Part 3 of a 6 part series. View series intro and index.
It’s hard enough to communicate with people who have different worldviews and come from a different culture—whether they are from across the street or another continent. Communication gets harder when it travels over gender lines. Add to this fact that we usually arrive with personal assumptions about meaning, definitions, and what information the other person has at their disposal.
So you’d think to make things a bit easier, we’d always be honest. Nevertheless, we aren’t. This comes from a heart that desires to please man and exalt self. Obviously, there’s always the old fashioned lie. More than that, there are (at least) three other ways we cloud the truth.
Withholding
The first way we cloud the truth is that we tend to withhold truths or facts that could damage our reputation. Most of the time, we get caught in our tangled web, and when asked why we didn’t speak up about a certain truth, we say, “Oh, that slipped my mind,” or “I didn’t think it was relevant.” We all know that when truth is inconvenient for us, our tendency is to simply pretend it doesn’t exist.
Manipulating
Instead of lying, we often mask or distort the truth. We call this “manipulating” the truth. This could look a lot like withholding, however it differs in that we tell the truth but put a subjective spin on it. More prevalent than that, however, is that we can use our charisma and charm and make something look good, if it’s bad, or make it look bad, if it’s good.
Changing the Subject
If you want to find out how honest a person is (or how intelligent they are!) pay attention to how often they change the subject. People who change the subject often likely want to avoid the truth. This technique, of course, is similar to the previous two types of clouding truth.
Changing the subject, on the other hand, is a way for us to have an excuse to say, “I didn’t withhold, manipulate, or lie!” We are essentially telling the truth. But the deeper truth is that when our friend asks us how our heart is doing from the burdens of family, work, church, etc. we say, “I’m okay. Do you want to go the game on Saturday with me? I have two tickets?” or “I’m fine. What kind of pizza do you want to order?” The problem with this is that it puts up an open hand to someone’s face to say, “You can come this far and no further. I don’t want you to really know me.”
If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll find out that, truly, we aren’t very honest all that often.
JAMES PRUCH 