Interesting Thought

“When I am talking to somebody there are always two conversations going on. The first is on the surface; it is about politics or music or whatever it is our mouths are saying. The other is beneath the surface, on the level of the heart, and my heart is either communicating that I like the person I am talking to or I don’t. God wants both conversations to be true. That is, we are supposed to speak the truth in love.” Don Miller, Blue Like Jazz, pg. 221.

This thought struck me. I can be talking to someone and saying one thing with my mouth (Oh, it is so great to see you!) and saying something entirely different with my heart (I really could not care less if I talk to you or not.). This is not speaking the truth in love. Often we misunderstand being ‘nice’ to someone as showing them love, when in fact, showing them real love might be telling them things they don’t want to hear. Speaking the truth in love is hard because it is risky. We might be perceived as being mean. In many ways it depends on how we do it. I don’t have to be mean while telling the truth. But I do have to be honest. This idea of two different levels of a conversation happening simultaneously helps me to think about what I am saying with my mouth as well as with my heart, which gets me further down the road towards saying what I mean and meaning what I say.