The Responsibility to Speak: Truth Does Not Require Contempt - Speaking the Truth in Love
A Weekly Devotional from The Founders' Quill: Reclaiming America's Judeo-Christian Heritage through Spirit and Truth.
Speaking Truth in Love
Last week we considered the responsibility to know. We asked whether we genuinely want to know what is true or whether we simply want to be told that what we already think is true. That question required us to slow down, listen, examine evidence, recognize our biases, and possess enough humility to allow truth to correct us.
But discernment does not end when we reach a conclusion.
Eventually, the citizen who has listened must speak.
There are moments when something needs to be said. A falsehood needs to be corrected. An injustice needs to be confronted. A principle needs to be defended. A neighbor needs someone to speak on his behalf. A public question requires thoughtful debate. A parent must teach a child. A pastor must proclaim truth. A citizen must make his convictions known.
Freedom of speech gives Americans extraordinary liberty to do these things. Yet possessing the freedom to speak does not settle the question of how that freedom should be used. The law may protect my right to say something while wisdom still asks whether what I am about to say is true, necessary, helpful, or loving. The Constitution may restrain government from silencing me, but it cannot govern my tongue for me.
Once again, the responsibility returns to the governed self. The question is no longer merely whether I have something to say. It is whether the way I speak reveals that my words, like the rest of my life, have been brought under the discipline of truth and the lordship of Christ.
Truth and Love Belong Together
Paul gives Christians one of the shortest and most demanding descriptions of faithful speech in the New Testament. He tells believers that, “speaking the truth in love,” they are to grow into maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:15 NIV).
We often find it easier to choose one half of that command.
Some emphasize truth while treating love as weakness. If something is true, they reason, it should be said plainly, forcefully, and without much concern for how it is received. Any appeal to gentleness sounds like compromise. Any request for restraint feels like an attempt to silence conviction.
Others emphasize love while becoming increasingly hesitant to speak difficult truths at all. They fear offending, damaging relationships, or appearing judgmental. Love gradually becomes indistinguishable from affirmation, and truth is permitted only when it is unlikely to make anyone uncomfortable.
Scripture gives us neither option.
Truth without love can become cruelty. Love without truth can become sentimentality. Christian maturity requires us to hold them together. That does not mean every difficult truth must be softened until it loses its meaning. Jesus said difficult things. The prophets confronted kings and nations. John the Baptist spoke plainly about sin. Paul challenged false teaching and rebuked destructive behavior. Biblical love has never meant pretending that wrong is right so that everyone remains comfortable.
But neither does courage require harshness.
There is a temptation, particularly when we believe something precious is threatened, to assume that greater anger demonstrates greater faithfulness. The sharper the insult, the stronger the conviction must be. The more thoroughly an opponent is humiliated, the more courage we imagine has been displayed.
Sometimes that is not courage at all.
Sometimes it is simply anger wearing the clothing of conviction.
The Christian must ask more than whether his words are technically true. He must also ask whether he is speaking that truth as a person being formed into the likeness of Christ.
Disagreement Is Not Enmity
Americans have never been strangers to fierce disagreement. The political world of the Founding generation was hardly the polite gathering we sometimes imagine from paintings of solemn men assembled around tables. Political disputes became personal. Newspapers attacked public figures mercilessly. Friendships fractured. Accusations flew between emerging political factions, and the presidential election of 1800 exposed deep divisions within the young republic.
When Thomas Jefferson delivered his First Inaugural Address in 1801, he therefore spoke to a nation that had recently endured a bitter political contest. Yet Jefferson offered an important distinction: “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.” He reminded Americans that people bearing different political names could nevertheless remain connected by principles larger than their disagreements.¹
Jefferson himself did not always live up to that ideal. Neither did his opponents. That is precisely why the statement remains useful. The Founding generation did not preserve republican government because everyone agreed. They had to learn, imperfectly and sometimes painfully, how a free people could continue living together when they did not.
We face the same problem.
