A Word About,… Truth

I was talking to a friend the other day in a casual conversation, when he used an idiom that I’ve been pondering since our time together. He said he’d been invited to a party. “Truth be told,” he said, “I hated every minute of it, but I managed to look happy until it was over.” The part I’ve been thinking about wasn’t the ‘managing to look happy until it was over’ part of what he said. It was the ‘truth be told’ part. That phrase, ‘truth be told’ kind of stuck in my head, and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. If I really examined what my friend was saying, I think it would be something like “If I had been truthful, I’d have told those party-goers that I hated going to that party, but I wasn’t truthful about it. Instead, I put on a happy face, so I’d look like I was having a good time.”

Truth be told, how honest am I, really? I’m wondering about the invisible, unspoken “truth be tolds’ of my life that creep in when no one but God can see. Acknowledging the truth can make us uncomfortable. Everyone polishes the truth a bit, now and then, I guess. Well, not everyone. Jesus never polished the truth.

In Mark, chapter 10, a wealthy young man approached Jesus, asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus gave him unvarnished truth. “One thing you lack: Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” That challenging truth exposed a young man’s attachment to wealth; when Jesus spoke the truth, the bible says the young man went away sorrowful. I wonder if Jesus worried about how his words might make that rich guy feel if he told him the truth?

The life of truth that the Lord Jesus lived was not harsh, but it was illuminating. In John chapter 4, he gently but truthfully confronted a Samaritan woman about her life. Remember? When she hedged a bit, and said she didn’t have a husband, he said“You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, (that’s another way of saying ‘truth be told,’) you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.”No doubt His directness made her uncomfortable, but the truth led to her realization that she needed God in her life.

Jesus said in John 8:32, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That’s the beauty of truth—it never binds; it liberates. The more we practice examining the truth, admitting the truth, acknowledging the truth, the lighter our hearts become, and the closer we get to living authentically in the light of God’s grace.

When we acknowledge the truth about ourselves to God, there’s no rejection waiting on the other side. Instead, we find grace. We find the One who already knows the whole story and loves us anyway. Truth be told, we’re all works in progress. Life is messy, and sometimes the truth is too. But we serve a God who is truth—unchanging, steadfast, and faithful.

Psalm 25:5 says, “Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” Truth be told, living in that truth changes everything.