We Have Stopped Telling Each Other

You paid the one about the drains on the fourteenth, standing in the kitchen of the house the two of you bought, and you did not mention it.

There was no decision. He came in about twenty minutes after you had done it and he looked tired and he had had the week he had had, and you thought: not tonight.

And then not the next night either, because by then it was a thing you had not mentioned, which is a different and more awkward object than a thing that happened.

And here is what you do not know, and which I would put money on.

He has one too.

There is something he has paid this month, or absorbed, or quietly moved from one place to another, that you have not been told about, and the reason is identical to yours and arrived on a night when you looked tired.

The two of you are doing the same thing, in the same house, for the same reason, and neither of you knows the other one is doing it.

Kindness that builds a wall

Let me be clear about the motive first, because I am not describing deceit and I will not have this read that way.

Nobody in this house has lied. Each of you withheld, and each withheld out of care, at a moment when the other one looked like they had enough on.

That is a decent instinct and it is the reason this is so hard to stop. It does not feel like a wall going up. It feels like being kind.

You have been kind in a way that builds something between you, and protecting somebody from a number has never once been the same as carrying it for them. The Holy Spirit is the one who gave the reason in the second half of that sentence, and it is written in Ephesians 4 that we are to speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

And now the arithmetic, which is what makes this worth an article rather than a mention.

When you paid the drains alone, the cost did not halve. It sat entirely on you. And when he paid whatever he paid, it sat entirely on him.

So instead of one household carrying two costs between two people, you have two people each carrying one alone, which is the same money and about twice the weight.

You have two people carrying the full weight of one house each, and a cost divided between nobody has never once been lighter than a cost shared. Ephesians 4 says we are members one of another and puts that as the reason for the truth telling, and the Spirit of God is the one who made it a matter of what a body is rather than a matter of honesty.

Members one of another

Here is the verse, and the reason attached to it is unusual.

Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:25, King James Version)

For we are members one of another.

That is not the reason anybody expects. The expected reason for telling the truth is that lying is wrong, and Paul does say that at the front of the sentence.

But the reason he gives is anatomical. We are parts of one body. And the point about a body is that information has to travel through it or the whole thing stops working. A hand that does not report pain to the head is not being brave. It is being useless, and the body gets damaged.

You are one body operating with the information withheld from itself, and a household that does not report has never once been a household being protected. The Holy Spirit is the one who chose that reason, and the written word gives an anatomical reason rather than a moral one.

And notice what it does to the question of whose fault this is.

If truth telling is about honesty, then somebody has been dishonest and somebody is in trouble. If it is about being members one of another, then nobody is in trouble and something simply is not working, and the fix is mechanical.

That is a much easier room to walk into.

You are not in trouble with each other, and a mechanism that has stopped reporting has never once been the same as a marriage where somebody did something wrong. Ephesians 4 makes it a matter of what a body is, and the Spirit of God is the one who took the accusation out of it before anybody had to have the conversation.