On my way to work this morning I saw a church sign with the words, “Truth Hurts”. I’ve actually been thinking along those same lines lately. There are several things over the past few months that have been brought up during preaching I’ve heard, as well as things I’ve been involved with personally, that when the truth has been spoken, it hurts.
I began asking myself, “Why does truth hurt? What makes it so harsh?” Mind you, I’m not questioning the validity or importance of truth at all. Truth is what is needed, rather than untruths or incomplete truths to make someone feel better about themselves or accepted in certain cliques.
The answer to the question of why truth hurts I believe is two-fold. First I’ll quote a verse:
Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them. -Psalm 119:165
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Back in February during our youth revival, I heard a message preached about the Great White Throne Judgment, and the reality of Hell. It was one of the roughest messages I’ve heard preached on Hell in a long time. It didn’t bother me at all though, for my own life (It did bother me for those that were present who were lost and didn’t respond). Not because I’ve grown cold or calloused to the subject, but because I have peace about my eternal destination because of what Jesus has done for me, and the fact that I’ve accepted Him as my Savior. So my point is that when you line up with the truth that is spoken, it doesn’t hurt. Which brings me to the first part of my answer.
Truth hurts because it exposes where you are wrong. It doesn’t necessarily expose it for all the world to see, but it will expose it to your conscience and your very soul. At the very least, it embarrasses you because you know that you’re not lining up with what is right.
The second part of my answer depends on a person’s willingness to respond to the truth they’ve been given. If they choose to correct where they’ve done wrong, it can hurt. An example can be where a person has done someone wrong, thinking they were right in doing whatever it was. When they were told the truth about the situation, it required them to humble themselves to go to that person and make things right with them. That’s a severe beating on a person’s pride!
The start of a healing process sometimes hurts. I’ll use an analogy here. I got into a little bit of poison ivy a little while back. It wasn’t bad – just a few small spots on both of my arms. I figured they were small enough and insignificant enough that if I left them alone, they’d heal on their own. On my left arm, a couple of those spots became bigger and were beginning to blister. I tried waiting a few more days, but they weren’t getting any better. I eventually had to pop those blisters and clean the wound really well so that it would heal properly. I didn’t look forward to beginning that healing process – popping those blisters didn’t hurt all that much, but cleaning them was a little painful. Rubbing alcohol was the best thing I could get my hands on for the job, and it burns on an open wound! However, it was a good thing to do, because those blisters are gone, and now you can barely tell there was any poison ivy there in the first place.
So there you have my reasons of why I believe truth hurts. It is only my opinion, but I think it’s right. Remember, though, that truth doesn’t have to hurt.
Feel free to leave your opinions on the topic on the comments section for this post. I could go on and on about it all, but I think most other ‘reasons’ could fall under the two I’ve listed here in one way or another. I’d be interested to see what others think about this all, though.
