Being Right vs Being Loving
My highest value is Truth & Love. It's not my highest two values; it is my highest value because I don't believe the two can be separated. A partial truth is the most powerful lie. The gap in the full truth leaves an opening for so many different, wrong understandings, but the full truth cannot be separate from love. Sadly, as John 1 points out, men prefer darkness to light; mankind prefers the lie or half truth to the full truth that can set us free. The full truth can't be spoken without love. Christians are commanded to speak the truth in love, but sadly, we can sometimes only speak the half-truth, focused on sinful behavior without love for the person caught in that sin. When we do that, it comes out as an accusation rather than an affirmation, and in the process we resemble the Accuser of Men (a.k.a. - Satan) rather than the One True God, Whose image we bear as ambassadors to this world. When we sin, the Accuser speaks half-truths about who we are and what we ...