Giving Honesty a Wide Path

“The toothpaste is all gone, Mama!” My youngest shouted from the upstairs bathroom.

I moved the pink step stool where she pointed and I uncover a puddle of bubble-gum flavored sparkly grit on the tile. Like a prehistoric animal stuck in a tar pit, the deflated tube lay glued to the edge.

“NayOHmee!” I called as she escaped around the corner and into the guest room.

There was disappointment in my eyes and heart and I know she heard it in my voice.

“What happened, Baby?” I asked. More calm this time. She peeked around the corner of the bedroom.

I didn’t do anything, followed by It was like that when I woke up, and It wasn’t me. I promise! It wasn’t me.

Sigh.

Because it WAS her. We were the only two in the house.

“Maybe it was the cat?” she suggested.

Shaking my head I asked her to sit in the hallway in a time out while I mopped up the gummy mess.

I figured she’d eventually tell the truth if I asked the right questions, waited long enough, and maybe offered to discipline the cat, the obvious culprit.

“I didn’t DOOO it!” echoed in the bathroom as I knelt. “I didn’t DOOO it…I did it.” It didn’t take long for her to offer the truth.

She collapsed into tears on the floor, and with all the drama of Sarah Bernhardt began her apologies.

Humans have been the same for thousands of years. We lie. We hide. We blame someone else {usually not feline} and then when the weight of the guilt is too heavy for our finite shoulders, we break.

We hide for a couple reasons, I think. We are ashamed because of what we did, but often we worry about the social consequences of keeping something hidden.

I sat her down on my lap and said that because she told the truth I wouldn’t discipline her for the wasted toothpaste. She cried and wailed and we talked about what happens when we lie.

Our trustworthiness fails.

Our own sense of confidence falters.

We begin to believe our own lies.

One of the problems in the church is that telling the truth comes with consequence. Being open and vulnerable, for the sake of living in the light, so often, especially in the Christian community comes with it’s own set of consequences that are totally outside of the ones that will fall because of what we’ve done.

Ostracism.

Scarlett letter branding.

Gossip.

Quick judgment.

Loss of job or position.

Of course, addictions, habitual sins and personality flaws come with their own innate consequences. {for example: a porn addiction might lead to distress and a lack of trust in marriage and anger issues might lead to violent or explosive behavior and sin, in general, keeps us apart from God}.

What I’m talking about are the social consequences that come with simply telling the truth.

Some of this is out in the open {how dare you?} and some of it is quietly whispered {what she can’t hear won’t hurt her}. Either way, we make people pay for being honest.

Many in our generation have espoused honesty, and sometimes raw or offensive honesty, as one of their core values. However, much of the church hasn’t provided a platform for honesty.

This isn’t a treatise on how to deal with lying from a small child. Even though I’ve been a parent for eleven years, I still scratch my head with confusion nearly every day.  Maybe I wasn’t the best mother for not disciplining for the lie. But she shared. She opened up and she told the truth because there was a platform for it.

I think this could be an example for the church.

We stop judging and begin holding the hands of those who need help. We stop ostracizing and begin welcoming those who have been given up on by the church. We stop hiding and create a culture of up-front-ness and truth telling.

We would essentially remove the negative consequences for honesty and pave a wide path for storytelling, openness, and opportunities for accountability and recovery in our churches.

IN our churches. Where it should be.

Have you ever received negative consequences for honesty? Have you ever been a part of a community where honesty was a value? Have you witnessed ostracism for openness?

{adapted from a previously published post on sarahmarkley.com}