I was using drugs and partying when I joined a Bible study.
I was new to faith, and my weekends hadn’t caught up yet. My new friends knew, because I told them what I’d been up to. They didn’t pretend it was fine. They told me plainly where that life was taking me, and the more I heard it, the more I could see it for myself. Then they prayed with me, and they kept inviting me. More than once I answered, “You have a point. I never thought of it like that.”
No single conversation changed me. A group of people who told me the truth and stayed did.
It can feel like there are only two options, so we go quiet or go blunt. A friend asks what you honestly think of their plan, and you think it won’t work: stay kind and say nothing, or be honest and risk the friendship. My friends didn’t pick, and the Bible has a phrase for what they did. John says Jesus came “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14, NIV). Both, at once.
On this page
A question to carry through the post: when did you last hold back something true to keep the peace, or say something true and wish you’d said it differently?
The tradeWhy kindness and honesty feel like a trade
The pull toward a kind lie comes from a good place. In one experiment, people graded a weak essay that was headed for a prize competition [1]. Some of the graders learned that the writer’s cousin had just died, and those graders gave higher marks. That’s compassion, and I wouldn’t want any of us to have less of it. But the graders had been told that honest marks were what would help the writer improve the essay. The kindness was real, and it kept back the feedback that would have helped.
Kindness that hides the truth has a name. Ken Sande, who writes about conflict, calls it peacefaking: keeping the appearance of peace when the peace isn’t real [2]. He’s careful to separate it from overlooking. Letting something small go, when you’ve truly let it go, isn’t faking anything. Pretending you’ve let it go is.
The opposite mistake is just as tempting: pushing the truth on everybody. The person who never says the hard thing and the person who always says it look at each other and think, at least I’m not like that. I wonder if both are driven by shame, the fear of being the one in the wrong. For one, it’s shame about what the other person might think of them. For the other, it’s shame about staying quiet when something true needed saying. One hides, and the other pushes.
I’ve stood at the pushy end. Years ago, at a Bible study, a confident speaker began teaching something I was sure was wrong. My heart was pounding and I’d started to sweat before I’d decided to say anything. Then I was on my feet, correcting him in front of the whole room. I walked out believing I’d defended the truth. It took me a while to see that I’d mostly defended my place as the one with the right answers. Even if I was right about the theology, nobody in that room was helped by how I said it.
The writer Randy Alcorn puts the whole problem in one line: “Countless mistakes in marriage, parenting, ministry and other relationships are failures to balance grace and truth” [3].
The verseFull of grace and truth, not half of each
Fourteen verses into his Gospel, John describes Jesus this way:
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:14, NIV
“The Word” is John’s name for Jesus, and the word that matters is “full”. By balance, Alcorn doesn’t mean half of each: “Jesus wasn’t 50% grace, 50% truth, but 100% grace, 100% truth” [3]. In a conversation, truth is the part that says what’s real, including what we’d rather not hear. Grace is the part that says I’m for you, before you’ve earned it and after you’ve failed.
John’s Gospel shows the truth at full strength. In John 8, Jesus is talking with people who have just begun to believe in him. He promises them that “the truth will set you free.” They’re offended, because being set free means you weren’t free to begin with: “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone” (John 8:31-33, NIV). Jesus means a different kind of slavery, the hold sin has on a person (John 8:34). They can’t see it, so he says the hardest thing in the chapter: “You belong to your father, the devil” (John 8:44, NIV). That’s truth at full strength. A person has to know what has hold of them before they can be freed from it.
Then comes grace at full strength. He went to the cross for those same people, and for the rest of us: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, NIV). Jesus spoke with grace, offering forgiveness to everyone who put their trust in him. He also spoke with truth, naming exactly what people needed to be set free from.
Take either one away and the other goes bad. Truth alone says: you messed up, so you’re a mess-up. Grace alone says: everything’s okay, it’s not a big deal. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called grace on its own “cheap grace” [4]. If my friends had offered only truth, they’d have told me I was wrecking my life and then stopped calling. If they’d offered only grace, they’d have told me the partying was no big deal, and I’d have believed them. Their grace made the truth bearable. Their truth made the grace mean something.
You might be picturing someone who said “I’m just speaking the truth in love” right before they hurt you. Often that kind of truth comes out of the speaker’s own anxiety, a need to get it said, and you can feel that it isn’t there to help you. Plenty of people have been hurt that way, some of them at church, and if that’s part of your story, I wrote a post about church hurt with you in mind. The phrase comes from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where the point of speaking the truth in love is that “we will grow” (Ephesians 4:15, NIV). A truth told in a way the other person can’t grow from isn’t what Paul was asking for.
The evidenceWhat happens when truth arrives with grace
A classroom study tested whether trust changes how criticism lands. Criticism can be heard two ways: as a comment on the work, or as a verdict on the person. Which one you hear depends on whether you trust that the critic is for you. So if the critic settles that question first, the same criticism should be easier to use.
Researchers tested that with 44 Grade 7 students [5]. The students wrote essays, their teachers covered them with comments, and each student got a note in their own teacher’s handwriting. Half the notes said, “I’m giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your paper.” The other half said, “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” With the first note, fewer than half the students chose to rewrite their essays. With the second, about three in four did. (Interestingly, the jump was biggest for the Black students in the study; their teachers were all White.)
The second note isn’t praise. It doesn’t pretend the essay was good; the comments already said it wasn’t there yet. The comments carry the truth, and the note carries the grace: I’m on your side, and I believe you can get there.
