Five Minute Friday: TRUTH

As I do on most Fridays, I'm joining up with Kate Motaung's Five Minute Friday linkup. 
The word this week is TRUTH.

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Someone once wrote these words to me:

"We need to get to the truth before we can find our way back to love again."

This was someone I loved. Someone who loved me. Someone with whom I had had a very difficult conflict.

When I read those words, this is what they said to me:

"You are wrong, but you are not willing to admit it. That is why we can't reconcile. Once you admit you are wrong, then maybe I will be willing to consider re-establishing a relationship with you."

I have thought about that a lot since then. Is that how relationships work: admit you're wrong (even if you don't think you are) so that the person will condescend to love you again? That doesn't sound like relationship, it sounds like judgment: assemble an agreed statement of facts and render a verdict.

I want to say that the reverse is true: love always takes the lead. It always establishes the safety and commitment of the relationship first, providing a sound foundation from which truth can be explored. That makes sense to me.

But in the end, I don't think truth and love are separate things. Maybe my finite mind needs to talk about them separately to try and make sense of them -- but they are really different ways of saying the same thing. The Bible says "God is Love," and Jesus says "I am the Truth." 

God is both of those things, all the time. He doesn't lean toward one or the other depending on which is most appropriate in the circumstances. His love is always truthful; his truth is always loving. 
  
I don't fully understand how this can be -- but I believe it. And it helps me, because now when I hear truth and love being spoken of as distinct, or opposite, or conflicting, I recognize that this is a concession to our human way of thinking. The deeper reality is this: 

Truth and Love are inseparable. 

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