Ephesians 4:25, 29 NRSV
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another…. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

When we speak the truth about us we give others permission to do the same.
– Ruth Graham

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

When Jesus came, He shocked, surprised and exposed the system. Are we not called to do the same? – Tim Green, Dean of Religion, Travecca Nazarene University

Let me lay a bit more truth on us: truth and love are not mutually exclusive. Truth isn’t the heavy-handed Papa here to lay down the discipline. Real truth sets free, truth invites, truth locks hands with grace, kisses love, and outlasts all of the fashionable Facebook rants and fear-baiting rhetoric, all of the splinter-spotting by the plank-in-the-eye crowd. – Sarah Bessey, In which I tell you the truth about telling the truth

Most of history has been content with cultural truth, denominational truth, national truth, scientific truth, rational truth, factual truth, personal truth, etc. These are all needed and helpful, but the job of true religion is to detach from them, use them in the largest possible synthesis, and find the Big Truth that is beyond any of these smaller tribal truths. Jesus’ metaphor for this Big Truth beyond our little truths was the “Reign of God” or the “Kingdom of God.” Or we might say “in the light of eternity” or “in the final analysis” or “in the eyes of God.” But these are all ways of moving away from tribal thinking and looking out at life from eyes other than and larger than our own.
– Richard Rohr

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