Why Isn’t Truth a Fruit of the Spirit?
“But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”
Why didn’t Paul include truth or truth-telling in his list of the fruit of the Spirit? This question popped into my head a little over a month ago.
Life would be so much easier if he did, wouldn’t it?
The sentences to come are less a definitive answer to this question and more of an exploration of what I’m coming to think as I’ve gone down the rabbit hole on this one. I think it boils down to something quite simple: God knows how we are.
Before diving too much deeper into the pool, I’ve come to recognize a flaw in my writing. I often forget how ubiquitous Christian terminology is within our culture without the proper theological understanding to undergird meaning between individuals. That’s a lot of word salad to say I’m not sure we understand what we mean when we’re lobbing Christian sayings back and forth at one another. We don’t agree on terms anymore. I want to write more flowery than this, but I’m learning that may not be effective. Historically, I’ve made too many assumptions. It isn’t effective. It leads to more twists and turns down a road that should otherwise be straight and narrow.
I’m going to make an effort to explain my thinking more clearly and avoid jumping to conclusions moving forward. It’ll be a work in progress. I’m a work in progress.
So let’s begin by restating the question: why isn’t truth a fruit of the Spirit?
My short answer: God knows how we are.
What do I mean by that?
Here’s my long answer:
He knows we’re more likely to wield truth, to use it as a weapon, than we are to live according to it. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, and I think Thomas Merton offers helpful language when talking about love:
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
He’s onto something. Particularly, because we use truth in a similar way. Truth often arises in relation to sin, and rightfully so. Yet, we feel the need to pit truth and love against one another. It’s as if they are in constant tension in our hearts, minds, and souls.
I’m not sure this has to be the case.
However, when we find ourselves stuck between some sense of righteousness and the call to love our neighbors, there’s something bewitching about truth that enters the picture. We feel the need to stand up for it. I want to clarify what I mean here. Truth, in this sense, is the need to get our point across. It has less to do with actually being right, even though that often is the case. Yet, it has more to do with being the one to cast the first stone at the sin in someone’s life, either personally, communally, nationally, the sin in their life that they are unwilling to acknowledge.
We feel the need to take a stand, to be the one who carries people across the finish line, because if we don’t say this right now, they are going to hell.
Viewing truth as something to wield rather than something to live is much easier to manage. It massages our fears. It puts us in the driver’s seat.
This circumstance is what I’m trying to get at with this question. I’m not overly interested in the philosophical or political understandings of truth. These camps may define truth as in the eye of the beholder, which this view co-opts in its own way. However, what I’m proposing as an antidote or an answer is something more religiously conventional.
Truth is a person, a man, Jesus.
Jesus, himself, proclaimed this. Jesus lived this.
When we tightly grasp our ideas of truth more than the person of truth (Jesus), we are more likely to see it as a weapon distracting us from our insecurities rather than a pathway toward obedience.
Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian media theorist during the mid-1900s, is helpful here. His formative theory concerning media is that the medium is the message. How media is organized, the way something is presented, actually contains the message it’s trying to get across. The channel determines the effectiveness; it contains the message itself.
This idea plays a formative role in my life. I do not believe that ends justify means. I do not believe that a message justifies its medium. In fact, I believe the means themselves may be ends. How we do something may say as much about our character as what we accomplish.
We see this in the life of Jesus. Yes, we have Jesus’s words, but we also have the medium in his life, actions, rhythms, behaviors, and stories. The medium of Jesus’s life tells us as much about truth as the words He uttered. How he teaches informs what he teaches. Madeleine L’Engle rightly reminds us that “Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories.” The content, form, and story of His life show us how to live.
The medium of truth is the message of truth.
The person of Jesus is the message of Jesus.
This idea is where my interests lie. It’s also my theory for why truth is not a fruit of the Spirit. The message of truth informs the way we live our lives and the way we live our lives shapes the truth we present. I believe the Apostle Paul is consistent on this point. The stories we believe shape the stories of our lives.
What is the message others see in it?
Truth apart from the fruit of the Spirit inevitably makes us more susceptible to the whims of the moment. We may, in fact, be correct in our beliefs, but out of alignment with the Spirit. It knocks us off course, diverts the “long obedience in the same direction” towards a faith that sprouts genuine growth. I believe in absolute truth, in its importance. Yet, to assert that I grasp every aspect of its absoluteness without bias is absurd.
Our hearts are easily swayed. It’s never been easier to let someone hijack your emotions than it is right now.
Our emotions may even be rightly hijacked. I’m not advocating for a stoic or emotionless existence. Bringing our emotions to God is a part of the puzzle of faith. It’s something I struggle to do. He is big enough to handle our emotions.
What I’m advocating for is a life shaped by the Spirit, by the life of Jesus, rather than the picture we see of the religious leaders and Pharisees of the New Testament. I believe the Holy Spirit guided Paul in his writing of the New Testament. I also believe his experience shaped his understanding of a life with Christ.
The Pharisees often stood up for the truth of the law. They advocated for pieces of the law to the letter. They crafted arguments for the sake of truth, to earn points, to show off their righteousness. Truth was, in some sense, the guiding force behind their sparring with Jesus. Yet, the law was never enough. It is not enough to bridge the gap of our souls.
Only love can do that. Only Jesus can do that. He is the Truth after all.
Paul’s transformation in the narrative of the New Testament is a shift from the crushing truth of the law to the freedom found in Christ. It’s exhausting to find ourselves burdened by the weight of the law, to be the moral arbiter of the sins of the world. Thankfully, it’s not our role to play in the drama of history or the future to come.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—is the medium and the message of the truth in our lives. The evidence of truth has less to do with our telling and more to do with our living.
I chose to quote The Message translation at the beginning of this post because the fruit of the Spirit often lives as a list in our minds, rather than as the outflowing of action they require of us. We can rattle the list off with precision, but we don’t let it permeate our souls.
We will be known by our love. That requires us to open our hands. How tightly we hold our truth makes opening our hands nearly impossible because our focus is not on God, but on our conceptions of Him, not on the people to be loved, but on the way we believe they should be.
They may not be there yet. Neither am I.
Something about a plank in our own eye. Idk. Maybe that’s what we should focus on.
I’m certainly trying to do better at that.
These words are less my absolute belief and more my stretching to understand. If we do not put ourselves in situations where the tension between living “God’s way” can occur, then we should not expect fruit to arise. By imitating Christ, we might find the development of our character. By changing our minds, placing our faith in Jesus, and meditating on His life, His story might become our own.
Most of the time, when I feel the need to butt in, the need to be right, I’m not actually fighting for truth; I’m fighting for the desire to feel vindicated. I’m fighting for my need to be right.
I don’t think this is healthy.
I don’t want to live in a world where I’m trying to prove myself or my fealty. In Christ, it is His righteousness, His work on the cross, and His love that bind us and save us. It’s not in my ability to get it right. It’s not in yours, either. The ground at the foot of the cross is level, or as Robert Farrar Capon puts it:
“Everybody, even the worst stinker on earth, is somebody for whom Christ died.”
That's the truth of the Gospel.
Living that truth requires imitating Christ's actions and the way he views people.
Our lives will bear fruit as He is at work in us.
