Thought for the Day - March 10th 2021
Jesus of Nazareth was once dismissed as a liar by people who told him ‘You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid,’ to which he replied, ‘I know where I’ve come from and where I’m going.’ This idea that our own truth isn’t good enough on its own, is something that we’ve seen play out in the media over the last few days, to devastating effect. Prince Harry and Meghan told their version of the truth and to some this is invalid testimony.
What is truth? And who has the right to tell it? These are important questions that are worth asking. On International Women’s Day thousands of social media posts celebrated the right of women to speak the truth even if our voices shake. To not speak and to hide the truth behind polite regard and convention is perhaps a more palatable approach, but to suffer silently is to slowly slaughter the soul.
The polarised extremity of the reaction to the revelations of Prince Harry and Meghan is perhaps to be expected but the harsh and deeply personal nature of the backlash is indicative of a deeper malaise in our society, a sickness that’s been growing largely unchecked and one for which there is currently no vaccine rollout. To some, Harry and Meghan have poured scorn and disrespect upon a treasured national institution, to others they’ve flipped over a rock to expose the crawling racism underneath.
My bible reading for today was an intriguing story from the book of Jeremiah where God asks him to bury his loincloth in a cleft of rock. Many days later, God asks him to dig it up again, and when he does Jeremiah discovers – rather obviously – that the loincloth is now useless. I think there is perhaps something to be said for washing our dirty loincloths in public; if you keep them buried forever, they quickly become good for nothing.
Our own truth is worth the telling, for all that it doesn’t exist in an objectivity vacuum. It is ours, no more no less. When we tell vulnerable truths, we testify to our humanity and confess to our helplessness as precious children of God. And yet just over one year on from the suicide of Caroline Flack and the Be Kind social media movement, another woman is having her mental health dismissed because she had the audacity to tell her own truth. Truth, when wielded with a firm hand, will do that.
In our angry age of polarised opinions, where nuance and subtlety are eschewed in favour of reductive and sweeping statements, writer Anne Lamott reminds us that we don’t always have to chop everything down with the sword of truth. Sometimes we can just point with it. Only we can say who we are and where we have come from.
What is truth? And who has the right to tell it? These are important questions that are worth asking. On International Women’s Day thousands of social media posts celebrated the right of women to speak the truth even if our voices shake. To not speak and to hide the truth behind polite regard and convention is perhaps a more palatable approach, but to suffer silently is to slowly slaughter the soul.
The polarised extremity of the reaction to the revelations of Prince Harry and Meghan is perhaps to be expected but the harsh and deeply personal nature of the backlash is indicative of a deeper malaise in our society, a sickness that’s been growing largely unchecked and one for which there is currently no vaccine rollout. To some, Harry and Meghan have poured scorn and disrespect upon a treasured national institution, to others they’ve flipped over a rock to expose the crawling racism underneath.
My bible reading for today was an intriguing story from the book of Jeremiah where God asks him to bury his loincloth in a cleft of rock. Many days later, God asks him to dig it up again, and when he does Jeremiah discovers – rather obviously – that the loincloth is now useless. I think there is perhaps something to be said for washing our dirty loincloths in public; if you keep them buried forever, they quickly become good for nothing.
Our own truth is worth the telling, for all that it doesn’t exist in an objectivity vacuum. It is ours, no more no less. When we tell vulnerable truths, we testify to our humanity and confess to our helplessness as precious children of God. And yet just over one year on from the suicide of Caroline Flack and the Be Kind social media movement, another woman is having her mental health dismissed because she had the audacity to tell her own truth. Truth, when wielded with a firm hand, will do that.
In our angry age of polarised opinions, where nuance and subtlety are eschewed in favour of reductive and sweeping statements, writer Anne Lamott reminds us that we don’t always have to chop everything down with the sword of truth. Sometimes we can just point with it. Only we can say who we are and where we have come from.
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