White lies are theoretically harmless, trivial, inconsequential lies generally told in order to be polite, protect someone's feelings, preserve the greater good, or to shield someone who is especially vulnerable from truths that may be harder than they can bear. It stands to reason that if there are white lies, then there must also be white truths. Many of us who love the truth are aware of and courageously tell the hard truths, the ones that tell things as they really are regardless of the consequences to ourselves or others. We stand firm behind those important and eternal truths and do not yield. When I refer to white truths, these are not the kinds of truths that I mean. Just as we might be tempted to tell a white lie because it seems so harmless and trivial, so too may we be tempted to neglect to tell white truths for the same reason. There are hundreds of opportunities that we have each day to tell the small, seemingly trivial and unimportant white truths. Telling someone that their hair looks really good today, thanking a cashier for ringing us up, letting someone know the tag is sticking up out of the back of their shirt, telling a family member we love them even when we've already done so a thousand times. All of these white truths cost us almost nothing and seem like it's no big deal if we tell them or not, but there is power in truth, and we don't know what kind of an impact even these tiny white truths may have in someone's life. I hope that we are just as diligent and faithful in telling the little white truths as we are about telling the big hard truths. I know that every time we tell the truth, the world gets a little bit brighter.
