Some thoughts about grace and truth-telling:

My memoir deals with difficult things with what I hope is unflinching, yet fair, honesty. I recently had someone ask me how I could preach about grace while portraying anyone or any situation in a negative light, especially publicly.

I've really wrestled with this. I don't think it's right to be ungenerous or exploitative in any portrayal; at the same time, honesty, even about difficult things, is not inherently ungracious.

Luther says that a theologian of the cross must call a thing what it is. To call a thing what it is does not preclude grace. On the contrary, I have discovered it is one of the ways in which grace breaks into our lives.

Grace implies a need for healing in the midst of pain. If nothing was broken, if people weren't wounded, if systems weren't harmful, there would be no need for grace. Grace comes *precisely because* there are painful, difficult, and unpleasant things that need to be reconciled.

It might feel like avoidance is better, but in fact it is not gracious to pretend that nothing is wrong when it is. Instead, it is deception, which leads to nihilism and despair. When we name what is painful and harmful, we can bear witness to the transformation of healing.

This is different from holding people's mistakes, even deadly serious ones, over their heads. There is no such thing as an unforgivable sin. But grace does not sidestep sin. It enters into it and transforms it. From personal experience, I can tell you this hurts like hell.

But no, it is not ungracious to name difficult realities. It is not ungracious to tell painful truths. Often, in these moments of confronting what is real, grace is trying to break in to help us heal. We can breathe deeply, look it square in the face, and let God do God's thing.