A person can reach a different conclusion without becoming my enemy. Someone can misunderstand an issue without being stupid. A neighbor can hold convictions I believe are profoundly mistaken while remaining my neighbor. And occasionally, the person with whom I disagree may see something I have missed.
Chapter 33 required us to remain open to that possibility while listening.
Chapter 34 asks whether we remember it while speaking.
What Contempt Does to Us
There is a difference between disagreement and contempt. Disagreement says, I believe you are wrong. Contempt says, Because you are wrong, you are beneath me.
The difference matters.
Contempt makes caricatures easier than arguments. If we can reduce people to labels, we no longer have to wrestle seriously with what they actually believe. Mockery can replace persuasion. Sarcasm can replace reasoning. Insults can produce applause from people who already agree with us, giving us the satisfying impression that something important has been accomplished.
But contempt exacts a price from the person who practices it.
James recognized the spiritual contradiction within our speech. “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father,” he wrote, “and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness” (James 3:9 NIV).
The person I am tearing apart with my words bears the image of the God I worship with those same lips.
That truth does not require me to agree with him. It does not require me to call falsehood truth, excuse wrongdoing, or remain silent about matters of conviction. It does require me to remember that the person on the receiving end of my words possesses a dignity that does not disappear simply because he is wrong.
We said several weeks ago that we cannot hate our way back to virtue. Neither can we ridicule our way there. If the defense of morality steadily makes us cruel, something has gone wrong in our defense of morality.
A Republic Needs Persuasion
There is also a civic reason our speech matters. A republic assumes disagreement. If citizens agreed about every important question, there would be little need for public deliberation. Free government instead brings together people with competing interests, convictions, experiences, priorities, and ideas and asks them to live under laws they have some meaningful role in shaping. That requires persuasion.
Persuasion is fundamentally different from coercion. It assumes that the judgment of another person matters. We offer reasons because we cannot simply command our fellow citizens to agree with us. We make arguments, listen to objections, answer questions, present evidence, and attempt to convince people who remain free to reject what we say.
George Washington understood something of the disposition such government would require. At the conclusion of his First Inaugural Address in 1789, he prayed that God's blessing would be evident in the “enlarged views,” “temperate consultations,” and wise measures upon which the success of the new government would depend.²
“Temperate consultations” is a striking phrase.
Washington was not describing silence. Consultation requires speaking. Neither was he imagining universal agreement. Deliberation is necessary precisely because judgments differ. The word temperate, however, suggests people capable of governing themselves while they deliberate.
That is an important distinction for a republic.
Free people must be able to disagree without immediately treating disagreement as betrayal. They must be able to argue strongly without assuming that strength requires hostility. They must possess enough confidence in their convictions to subject those convictions to argument rather than merely increasing the volume at which they are expressed.
A republic does not need citizens without convictions.
It needs citizens whose convictions are strong enough to withstand conversation.
What Am I Trying to Accomplish?
The responsibility to speak therefore begins before the words leave our mouths.
Suppose I have done the work we discussed last week. I have listened. I have investigated. I have resisted rumor. I have examined my own assumptions. I have reached a conclusion I genuinely believe is true.
Now I am preparing to speak.
What am I trying to accomplish?
That question can expose more than we expect. Am I trying to help another person understand something, or am I trying to punish him for disagreeing with me? Am I describing what he actually believes, or have I exaggerated his position into something easier to attack? Would I speak these words in the same way if he were sitting across the table from me? Am I contributing something useful, or has my anger simply found somewhere to go?
Social distance can make cruelty remarkably easy. We can type words to a stranger that we would be embarrassed to say while looking into his eyes. We can forget that a profile picture represents a human being with a family, fears, failures, hopes, wounds, and a story we probably do not know.
The Christian should remember.
And there is another question worth asking:
Do I want this person to understand the truth—or do I want other people to watch me defeat him?
Those motives are not the same.
One seeks persuasion. The other seeks performance. One treats the other person as someone worth convincing. The other uses him as a prop before an audience. That distinction matters in our homes, churches, workplaces, neighborhoods, and public conversations. It matters whether we are talking across a kitchen table or through a screen. The medium may change, but the responsibility of the speaker does not.
