Our commitment to speaking truth as leaders and Christ followers

One of the attributes of God is that He is truth incarnate. If you do a search of words like "truth," or "lies" you realize that God's character demands truthfulness from His people. But even more significant are Jesus' statements in the Gospels that Satan is the father of lies. Thus, when we speak truth we emulate the character of God and when we knowingly speak untruth or spin the truth (so that it is no longer truth) we emulate the Evil One. There is no other conclusion.

The lack of truthfulness in our lives or organizations is designed to make us look better than we are or to cover up our own mistakes. It is what Washington does, it is what corporations do it is what happens daily all around us. It is an acceptable practice in many circles. But it should not be acceptable in the lives or organizations that represent Jesus. If we represent Him we must emulate His character and truth is at the heart of who He is.

Spinning the facts to make ourselves look good is so ubiquitous in our society that it pervades many of God's people. I often work with churches where leaders have not only not told the truth to the congregation about issues they were dealing with but actually lied. They would say to protect people. Silence is far better than lying and while one does not have to share all truth, whatever is shared must be true. 

Often we add some truth to falsehoods to make our statements plausible. But as CS Lewis points out in The Last Battle, The Chronicles of Narnia, "By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lies far stronger." 

We have had instances in our own organization where someone was not truthful in their communications. I take these instances very seriously as the leader of ReachGlobal because our integrity is at stake. When we become aware of such issues (thankfully rare) there is literally a "come to Jesus meeting" since such violations go to the core of who He is and who we represent. We either emulate the Father of truth or the father of lies. It is that simple.

All of T.J. Addington's books including his latest, Deep Influence,  are available from the author for the lowest prices and a $2.00 per book discount on orders of ten or more.