When You’re Asked to Choose Between Truth and Love

I always wish I was cooler.

That desire would run my life, except that even more than wishing I was cooler, I want to follow Jesus.

I wish following Jesus provided all the answers to life’s complex questions (because, how cool would I be if I knew those answers), but in over six decades of following Him, that hasn’t been my experience.

He is the answer because everything was made by Him, and through Him, and for Him.

One of my favorite Jesus passages is Colossians 1:15-28  “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” (This happens to be NKJV, but it’s an amazing passage in any translation.)

So, in this way, Jesus is the answer (just like the song we used to sing with acoustic guitar in the ’80’s.)

But, does that mean we instantly know how to vote in an election or how to respond when our child wrestles with gender dysphoria or how to keep our own faith intact when those close to us are deconstructing theirs?

Not in my experience.

And right here is where I want to say that totally cool thing that my deconstructing, skinny jean, hip preacher friends insist is true. “It’s so simple. Just love. Just love like Jesus did. And stay chill.”

But, you know I can’t.

Because sometimes Jesus loved us by telling us really hard things, by speaking truth in ways that caused people to pick up stones to throw at Him, or even to walk away.

John 6:66-69 ESV says: “ After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,  and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.'”

Peter didn’t say he was sticking with Jesus because “I just love you, man.” He says they have no where else to go because only Jesus had the “words of eternal life.” He was God’s Holy One.

Yes, Jesus loved the outcasts, the rejected, the sinners, and the scorned. He also loved the Pharisees but His pursuit of them sounded more like delivering truth in hard ways.

And great crowds of sinners, outcasts, the demon possessed, the rejected, and the scorned followed Jesus. These crowds cheered as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

But only days later, these same crowds let the Pharisees motivate them to call for Jesus’ crucifixion. They stood around and watched Him die–outcasts and Pharisees united in murderous intent.

 

And He loved them all. He died for us all. I would have been standing there, too, watching Jesus die, afraid I might be next if I open my mouth, knowing He loved me, and feeling the feeble nature of the love I offer in return.

It’s really not simple. If the truth about love was simple, God would have sent a memo, not the sixty-six books that comprise His Word to us. He’s not a frustrated English teacher, He’s God communicating great, eternal truths to people He created in love.

If the truth about love was simple, we’d be better at it.

If the truth about love was simple, we’d be loving one another every day, in every way, outcasts and Pharisees alike, rather than trying to sort one another out and decide who plays who in our modern re-enactment.

Here are a couple of things I know:

1. The more I listen to the talking heads of our times, the more confused I become.
2. The moment I open God’s Word, the confusion clears. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have Jesus revealed in His Word.
3. Never once will any of us be required by God to choose between love or truth.
4. There is no such thing as love without truth because there’s no such thing as love that lies. There is no such thing as truth without love because deception is from the devil and there is no love in him, only counterfeits.

Yes, the disciples, the Chosen, just followed Jesus. They walked with Him. They ate, laughed, worked, and ministered with Him side-by-side. Do you know what they did next? They wrote about it. They recorded what He did and said. They recorded what happened next and they taught others what He taught them. They wrote it all down for us. In love.

And it wasn’t easy. Love sometimes meant letting people walk away, or escaping from them before they killed you for telling them the truth about Jesus’ love.

The early church was closer to Jesus and the news of the gospel than any of us is now and here’s what we know. Delivering this truth in the love of Jesus made them targets and led to suffering and sometimes (often) death.

Many came to know Jesus through their ministry. Many others picked up stones or created edicts or watered down what they were teaching to dilute it of truth or married it to a lie to lead others astray.

It’s not simple. But, it’s not impossible, either, not with God. Nothing is impossible with God. Not even the inseparable nature of truth and love.

Have you been asked which is more important: Love or Truth? Watch out. https://t.co/f4h4f2rMdy God never makes us choose. #amwriting #Jesus

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) November 22, 2022