It’s popular to believe that everyone ultimately wants to know the truth. While this concept is the thesis of many a popular Hollywood movie, it’s a fallacy. The reality is that most live in denial of the truth. The wife who is unwilling to admit her husband is an alcoholic when it’s painfully obvious to everyone else. The parents who cannot face the reality that their child is a drug addict. The person who ignores symptoms of serious physical illness and refuses to go the doctor because they fear the truth. The suitor who cannot face the truth of a rejected marriage proposal. The victim who cannot acknowledge the truth of the conman who has fleeced them.

There’s a powerful scene in the movie “A Few Good Men” where Col. Jessep (Jack Nickelson) is being questioned by a lawyer, Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise) in a court of law ….

Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee (Tom Cruise): I think I’m entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can’t handle the truth!

There are those who are always seeking but never arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3:7).

Often when Jesus told the disciples the truth they couldn’t handle it. He told them it is was easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter Heaven. He told them that a disciple would betray him. He told Peter that he would deny Him. He told them divorce was unacceptable. He told them that He Himself would be crucified. It was the truth. But from their reaction, they couldn’t handle it. This is one reason that Jesus caused such controversy among the religious and political leaders of His day - He told them truths they didn’t want to hear.

One of the challenges of following Jesus is that He ultimately won’t let us run away from the truth. God desires that everyone come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). And sometimes He gives us a truth that is hard for us to handle. We’re prone to think that unlike all those other people, we can handle the truth. We’re wrong. There are some truths that we foolishly deny simply because they don’t fit into our view of ourselves and the way we want things to be.

Similarly we often make the critical mistake of failing to recognize that those we are trying to lead to Christ often cannot handle the entire truth yet. We foolishly drop the whole truth on them like a sledgehammer. And then we wonder why they reject it. Key to being missional is being like Jesus and recognizing the not everyone can handle the truth in entirety up front. We need to be sensitive to the One that will ultimately lead them into truth – the Holy Spirit.

In John 16:12-13 Jesus tells the disciples “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

The Message renders it this way - “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That is why I’ve said, ’He takes from me and delivers to you.’

They couldn’t handle the entire truth yet. Jesus tells the disciples in effect, “You can’t handle the truth. There are some things that are just too much for you to bear right now.”

Likewise, we need to be sensitive and discerning to how much truth others can handle at that particular moment. This doesn’t mean avoiding or denying the truth. It means trusting the timing of the Holy Spirit. We need to be like Jesus.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
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Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)