Corollary: (n) an immediate consequence or easily drawn conclusion.

Although it is not simple to explain to a six-year-old, nevertheless it still needs to be taught.

I had to instruct all of my children in a simple principle:

If you lie to me, we’ve got nothing—no relationship, no interaction, no possibility, no way of drawing close to each other.

Because lying comes with a corollary.

If my children lied to me, they were telling me they did not believe that truth would give them standing—even though I told them that no matter how bad they may think the truth might be, it was never as evil as the tiniest lie. And if they lied to me, they were saying they did not believe the truth could be heard and that they would still be able to continue being loved and appreciated.

Once they showed me they didn’t care about the truth, I knew they didn’t care about my feelings. Without the truth, I have no way to measure the depth and breadth of my relationship with anyone.

Once they created the corollary that they didn’t care about my feelings, they were making it obvious that their pride was more important than our relationship. You can see—it’s difficult to continue a friendship at that point.

Since their pride was more important, the only thing left for me was to leave them to their pride without my respect, trust and affection.

We create corollaries every day.

We make exchanges.

We explain through our actions not just what we think of a certain situation, but what we think about one another.

And even though we all would like to live in a vacuum, inside a bubble where we would be free of commitment, criticism and responsibility, no such world exists.

We have this world—where the truth does make us free—because suddenly we are liberated from all condemnation, incrimination, scrutiny and most importantly, no longer in fear of being doubted.

Subscribe to Jonathan’s Weekly Podcast

Good News and Better News