|
Telling the Truth
“Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips
and from the deceitful tongue.
What shall be done to you, and what more besides,
O you deceitful tongue?”
Psalm 120:2-4
This prayer from Psalm 120, appointed today for Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, is more demanding than we might think! Most of us were taught from an early age that lying is wrong. Possibly we were told the old story of when young George Washington chopped down his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet he’d gotten for a birthday present. When asked by his father if he had chopped down the tree, the boy Washington said, “Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the tree.”
Whether that story is true or not, it certainly gets at an important aspect of what Scripture is telling us. “Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips!” How often we are tempted to tell lies when convenient, to hide something we have done, to damage our rivals or just to get ahead. Even though we may feel like our refusal to tell a lie puts us at a disadvantage, Scripture is clear. Followers of Christ cannot be people of lying lips.
Yet, this Psalm goes further than that, doesn’t it? It’s quite possible to avoid telling a lie in a strict sense, but in fact to have a deceitful tongue. Perhaps we tell only the part of the truth that suits our purposes and leave out the important parts. Perhaps we are misleading about our true intentions. Perhaps we say true things out of context or cherry-pick the bits that fit the story we want to tell.
We might even think that we have good reasons for our deceitful tongue! Maybe, we think, if we tell the truth, it will be impolite. There are, I’ll allow, times when it is best to follow the dictum of my Upper Midwestern upbringing: if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all! But there are other times when avoiding the truth and speaking instead with a deceitful tongue will only make things harder in the long run.
You see, when we avoid telling the truth, we put up relational barriers between ourselves and others. Not being honest with someone is a way of not respecting them, of avoiding hard truths that you think they can’t hear. But how will they ever hear them if no one tells them? Remember what Scripture says: we are called to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) and our Lord was full of truth and grace (John 1:14). How we tell the truth matters a great deal. But we are called to tell the truth, even when it’s hard. The “deceitful tongue” may feel more polite, but speaking the truth with love and grace is always better.
| 
