Silence will set you free.
So quiet up, and listen down. Nope. Scratch that, reverse it.
—Willy Wonka
Jesus, scratching and reversing:
“And you will know the truth. and the truth will set you free.”
—John 8:32
This “knowing” that Jesus talks about is not merely intellectual, this is a whole-being “knowing.” It’s the same word that the Bible uses when talking about sex: Two people knowing each other is different than two people KNOWING each other. You get what I mean. So you can get what Jesus means: Knowing the truth is different than KNOWING the truth.
Jesus is not that interested in knowledge that is all in your head. It’s not about whether the right data has been downloaded into your brain. This is not the Matrix. You are not a computer. You are a human being with a body that is capable of knowing in more ways than one.
Yes, your mind thinks. But also, your eyes see. Your ears hear. Your skin feels. Your tongue tastes. Your gut reacts. Your skin feels. Your mouth speaks.
As more of our senses are involved, the more we truly know something. Experiential knowledge. The truth only sets us free when we truly experience it. When we live within it. When we actually exist in reality. Whole-being KNOWING.
And, now, a curveball for your private Bible-reading devotional time: Jesus not talking to you, dear reader. Nor is he talking to me. He is talking to us. In the context of John 8, as in most of Jesus’ teachings, Jesus is not speaking to an individual, but to a group. Our Western individualism has blinded us to the communal nature of faith, so quite often our application is a swing and a miss.
Jesus doesn’t just want an individual to know the truth—he wants the community to know the truth.
Jesus doesn’t just want an individual to live in freedom—he wants the community to live in freedom.
Jesus doesn’t just want all this for you—he wants it for your church. (And Your family. And your office. And your neighborhood. And your PTA. And your pickleball club. And…)
Which leads us one very simple, yet challenging next step: Speak up.
If you see something, say something. If truth liberates, then silence suppresses freedom. Truth cannot be silent. There’s more than one way to lie. Silence is often the easiest way to skirt around an inconvenient truth. Truth that is not communicated is left to rot in our minds and thus does anyone little good. It must be spoken and heard, written and read. (Well, maybe that’s not true. Silence probably does someone some good. Follow the power and money to get to bottom of that mystery.)
Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a speech in Selma, Alabama,
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
The opposite of this is also true: The day we speak up about things that matter, our lives begin to be real life. The day we dare to speak the truth in love, our communal life begins to be real life.
Is there something true that needs to be brought out into the light? Something hidden and quiet that is holding your community captive? Something that the powers, whether overtly or subtly, are urging you to keep quiet under the pretense of “unity” or “honor” or “Matthew 18” or some other pseudo-biblical peer pressure? Is there pressure to “quiet up, and listen down”?
Nope. Scratch that, reverse it. Speak up, and listen up. Let the truth set your community free.