bursting the bubble

This is a week where truth and trust have dominated the headlines and caused many to question their faith in some people and in some institutions.
I remember one evening in Albania, when a group of us were chatting, sharing some of the odder idioms of our own local languages. An Italian suggested that to describe an unlikely event he would say “if my grandma had wheels, she'd be a wheelbarrow”.  An Armenian added that if someone was annoying him he would say “Stop ironing my head” while if my Russian friend fooled me he would say he had “hung noodles on my ears”.
My offering was greeted with confusion when I said if someone was told me something implausible I would say “do you think I came up the lagan in a bubble?” This phrase caused us to segwe into a conversation about how we know when we were being told a lie and although we didn’t get consensus we did agree that it would be great to have the ability to tell when someone is lying to us!
How we feel about telling lies revolves around whether we see truth as something absolute, forensic – something able to be proven or not. So often we have been brought up with such a binary viewpoint. That things are either right or wrong. Arguments are settled on whether or not the Bible, or another sacred text supports one view or the other. How often have we heard and maybe even used “The Bible is clear on that” to put someone else right on a contentious subject.
Truth or its absence has been a subject of recent media speculation ranging from whether or not a sports star was telling “the whole truth” in a particular context, to discussing who was or wasn’t present at a particular garden party/work event. Now we face the potential of the courts deciding whether or not a certain Royal was being truthful.
Jesus once said he was the Truth and that Truth can free us. His statement understands truth as relational and not simply a set of rules to be followed. In this understanding, seeking Truth is seen a journey, not a destination, a road on which we travel with other broken people who pursue the same goal, to build relationships. This is a Truth that liberates all and doesn’t diminish any.
This is a Truth that recognises the passion and determination of the truth seeker understanding that we all fail because we are human. Heroes included.
Such truth doesn’t stand in judgement of others. This doesn’t mean that we are not punished when we break the law as this is a consequence of our democratic system.
It recognises that although we all have a past, we all, too, have a future.

So be careful of standing in judgement of others that fail for there but for the grace of God go we.