Being Teachable through Holy Candor

Overcoming toxic silence in relationships

As many of us experience, the communities that we inhabit (families, churches, schools, workplaces) can easily be transformed into spaces devoid of truth. This happens whenever and wherever we value harmony and tranquility over reality. This phenomenon is commonplace. We often go along. When someone needs to rock the boat. Given our own experience, my wife and I have tended to overcorrect in the opposite direction—opting to say whatever is true whenever we know it, regardless of the consequences. (Yes, pray for our son, friends, and close family!) The reason, in part, we’ve swung in this intentional direction is to correct some family system tendencies in which we were raised. Be it alcoholism, lies, or deception that hurt real people, exposure has proven to be an essential antidote to the secret lies that can harm.

The capacity for truthful candor can both reveal and create health. Social scientists who study the dynamics of social arrangements have shown that one of the most significant marks of a truly solid, healthy relationship is that it cultivates the capacity for candor and harmony simultaneously—that truth and trust coexist. When one person in a relationship does something that, when revealed, may bring pain, it is often (wrongly) assumed that guarding that secret will protect the tranquility of the relationship. In the end, however, this has the power to create further distrust and harm upon discovery. In short, the inability to speak with candor exposes the fragility of the relationship.¹ There are two toxic costs with secrets. They reveal distrust. And they further create it.

Candor threatens all forms of enmeshment. This is why it is a lost art in much of our cultural landscape. We almost always seem, by some unspoken law of nature, to want to go out of our way not to rock the boat of relationships. Harmony is too often exalted at all costs. Recently, a friend shared, albeit quite passive-aggressively, that I had done something that bothered them. What did I do? I over-apologized and took full blame for everything that had happened. Why? What transpired was little more than a re-enactment of much of my childhood, of feeling that I can provide the harmony the room needs if I can quietly fall on the sword. Had I made a mistake? Yes! But in taking over-responsibility, I was quietly endowing myself with permission not to have to confront how their snide remark was equally hurtful. They may have spoken the truth in the wrong way. But I kept my hurt feelings secret for the worst reason. Both needed correction.

Not speaking up plays a significant role in creating the fragmented world we live in today. It was, in part, the lack of candor that led to the fall of humanity. When we see the serpent enter the Garden of Eden, we watch as he approaches the woman. “Did God really say,” he asks her, “you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” (Gen. 3:1) Of course, they could eat from any tree in the garden—save one (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). She eventually eats. And the rest is history.

Photo by Yash

Proceed with caution, though. Sadly, in much of Protestant culture, it is taught that the consequences of the human fall rest solely on the woman’s shoulders. How many times have we heard preachers wonder out loud what would have been had she not eaten from that tree? Would we still be in Eden? But comments (well-intentioned or not) like these reflect a half-baked reading of the text. Of course, what do we learn about who was also present as the serpent deceived the woman? The text simply records:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Gen. 3:6)

Adam was actively present with her the entire time, apparently watching everything happen. All the more, given that the commandment not to eat from the tree was initially given to the man before her creation in the story, it underscores his complicity even more. The man does not correct the serpent. He does not speak up and remind everyone of what God had previously revealed. Nor does he knock the fruit out of her hand as she raises it to her mouth. He watches passively, as if everything happening were fine and dandy.

There is, it seems, a form of silence that is both dangerous and tragic. In his Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) gave voice to this diabolical reality. Ignatius compares the serpent in Eden to someone who seeks to seduce and groom an innocent girl for his evil perversions. What is the greatest hope of such a sick creature? He could only hope that the girl would not tell her father. Why? Because a secret unexposed is how he gets what he wants. As one contemporary translator renders Ignatius’s instruction:

[The devil’s] first care and greatest concern is that his words and suggestions be kept secret. There is nothing he wants less and fears more than to have the girl tell her father about them, or the wife her husband. For he well knows that then his plans and stratagems are cancelled. Similarly, the devil twists and turns every way so that anyone whom he wants to attack and ruin keeps his fraudulent suggestions secret. He is most frustrated and pained when his enterprises are exposed in confession or, outside of confession, in spiritual consultation. For he knows that this pulls the rug right out from under him.²

Sadly, the devil got his way in Genesis 3. Neither the man nor the woman went immediately to God to see what he thought about what the serpent had said. Nor does Adam speak up to her—the very thing she needed. His silence is deafening. And all such silence is the antithesis of love in the Bible. Why? Because love speaks up. Love corrects. Love says what is true. Love has a kind of candor to it. In a culture shaped by the almost untouchable ethic of blind affirmation, any teaching of holy candor fits like a square doctrinal peg in a round cultural context. Is it love to watch someone unthinkingly drink poison or walk off a cliff? Good Lord, no!

Holy candor is the gift of godly honesty. It is a thing that may disrupt the harmony of the present moment. But, it does its disruptive work today so that flourishing and life might be present tomorrow. Could it be that our unwillingness to speak up could be understood as a form of passive hatred? It is hard to consider this given how often we are silent. But I think, at times, it is.

Being teachable entails our willingness to create space for, and cultivate trust in, people who embody such forms of truthfulness. This is not a permission structure for belligerence, harshness, or verbal brutality. Nor should we open ourselves up to emotional abuse or coercion. Still, we must wisely choose to give space to that bold friend who possesses that forgotten gift of holy candor. One can only imagine the woman’s regret after they’d packed their bags to leave Eden. Why didn’t he say something to me? Why was he silent in my time of need? Why did he just let it all go down as it did?

A community without candor is a community of toxic affirmation. It’s that deceptive place where we discover we’d known and been known by the kindest of liars. It is one thing to be around people. It is another to be with people who love you with the truth. We all need at least one person who embodies that. As a spiritual master once said, make it your goal to have at least one friend who believes in the final judgment. Why? Because that person may be the one person who believes that truth is far more meaningful and weighty than the false harmony we’ve grown used to swimming in.

There’s little more painful than sitting in an ash heap of destruction, only to realize everyone around you celebrated you into it.

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Thanks for being a reader of the Low-Level Theologian. As always, you can find me wasting as little time as possible on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Or, check out my podcast with Dr. Nijay Gupta at Slow Theology. Do remember that I just released A Teachable Spirit: The Virtue of Learning from Strangers, Enemies, and Absolutely Anyone with the folks at Zondervan Reflective. Pick up a copy and dig on in.

1. Alisa Bedrov and Mark R Leary, “What You Don’t Know Might Hurt Me: Keeping Secrets in Interpersonal Relationships,” Personal Relationships 28, no. 3 (2021): 495–520.

2. St. Ignatius, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola, trans. Delmage, Lewis (Boston, MA: The Daughters of St. Paul, 1978), 159.