Truth Will Out

It was William Shakespeare who first coined the phrase, "Truth will out." That is, no matter how hard someone tries to hide it, the truth will always be eventually revealed. The analogy I use is that of paper mache. You take a balloon and cover it with strips of newspaper soaked in a solution. No matter how many strips of newspaper you cover it with, it will always take the shape of the balloon inside. That shape may be distorted, but it is still roughly the same shape. This is a lot like trying to cover the truth with falsehoods. You can never fully erase the shape of the truth. Jesus said something similar when He said, "you will know a tree by its fruit. A healthy tree doesn't produce rotten fruit, and a rotten tree doesn't produce healthy fruit." In another place He says, "A grape vine doesn't produce thistles, nor does a thistle plant produce grapes." You know the plant by what it produces.
     You know a disciple of Jesus Christ by the fruit he or she produces. You also know someone who isn't by the fruit that person produces as well. There are the works of the flesh, and there is the fruit of the Spirit. We will always wrestle with our own malfunctioning flesh, but the disciple of Jesus Christ is obligated to live as He taught and walk as He walked, or else he or she is not being a disciple at least in that moment, no matter what they profess to believe or teach. There is the flesh and there is the Spirit and you can only enslave yourself to one of them, and make no mistake, you will enslave yourself to one of them at any given moment. There is self and there is truth. Where self is, truth is not. Where truth is, self is not.
     The mark of a disciple is the manifestation of the life of Jesus Christ within and through that person. If those people at a church, or those Christians around you do not behave as Jesus taught and lived, then they are not being disciples. They may call themselves Christians (though the first Christians would not have called them such), but they are not disciples of Jesus Christ. If their first concern is their own ego, their own self or self based concerns, protecting themselves or getting what they can for themselves, then they are not disciples of Jesus Christ. It does not matter if they are church members, church leaders, pastors, priests, bishops, or prophets. If they do not display Jesus Christ, who is love and kindness incarnate, and if they do not display the self sacrificing life which He lived, the forgiveness He preached and practiced, the non-condemnation and non judgment, then they are not disciples of Jesus Christ. And if they are not disciples of Jesus Christ, how can they possibly teach others to be disciples? That is, as Jesus taught, the blind leading the blind.
     Our behavior displays for the world whether we have enslaved ourselves to the flesh or to the Spirit of Christ. The only way this can be mistaken is if someone doesn't know what a disciple is supposed to look like, that is, if they've never seen one before. There is no real covering up the fruit we produce. There's no disguising rotten fruit as healthy unless you don't know what healthy fruit is supposed to look like, but once you've see it, you immediately know the rotten.
     I am as guilty of enslaving myself to my flesh as anyone else. And I see the rotten fruit it produces, and experience the pain it causes both myself and others. Every time, it hurts someone. It costs someone some kind of pain, and my self based behavior encourages the other person to react in the same way. And the harm continues to be carried from one person to the next person, and then the next person, and then the next person.
     But the fruit produced by enslaving myself to the Spirit of Christ always produces first love as the foundation. It always promotes healing, and not harm. The energy it puts out creates joy, peace, patience, faith, self control. And this too can be passed from person to person. It may cause me temporary pain or inconvenience, but the peace, stability, and goodness it creates are far longer lasting.
     The truth will always reveal itself to be the truth. You will always know a tree by the fruit it produces.