A Gentle Answer Is Not a Weak Answer
Proverbs offers another piece of wisdom that seems almost too simple for our age: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1 NIV).
Notice what the proverb does not say. It does not say a gentle answer is an evasive answer. It does not say a gentle answer avoids truth. It does not say a gentle answer always produces agreement.
Gentleness describes the manner, not necessarily the content.
A gentle answer may still say no. It may still identify wrongdoing. It may still establish a boundary, defend a principle, challenge an argument, or refuse to participate in something conscience cannot permit.
But it does so without unnecessarily adding fuel to the fire. That requires strength.
Anyone can return insult for insult. Anyone can allow another person's anger to determine the tone of the conversation. Self-government appears when someone else loses control of his words and we refuse to surrender control of ours.
The same principle applies publicly. We should be especially cautious about assuming that the loudest voice is the bravest one.
The volume of our anger is not the measure of our courage.
Sometimes courage is standing firmly while refusing to hate.
There Is Still a Time to Speak
None of this should be mistaken for a call to timid Christianity or passive citizenship.
There are moments when silence becomes its own moral failure. Injustice should be confronted. Falsehood should be challenged. The vulnerable should be defended. Corruption should be exposed. Religious liberty and freedom of conscience should be protected. Christians cannot surrender moral conviction simply because someone labels that conviction offensive.
Scripture gives us no picture of discipleship in which faithfulness always keeps the peace.
The prophets spoke.
John the Baptist spoke.
The apostles spoke.
Jesus spoke.
And sometimes their words produced intense opposition.
Christian civility therefore cannot mean that we speak only truths everyone already finds acceptable. Nor does loving our neighbor mean refusing ever to tell our neighbor something he does not want to hear.
The question is whether our courage still looks like Christian courage. Can we confront without dehumanizing? Can we refuse to yield without refusing to love? Can we defend conviction without delighting in humiliation? Can we speak boldly without needing an enemy?
That is much harder than simply becoming angry. And it requires far more self-government.
Speech Under the Lordship of Christ
Paul's instruction returns us to where we began: “speaking the truth in love.”
Truth and love.
Our culture often asks us to choose. Scripture refuses.
The Christian citizen therefore enters public life carrying both conviction and humility. He speaks because truth matters. He listens because wisdom matters. He refuses to manipulate because integrity matters. He refuses contempt because his neighbor bears God's image. He can acknowledge when an opponent makes a good point because truth matters more than winning. He can apologize when his own words cross the line because faithfulness matters more than saving face.
And when something must be said, he says it.
Not because he enjoys conflict.
Not because anger has taken control.
Not because an audience is waiting to applaud.
He speaks because conscience requires it. Freedom gives us the right to speak. Self-government teaches us to govern that speech. Christian discipleship places even that freedom beneath the authority of Christ.
The question is therefore not simply whether we are speaking loudly enough to be heard.
It is whether our words bear witness to the truth we claim to defend.
So perhaps the mirror must remain before us for one more week. When people hear me defend what I believe is true, do they hear only my anger, my politics, my frustration, and my contempt? Or can they also hear evidence of the Christ I claim to follow?
When people hear me defend the truth, can they also hear Christ in the way I speak it?
A free people need courageous voices.
A Christian people should know what those voices ought to sound like.
Spirit & Truth
Thom H. Paine
Notes
Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1801. Speaking after the contentious election of 1800, Jefferson declared, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle,” before appealing to principles shared across emerging partisan divisions.
George Washington, “First Inaugural Address,” April 30, 1789. Washington concluded by praying that divine blessing would attend the “enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures” upon which the success of the new government depended.
Bibliography
Jefferson, Thomas. “First Inaugural Address.” March 4, 1801.
Washington, George. “First Inaugural Address.” April 30, 1789. National Archives, Washington, DC.
The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.
The Founders’ Quill seeks to recover the spiritual and moral foundations that shaped the American experiment in ordered liberty. By returning to Scripture, history, and the wisdom of those who came before us, we are invited not merely to admire our inheritance but to become people capable of preserving it.
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