Something went wrong a long way from here, and the people it happened to are in your building.
They are not angry at head office. Head office is an abstraction and you are a person with a face, standing behind a counter with a name badge, and so the whole thing arrives at you, and you have been absorbing it for days.
And you have been given words to say. There is a form of words, and it is not exactly untrue, and it has been written by somebody careful, and every time you say it you can feel the person in front of you noticing that you are reading.
That is the position, and I want to name it plainly before I say anything else, because you have been holding it alone and it is genuinely difficult and nobody has acknowledged that.
I am not going to name anything. Not an incident, not a sector, not a company, and this is not about any particular event.
And I want to be clear about one boundary at the top. If what happened was actually wrong, not embarrassing but wrong, then honesty about it is right, and saying so is not disloyalty of any kind. Where and how to raise that is a matter for somebody qualified in your jurisdiction, and I am not going to instruct you on it from here. What I am going to talk about is the counter, and the next person who walks up to it.
The lip of truth shall be established
There is a line in Proverbs about how long different kinds of speech last, and the timescale in it is the useful part.
The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment. (Proverbs 12:19, King James Version)
Established for ever, but for a moment.
It is not a rule about honesty being nice. It is an observation about durability. A true sentence keeps standing. A managed one holds for as long as the conversation lasts and then it is gone, and something is gone with it.
You have been in the moment-long business for days, and it is exhausting in a specific way, because a sentence that will not survive the afternoon has to be defended continuously.
Proverbs 12:19 puts truth in the category of what lasts rather than what is polite, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach a person who is tired of holding a form of words upright.
You are able to say a thing that will still be standing tomorrow, and the careful version has never once been able to do that. Proverbs 12:19 says the lip of truth shall be established for ever, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a true sentence the thing that holds a person up rather than the thing that costs them.
Honesty is not the same as blame
Now the distinction, because I think this is where you have been stuck, and it is why you keep reaching for the script.
You believe your only two options are the form of words or throwing the organization under a bus. So you take the form of words, because you are not a person who throws anybody under a bus, and then you feel like a liar all afternoon. Proverbs 12:19 knows nothing of that pair of options, and the Holy Spirit is not the one who narrowed the list to two.
There is a third thing and it is not a compromise between the two.
It sounds like: I do not know why that happened. I know it happened. I am sorry it happened to you, and here is what I can do from where I am standing.
Not one word of blame. Not one word of defense. No explanation of a thing you were not there for, no speculation about people you have never met, and nothing pretending you have information that you do not.
Proverbs 12:19 commends the true lip without commending an accusation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person that plain and loyal were never opposites.
You are able to be honest without accusing anybody, and blame has never once been the price of the truth. The written word establishes the true lip and says nothing about attacking anyone, and the Spirit of God is the one who opens the third option to somebody who could only see two.
Say one true sentence
So the assignment is one sentence, to one person, the next time it comes up.
Say it in your own words. Not the script. Do not perform sincerity either, which people can smell from about six feet.
And then stop talking. That is the discipline. You will want to fill the silence with context, and the context is where the script gets back in.
Three things about what will happen. It will be shorter than the scripted exchange. The person will almost certainly soften, because they have spent two days being handled and you will be the first person who has spoken to them like a human being. And you will feel, for the first time in a week, that you are standing on the floor rather than on a piece of paper.
Proverbs 12:19 has a plain true word lasting past the moment it was said in, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present at a counter when a person stops reading.
You are able to speak plainly and stay standing, and the moment has never once required a script to survive. Proverbs 12:19 says a lying tongue is but for a moment while the true lip is established, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody the first time they say a true short thing to a stranger.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody today.
You are standing there honestly, and speaking plainly has never once been disloyalty. I am not asking you to attack anybody or to speculate about anything. Proverbs 12:19 puts the true lip in the category of what lasts, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my telling who takes a script out of somebody's mouth and leaves them able to speak.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You are not carrying this counter alone, and He has never once been absent from the hard part of your afternoon. The written word says the lip of truth shall be established for ever, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a person at the moment they stop performing and start speaking.
One true sentence. Then stop talking.
Declare this over yourself
- Form of words I have been reading off a page for a week, you are finished today. Proverbs 12:19 says a lying tongue is but for a moment, so by the Holy Spirit you do not come out of my mouth again in the name of Jesus.
- Belief that my only options are a script or an accusation, you were never the whole list. The word establishes the true lip without once commending blame, and by the Holy Spirit I am done choosing between hiding and attacking.
- Father, You are at this counter with me and You have not left it once. Your word says the lip of truth shall be established for ever, so by Your Spirit I say one true sentence today, and then I stop talking.
Proverbs 12:19
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