Counselling runs on the same pair, warmth you don’t have to earn from someone who isn’t faking it, and clients tend to do a little better when they sense both [6] [7] [8]. Take away the honesty and you’re paying someone to nod. Take away the warmth and you’re paying a critic with a diploma. Even a true thing needs pacing. Hold a hard truth like a clenched fist for too long and the hand seizes; it takes a gentle movement in and back out.
Which is harder for you to give someone: the truth, or the belief that they can handle it?
Receiving itYou don’t get grace by fighting with truth
My friends did their part. Mine was to stop fighting what they told me. Jesus told a story about two men who went to the temple to pray. One, a Pharisee, listed his good habits. The other, a tax collector, “beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner,'” and Jesus says he’s the one who “went home justified before God” (Luke 18:9-14, NIV). Justified means set right. The one who admits he has a need is the one who’s saved.
The story goes that when Empress Catherine toured the Russian countryside, her minister Grigory Potemkin had fake village fronts built along the route, so she’d think the land was thriving. The fronts impressed the empress. The poverty behind them stayed where it was. Hiding the truth is one more way of fighting it, and you don’t get grace by fighting with truth.
Truth without grace does the same damage pointed inward. The truth about our shortcomings can turn into a whip for our own back. I’ve used it that way, beating myself up in my striving, and what I found in the end was that God had simply accepted me.
In practiceWhat this can look like in a hard conversation
If a hard conversation is ahead of you, the research is encouraging. People asked to imagine three days of total honesty expected it to go badly. People who actually tried it found the conversations more pleasant, and more connecting, than they’d expected [9].
Paul’s line for all of this: “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Colossians 4:6, NIV). Here’s what that can look like: four habits for when we’re the one talking, and one for when we’re the one listening.
When we’re the one with something to say
- The plank first. Jesus pictured someone trying to take a speck out of a friend’s eye with a plank in their own (Matthew 7:3-5). Lean in to help like that, and the plank hits them in the face. Sande has a rule of thumb for this: if we’re only 2 percent responsible, we’re 100 percent responsible for the 2 [2]. So before a hard conversation, it helps to write down what’s ours in it: impatience, wanting to be right, an old grudge.
- Listening before telling. Years ago, in street ministry, I’d hand out advice before I understood anyone’s problem. One woman told me my advice had nothing to do with her actual problem. I ask more questions now.
- The reason, out loud. The classroom note paired a high standard with belief in the student. With a friend whose plan we doubt, it might sound like: “I’m telling you this because I think you can build something good, and this plan isn’t there yet.” If we can’t say a sentence like that honestly, we’re not ready for the conversation.
- A private word. Jesus’ instruction is to go “just between the two of you” (Matthew 18:15, NIV). Most hard truths go better at a kitchen table than in a group chat.
When we’re the one hearing it
A hearing before a verdict. We don’t have to agree with all of it. “You have a point” may be the most useful thing to say before we defend ourselves. Proverbs puts a friend’s honesty above an enemy’s flattery: “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses” (Proverbs 27:6, NIV). A friend who is safe to be around, and who has stayed, has earned a hearing.
One honest limit. Speaking the truth in love never obliges you to confront someone who isn’t safe for you. If being honest with a partner, a parent or a church leader has ever left you afraid, the first hard conversation belongs with someone safe: a counsellor, your family doctor, or a friend who’ll stand with you.
Something to take further: if the hard conversation you keep rehearsing is with someone who hurt you, there’s The Forgiveness Ledger, a free, fillable worksheet. It counts the full cost of a hurt honestly before it asks you to let anything go.
ReviewBack to the question
Back to the last time you held back something true, or said it and wished you’d said it differently. If you held back, which of those habits might have helped? If you said it badly, what was missing: the listening, the privacy, or the belief that they could take it?
If these questions are live for you, this is the kind of work I do with people from faith communities, and my Christian counselling page describes how I bring faith into the room, in Colwood or online anywhere in British Columbia.
One last question. Who told you the truth and stayed, and do they know what their honesty did for you?
Educational content; not a substitute for therapy. If you’re working through something significant, consider connecting with a counsellor or your family doctor.
References
- Lupoli, M. J., Jampol, L., & Oveis, C. (2017). Lying because we care: Compassion increases prosocial lying. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(7), 1026-1042. DOI:10.1037/xge0000315
- Sande, K. (2004). The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict (3rd ed.). Baker Books. ISBN 9780801064852.
- Alcorn, R. (2003). The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance. Multnomah. ISBN 9781590520659. Quoted from the author’s own excerpt, “The Grace and Truth Paradox: Grace Passages”, Eternal Perspective Ministries (2010): https://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Jan/28/grace-passages-grace-and-truth-paradox/
- Bonhoeffer, D. (1959). The Cost of Discipleship (R. H. Fuller, Trans.). Macmillan. (Original work published 1937.)
- Yeager, D. S., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., Brzustoski, P., Master, A., Hessert, W. T., Williams, M. E., & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Breaking the cycle of mistrust: Wise interventions to provide critical feedback across the racial divide. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 804-824. DOI:10.1037/a0033906
- Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95-103. DOI:10.1037/h0045357
- Farber, B. A., Suzuki, J. Y., & Lynch, D. A. (2018). Positive regard and psychotherapy outcome: A meta-analytic review. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 411-423. DOI:10.1037/pst0000171
- Kolden, G. G., Wang, C.-C., Austin, S. B., Chang, Y., & Klein, M. H. (2018). Congruence/genuineness: A meta-analysis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 424-433. DOI:10.1037/pst0000162
- Levine, E. E., & Cohen, T. R. (2018). You can handle the truth: Mispredicting the consequences of honest communication. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(9), 1400-1429. DOI:10.1037/xge0000488
