Photo by Rachel Titiriga

By Melanie Mar Chow

As I pen the final “truthfulness” entry of this month, I’m grateful to AAWOL sister, April! She provided Artistotle’s definition of truthfulness to anchor this offering. How does living life with no deceitful or manipulative actions or verbal responses look for Asian American women in Christian leadership?

Christians should immediately recall that Jesus is “The Way, The Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). He promises a better abundant life, even to eternity if we know Him. Truthfulness is foundational to Christians. Without it, we live confused lives. Deceitful voices must be diminished to claim God’s promise. We cry like the psalmist, “Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth” (Psalm 86:11).

We daily dodge deceit. Society has expanded dictionaries with words like exaggeration, half-truths, white lies, and now cover-up lies. The irony is we make excuses. We avoid daily time with God who can and will redirect us to His purposes. For Asian Americans we often want to keep harmony, not to confront and bring shame to our neighbors

I also appreciated Ajung’s challenge to be courageous to embrace truthfulness and God’s truth alone. Without courage, we cannot boldly run to God to ask for redemption when we recognize sin in our lives. Self-examination is so important. If we continue in dishonesty, there is much damage ahead. People may misunderstand the power of Jesus when we talk about our lives as Christians with deception. Worse, some may not want a relationship with God.

Case in point. This Asian American Christian woman leader just finished her recent prayer letter to her supporters. The purpose of a prayer letter is to ask for prayer. Instead, I fall to telling others great things that are happening in our ministry to reinforce the Asian value of giving the reader enough to feel good about sending money for the work we do and neglect mentioning the hard parts. How do we honestly portray the daily grind of self-doubt, concern for whether we made the right choice of clothing when we spoke to our students, why we failed to deliver God over selves, and when I fell to my maternal instincts and not to God’s commands. If we continue to have non-truths in our lives, there is much damage that can happen. People may misunderstand the power of Jesus when we talk about our lives as Christians with deception. Worse, some may not want a relationship with God. If I don’t find freedom He tells us to remember Lot’s wife, to not focus on looking back on the lies of the past (Luke 17:29-33).

Instead Jesus wants us to share the victories His truth brings. I praise God for Grammarly and family who review my letters before I hit the “send” button. They don’t let me send it with dishonesty. Community brings out the courage the author of Hebrews encouraged: “Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13). The Body of Christ comes alongside for accountability when we don’t pursue God’s ways.

Since I lean more to being a practitioner than an academic, I offer these words of hope.

• If we seek God’s truth, He will provide His words and ways for us to follow
• Cling to His direction to navigate life regardless how challenging or easy life might seem
• Rely on crying out to the Holy Spirit to pray when we don’t have words
• Truth from God’s word is always better than the lie of mankind
• Acknowledging our weaknesses demonstrates God-given strength to find victory

More than that, I need God’s relentless love that pursues me to live in His truthfulness. The other night forgetting to upload a podcast but wanting to listen to something on my drive from the Central Coast to LA, I had to listen to the radio. Yes, radio. God found for me iHeart Radio’s KLove Classics station. I was able to revisit the voice of Amy Grant, who, early in my ministry career, was the Lauren Daigle of today and sang encouragements to us Jesus followers.

Amy Grant singing Gary Chapman’s song “Father’s Eyes” became my prayer to be courageous and live truthfulness for others to see. The best promise? John 8:31-32: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” No lip service from this one, just a prayer/desire for us all to be free to know God better, so you and I and others can live with Him for eternity.

Rev. Melanie Mar Chow serves God through Asian American Christian Fellowship, the campus ministry division of the Japanese Evangelical Missionary Society (JEMS). She has been an ordained American Baptist minister since 2004. A Pacific Northwest native, she currently lives with her husband and daughter in Southern California.