3-12-21 - Do What Is True

You can listen to this reflection here.

I find this week’s gospel reading a challenge, these words of Jesus that are both wonderfully affirming, yet clearly set a boundary between those who accept the gift of God in Christ, and those who choose darkness. (Jesus does not comment directly about people of different faiths; we can interpret his words narrowly or generously.) It's been heavy going, navigating the flow of his ideas and how to interpret them.

However, we end on a high note, as Jesus closes his discourse with Nicodemus with this observation: “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

I am struck by that phrase, “Those who do what is true.” I expect it to say, “Those who do what is good.” But “good” is a very subjective measure. What one person considers good might be harmful to another. What is true, though – if we define “true” as guileless, transparent, without any falsehood – no one can argue with. It just is.

We go off the rails when we equate being a Christian with "being good." If we were good, we’d have had no need for Christ, and no need to be Christian. Being a Christian means acknowledging how “not good” we can be, and how much we need God. As we accept that Christ did not come to condemn us, and that God receives as we are; as we allow the Holy Spirit to live in us, we find ourselves better able to choose the good. So let’s take “being a good person” out of this.

What about being true, though? That yields some room for growth. To be a person without guile, without falsehood, without hidden agenda, totally transparent – that is a worthy goal, and one that we can attain only as we see ourselves with humility and clarity. To arrive at that place, we will need the Spirit of God at work in us, to dismantle false personas we carry, the fears that cause us to pretend or withhold the truth.

In that sense, we not only strive to be true. We must allow ourselves to be trued – the verb referring to the way a carpenter brings something into the exact position or alignment needed for it to function properly. Just as an object cannot “true” itself, so we must be “trued” by the power of God, the only one who knows exactly how we are to be aligned, because s/he’s the one who made us.

What we can do is make it our heart’s desire to become people without guile or falsehood or hidden needs or strategies. We can start to notice when something we say is less than the truth, and revise it. We can pay attention to the circumstances in which we seem to feel the need to hide behind a mask of who we think people want us to be, rather than being fully, gloriously who we are, faults and all.

I imagine the Carpenter of Nazareth knew something about how to "true" materials. I want to let his Spirit “true” me into proper alignment. As I become a person who “does what is true,” I come more and more into the light. I’ll see you there.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are here.  Water Daily is now a podcast! Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.