Truth is irritating.

Truth is irritating.  Or perhaps I should say, Absolute Truth is irritating.  It is annoying.  It is the ever-present mirror pointing out the ridiculous spinach stuck in our teeth.  As a thorn it pricks our Americanized values of diversity, acceptance and self-reliance. 

A few years ago I was living in Phoenix, Arizona.  While taking the risk of offending many of my dear Phoenician friends, everything in the desert wants to hurt you.  Rocks, insects, cactus, and the oppressive heat have one unified goal – to suck the life from you and leave your bones to bleach in the sun.  It was in this hostile environment that I decided to train for my first half marathon.  Silly I know.

Our house was on the edge of the city nestled into a loving lunar landscape of rocks, cactus, a few more rocks followed by more cactus.  Many mornings I would head out and log a few miles of training before heading in to work.  It became a consistent pattern.  Wake up, pull on my shorts, lace up my shoes, take a t-shirt and dunk it in a bucket of water, put it on, take a ball cap – dunk it in water, put it on (if you have questions about my pre-run process please refer to the previous paragraph).  Once properly equipped for my surroundings, out the door I would run.

More often than not I would find myself slipping into a run induced delirium.  I’ve heard this described as the elusive “runner’s high”.  It’s the point at which conscious thought about running ceases.  You enter a strange state of cruise control; no longer are you making any real choices about the world around you.  Legs pump, arms swing, feet strike the ground; repeat, repeat, repeat.  There is no longer any decision to run – you just do.

Then, Ouch!  What was that?  I keep running – it keeps hurting.  First it’s distracting, then irritating, then finally painful.  Somewhere during the ten miles of my morning run I had picked up an obnoxious cactus needle stowaway.  It had lodged inconveniently under the soft fleshy ball of my foot.  Step, ouch! Step, ouch!  Each stride sent this offensive piece of vegetable matter deeper and deeper into the nexus of nerve endings in my foot.  Any semi-intelligent mammal with opposable thumbs would have stopped running; taken off the shoe and removed the injurious spike.  I, however, am far from semi-intelligent.  No sir.  I would not be stopped.  I would not succumb to the inconvenient truth shooting like a hot knife through my foot with each stride.  My plans for my morning run would not be altered, no matter how painful.

As I limped through the front door, my wife asked, “Honey, what’s wrong?  Did you hurt yourself?”  Crumbling onto the couch, I removed my shoes and took out the offending spear.  “Yeah, I got a needle in my shoe.” I say.  Looking at the needle, my blood stained sock and me, my wonderful wife furrows her brow, cocks her head slightly and asks a deeply penetrating question, “Why didn’t you stop and take it out?”  So offensive and hurtful is the question that I shrug it off with a grunt.  “No, seriously.  Why didn’t you stop and pull that thing out?”  Frustrated and slightly chagrined I reply, “Because I didn’t want to.  I was hitting a good stride and didn’t want to stop.”  Mustering up all her compassion, mercy and wifely grace, she replies, “Man you’re dumb.” and walks away to go get the hydrogen peroxide.

Why didn’t I stop?  Because I didn’t want to.  Because my plans would have been disrupted.  Because holding on to what I wanted to do outweighed the potential value of stopping and taking the needle out.  No matter how intense the pain of each foot strike, I refused to accept the reality jabbing through me.  I choose instead to accept repeated and increasing pain rather than adjust to the truth of the situation.

So often I respond to Truth in the same way.  I ignore it.  I struggle through in spite of it.  I make excuses for why it does not need to be “my” truth.  As the pain and discomfort rise, so do my rationalizations and excuses.  I willingly hold tight to lies rather than surrender to offending and uncomfortable Truths.  Truth is, my lies—that I’ve built plans, systems and fortresses around—are far more destructive and disruptive than the time and effort necessary to align myself with Truth. 

My stubborn unwillingness to stop and remove the needle from my shoe had lasting consequences.  I developed an infection that sidelined me for a few weeks.  Ignoring the truth cost me much more than the time it would have required to accept reality and respond accordingly.  So much pain would have been avoided if I had stopped, acknowledged the truth and dealt with that offensive spike. 

Truth is so often like that cactus needle. It is placed as a holy splinter nudging us toward transformation.  It is meant to be irritating.  If not, it would never grab hold of our fallen, sinful sensibilities.  Embracing Truth and making the necessary course corrections—though difficult and sometimes painful—protect us from greater harm.  

God places Truth in the souls of our lives to grab our attention.  Can it be ignored?  Sure.  Can we put off dealing with the Truth?  Yes, but it prolongs the pain and increases the scope of the consequences. 

I’ll bet Jesus has placed an irritating piece of Truth in your life.  I would also bet that often you do your best to ignore it.  Choosing instead to push through the discomfort while pursuing your own plans.  This must drive Jesus nuts.  He patiently pursues us and we doggedly hold tight to our plans.  Choosing a lie over His Truth.  I wonder if in His infinite love and compassion Jesus’ response is like my wife’s response to me—“Man you’re dumb.”

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32