threetails here.

Well, I guess you could call this a sermon. I'm not clergy, not yet anyway. I'm a lay server with plans to enter holy orders. But I've been thinking a lot lately about this idea of radical honesty and what a wonderfully good adjunct to a Christian life it is to lose pretenses, say what you really feel, and build closer relationships by not hiding behind a mask all the time.

As a transgender woman, I had to learn a great deal about radical honesty. I had to admit to a lot of things I'm not comfortable with admitting in the process of using my transition to become a better person. And although I have things I don't advertise a lot of facts about myself in public, I basically have no secrets any more. It's all unsecured, open, and available.

Here's a good place to start with radical honesty: never say "I Love You" unless you mean it.

Words have power, don't use them in vain. If you tell someone you love them when it's not true, those words lose their power.

Matt. 5:13
"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."

Here we have the salt losing its taste, the only thing that makes it worthwhile. The salt- like a word overused- loses its meaning and purpose.

If I can get a little Kierkegaardian here a moment, the whole point of being a Christian is to live a life of meaning and purpose. It's both scriptural and intuitive. The meaninglessness of words is the worst existential crisis a Christian can face, since the Word itself is held to be a spiritual being. If words have no meaning, then the Word (Logos) ceases to be divine.

When you pair this with Matt. 7:6, again we see trampling underfoot as imagery for using your virtues in vain:

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces."

Now, here we have a verse that may seem problematic at first. Are we to assume that those we don't really love are pigs who don't deserve it?

No. Not at all.

If anything, when you go through the people in your life whom you love, or think you should love, and you encounter someone whom you feel intellectually you should love but don't, ask yourself, why don't you love them?

Meditate on it. Focus on it. Treat it like one of the most important questions in your life and development as a Christian because believe me, it is. Someone who calls themselves a Christian but lacks a mature understanding of love is... well, we've probably all met at least a few of those in our time, haven't we? It's not a pretty thing.

Then once you understand who you love and why you love them, take it one step further: try to be more loving. Recognize the gap between those you love and those you think you should love, and use that gap to figure out where you need to grow the most. Some of the people you don't love will be easy to love once you think honestly about who they are, and whether or not they're positive, supportive, and loving people themselves. Then go one further: Love the people who are difficult to love. And always strive to grow in that direction.

This is my commandment, That you love one another, as I have loved you.
John 15:12