WITH LOVE, ALÉTHEUÓ...
Long before the era of TikTok and Instagram; Facebook reigned supreme as the social networking site to be. I still remember the nostalgia I felt when I opened my Facebook account about 13 years ago. I could connect with my classmates and thousands of other people around the Globe; the "earth and all it's fullness thereof" was literally my social buffet. At the time, my mum was convinced that Facebook was the next evil thing that was invented to capture the "destinies" of young people. Her convictions were further strengthened by a popular telecast preacher at the time who often performed deliverance sessions on young people who had been "possessed" from their dealings on Facebook. My mum would always call out to us then to join her watch the latest deliverance session, serving as a deterrent to us from becoming entangled in Zuckerberg's web. So you could imagine my amazement a few years down the road when I got the notification that my dearly beloved had just joined Facebook 😄. Well, it turned out she was not entirely wrong...
As with most publicly available platforms, there is a sleuth of (mis)information on it, most of which requires intentional discernment and filtering. Even more so for a Christian. As I prepared to write this post, I remembered one instance that I had almost succumbed to misinformation. Grab your coffee (tea or juice), let me tell you the story. I was scrolling through Facebook then and found a post that I liked and ended up sharing. It was around friendship versus sonship as believers, and read something along the lines of... "Abraham was called God's friend, and many aspire to be so. However, you don't go back home to your friends, but your sons, and they do know what you are doing. God has called us sons and I'll rather remain a son than aspire to be a friend" It sounds sweet right? I thought so too, and off I shared. A few minutes after sharing that post, along with getting notifications of a few likes, I got a lengthy message delivered to my inbox. It was from someone I knew and respected, and she had taken the time to expand, lines upon lines and scripture upon scripture, why the quote I had just shared was grossly inaccurate. In hindsight, it was a "high sounding nonsense" if I describe it in my own words. I was really instructed, thanked her and reminded her of my sweets which I had requested from her to bring while returning from her trip. Can you tell what is wrong in that message? Let me know in the comments, it will probably be a post for another day.
You may have figured out by now that today's post is not about Facebook. However, I wanted to draw your attention to three lessons that struck me from that incident:
The fact that something is well crafted or sounds sentimental doesn't necessarily mean it is true. Truth is objective and we must always be careful to separate it from sentiments.
Secondly, that incident was one of my first lessons about the dangers of interpreting the Bible out of context and making a doctrine out of a single verse. The Bible is a complete book, it has to be understood in context, and doctrines have to be established on the entirety of truths found in it. Failure to do so brings one on the edge of heresy.
The third lesson is the concept of alétheuó (Gk), literally translated as "truthing" and is the phrase translated as "speak the truth" in Ephesians 4:15.
Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of His body, the church - Ephesians 4:15 (NLT)
This Bible verse encourages us to speak the truth, but with love. As I think back to the encounter I just described, I gained an appreciation for this scripture, and realize the need for correction that is carefully crafted and done in love. I am at a point now in my Christian walk where I can accept the truth of God's word regardless of the nuances surrounding the delivery. That is where we eventually need to get to as believers. But until then, whenever we have the chance to correct someone, let us "with love, alétheuó"
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