“Speak the truth to one another;render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace” (
Zechariah 8:16 ).
This solid piece of advice from the Old Testament prophet seems like an ethical commonplace. “Tell the truth” is one of the first moral principles we learn as children. Be fair. Resolve conflicts in honest conversation. Every adult who participated in our upbringing probably gave us some version of these teachings.
But following them can be difficult and complicated in new ways for this generation of Americans, Christians, speakers of English—the language that dominates global discourse—and consumers of mass media. That difficulty makes it urgent that we learn new strategies of truth-telling in the interests of waging peace and delivering the good news that is bigger than the bad news—indeed, in the interests of survival.
