Shade tree wisdom 5/3/13

Shade tree wisdom 5/6/13

“Speak the truth to one

Another, render in your

Gates judgments that are

True, and make peace”.

Zachariah 8,16 RSV

This solid piece of advice from an Old Testament prophet seems, or ought to be, sort of taken for granted. After all, one of the first moral principles drilled into us as children was “always tell the truth”. And when we were caught in a lie, we paid the price. How often did I hear “That’s not fair” from children playing near my study window.

More and more it seems hard to speak truth. Variations of untruth are so many so varied, and so well disguised. They come in the form of imprecision, socially acceptable slippages, or just plain propaganda. One Phrase often used, “I didn’t mean it that way”.

The truths of the gospel need precision, exactness, lines worthy to drink in and savor and use to build a life that honors God. And for that, we need a lodestar a touchstone, a guiding principle, something to use to measure what we heard.

Precisions means attention, precise words give a true picture, and it might even cause resentment or anger.

But consider, we use our computer to send emails. And we have to be exact in our address, don’t we, and we accept that because “otherwise it won’t go through”.

Speaking words of truth separates wheat from chaff, the sound from the unsound. We need to discriminate, as we do when we eat mushrooms. We eat only those that do not poison us. We discriminate. We insist on that.

Sloppy phrases often hide bitter truths. Like saying of an explosion that “there was some collateral damage” instead of, “14 children with their mothers who were on an outing were also killed in the blast”.

` It is time, for us to speak truth one with another. And one truth that will save your souls is this. “Jesus Christ died for the sins of mankind” and this “No man comes to the Father But By ME.”

GPD 5/6/13