How long does it take to tell a lie?
The same amount of time it takes to tell the truth.
Is there really a difference if you tell it right? If you smile, wave or nod with assurance?
If you hit the mark, say the right thing, give the people what they want?
Justin Cox
Doesn’t it all come out the same in the wash?
“Of course not,” you say! “Give it to me straight,” “Don’t sugarcoat it,” “Stop beating around the bush.” “I can take it!”
Can you? Can you, really?
People want the truth. They demand it. They believe they are owed it.
People will chase the truth down rabbit holes, cite their own research as proof they’ve obtained it, and claim some are universal. Many do this by sharing a TikTok video.
No, like Shakespeare’s critique of fortune, truth can be a fickle thing at times.
“People want truth, but not so much as they want comfort.”
People want truth, but not so much as they want comfort. Their ears long to hear, “Everything is fine.”
As a congregational minister, I know this all too well.
On Sunday mornings, my job is to keep the institution moving.
I sit in the front pew. I call congregants to worship. I tell them when to stand and when to sit. I remind them of hymn numbers. I lead them through responsive litanies, and I read Scripture as if it still means something. I practice proclamation — sometimes getting nods, other times getting stares that need to be sheathed. At the end of an hour, I give a blessing and greet folks at the door. We shake hands, hug and promise to do it again soon.
Many pastors and I do this. We act as if everything is fine.
Everything isn’t.
Your pastor is pretending. We have plenty of reasons to lie.
We tell you it’s fine as we gaze out at our congregations that keep getting a little smaller each year. There’s plenty to blame for church decline. We could start by discussing the current trends in organized religion. Pull stats from Pew Research Center. We could email you Ryan Burge’s latest Substack. Or we could pull out the bulletin from last year’s All Saints Service and point to souls no longer with us. We could talk about the couples or families who departed after a certain sermon touched on a topic they felt shouldn’t have been broached from the pulpit.
Take your pick. Pews once filled are now remaining empty.
We tell you it’s fine while the country tears itself apart. Political divisiveness continues to find new ground to lower our expectations of one another. Clergy can’t mention immigration, climate change, health care, classism, gun reform, economic challenges, racism, same-sex marriage or anything hinting at DEI, Christian nationalism or abuse by the powers and principalities of the world upheld by elected officials without feeling our tenure might be shortened.
“We’re tongue-tied — not because we don’t know what to say, but because of what we’re not allowed to say.”
The truth is, we’re tongue-tied — not because we don’t know what to say, but because of what we’re not allowed to say.
We tell you it’s fine, even though we’re physically, emotionally and spiritually running on empty. We grin and bear it as budgets shrink and budget meetings drag on. We hold it together when news comes that the building needs another repair. We spend many a late night counting anxiety-fueled sheep. We attend conferences on ministry survival and thriving practices. When we get back, we’ll tell you we feel refreshed. Not because we discovered new approaches, but because it did us good to be in a room with others who are in the same boat as us. It’s good to know we’re not failing alone.
We lie when you ask us how we are. When you ask us about our families, we lie again. The truth is, we’re exhausted and we don’t know how to fix it.
We tell you it’s fine, even though things in our churches continue not to change. We do the same events, the same outreach, the same bazaars we did in 1975. The energy and convincing it takes to get new ideas and programs off the ground is an uphill struggle. We’re tired of hearing, “We do it this way,” “That would never work here,” “We don’t have the money for that.”
We bow our heads not in prayer, but in frustration when we hear, “Just slow down. You’re trying to get us to move too fast.”
The truth is, preservation is not why many of us accepted our calls.
And so, we keep things light. We hold back. This is called being hopeful.
This leaves us asking: Are we proclaiming Jesus and his kin-dom, or are performative pastors preaching nothing more than status-quo reassurance?
I dunno.
I do know I don’t want that. I’d like to think those in our congregations don’t either.
I want to believe we still value honesty.
So what if, instead of pretending everything is fine, we simply admitted it isn’t? What if pastors could say, without fear, that we are worn out, worried, unsure about the future? And what if congregants could say the same?
That would be a good start, because Scripture never paints a picture of everything being fine. The stories I learned as a child in vacation Bible school, the ones I studied in seminary, took place in occupied lands, with green-horned fishermen and questionable tax collectors, and proclaimed a Savior who told the truth even when it cost him everything.
Perhaps the church does not need more performances designed to reassure the masses. Perhaps it takes courage — the courage to name ourselves honestly and to stand where we are.
The truth isn’t always comfortable. But unlike the lie, it is the only thing that might finally set us free. That you can trust.
How do I know?
A carpenter told me as much.
Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University and Wake Forest University School of Divinity and McAfee School of Theology, where he received his doctor of ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.