For followers of Jesus truth-telling is not optional but crucial; the question what is truth, however cyncially asked, has an answer; integrity is truthfulness of character expressed in words that aim at honesty over expediency, clarity over obscurity.
The aim of words is to edify, build up, support that which is good and true and humanising; this in contrast to a discourse that aims to tear down truth and deceive the reader or hearer.
When words are captured by power and used as weapons to gain, increase and hold on to power, then yes, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. We shouldn't need to be told that by the author of two of most prescient and trajectory setting dystopian novels. But in the 21st century world of digitised and word saturated global culture, where immediacy and non accountable social media exchange encourages truth, half truth and lies, provokes disagreement, dislike, hostility culminating in hate language, and gives unprecedented exposure to anyone with internet access to a difficult to regulate but pervasive medium – in such a culture, truth is a hostage to fortune, and that is a euphemism for clear and present danger to its welfare.
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free", said Jesus. Placed alongside Pilate's ambiguous and exasperated question, "What is truth", Jesus words push back at us, and our responsibility to care, to discern, to defend, to speak truth. Failure to do these is the loss of the very freedom that makes us human.
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