True isn't enough.

Truth isn’t true just because it’s true.

This may seem silly, perhaps self-contradictory, but allow me to explain.

Whenever we speak, we are representing more than just propositional content. We are revealing God and His Nature. Because the Bible is true and Jesus calls Himself the Truth, honesty is an essential part of the Christian paradigm. However, truth can become a tool for evil in a variety of ways, most notably when it is used to hurt people rather than bless them.

For instance, when people are vicious in the way they wield true ideas, we call them “brutally honest,” a label which should immediately show a speaker’s ungodliness despite his statement’s non-falisty. As Richard J. Needham explained, “People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.” Thus truth without mercy actually becomes untrue.

But merciful truth can still fail the test of godliness by being weak or impotent. If God’s Word is both true and merciful, it is also abundantly powerful. In short, any expression which is not true, merciful, and powerful becomes false as a result. Achieving all three simultaneously is a terribly high standard, but then again, consider Whose Word we represent.