Speaking the Truth in Love

After hearing several people recently (and in the past) talking about this reference in the Bible, I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.

Often in my experience, I have heard this dichotomy brought up in the context of a tension, the desire to try to balance two opposing goals. Some people speak truthfully. Others speak lovingly. The goal is to attempt to do both at once. Often, when there is tension between the two, people speak of 'erring' on the side of one virtue or the other.

But after at least a year of percolating this idea in the back of my mind, I think that view is inherently flawed. You cannot see Truth and Love as being opposed or even disconnected. Since both Truth and Love are virtues, you cannot 'err' toward a virtue, but rather you have to err away from a virtue. So when someone speaks of 'erring on the side of love,' what he really means is 'erring on the side of falsehood', and likewise when one speaks of 'erring on the side of truth,' he really means erring on the side of spite.

So what does this tell us about our views of this strange 'tension'? Allow me to illustrate. Here is a graph (I'm a nerd) that shows how I think most people would view the Truth/Love relationship:



Note that in this diagram Truth and Love are unrelated to each other. You can have either Truth or Love or both or neither, and neither has any bearing on the other. The lines or axes of the graph are straight, and imply that you can speak absolute Truth with no attention to Love whatsoever. But again, both virtues are just that: virtues. I think that any virtue we practise will necesitate the excercise of all other virtues to some degree or other, so assuming that we can pick one over the other is fallacious.

I think, rather, that the following diagram illustrates how these two interact a little better:



Note a few things:
1) The axes on this graph are not straight. Both bend toward each other, meeting at the height.
2) In order to be completely Truthful, one has to be completely Loving, and vice-versa. If you are completely lacking in Love, you will - of necessity - be completely lacking in Truth.

Also see that there are several points on this graph where you can increase or decrease the 'value' of one virtue without affecting the value of the other. However that will only take you so far. Eventually you will run into a wall, and either you will decrease both values, or you will increase both values. Thus, you cannot 'err' on the side of one or the other, but rather you are forced to either sacrifice both or to maintain both.

Finally, note that in this diagram there is a definite end point. This graph does not extend toward infinite. Rather, the most Loving and Truthful you can hope to be is the exact amount you should be. Most of us hover around being half as loving as we ought to be, or 1/3 as Truthful as we ought to be, etc. There is a point of perfection, but it is very seldom reached even in a single interaction.