How to face the truth about ourselves

A middle-aged woman went to see a friend of mine and shared with her that her marriage was failing. She had been single for a long time and lonely, so when she met her future husband, the relationship developed quickly and soon they were married. However, her husband proved to be manipulative and violent, and she could not cope with it anymore. When my friend probed about the relationship and asked if there were any warning signs, the woman admitted that indeed there were, but she did not heed them because she was so desperate to be married. It is a heartbreaking story that may resonate with our experience in the sense that the temptation to suppress evidence in front of our eyes can come to any of us, even if the scenarios may look very different. We can dismiss signals that there is trouble ahead because we think they are negligible or we can manage them or because we want something too much.

Knowing and suppressing the truth

I believe that the same dynamic is at work in Ahab. On one level, he does know that Micaiah speaks the truth, and we get an inkling of it when he rejects Micaiah’s mimicking of the other prophets and lectures him on telling the truth (1 Kings 22:16). It also becomes evident in the way the king disguises himself as he goes into battle (1 Kings 22:30). If he really thought Micaiah’s prophecy a lie, he would have confidently gone in full royal regalia, like Jehoshaphat. Yet human behaviour is strangely contradictory because if he fears that there is truth to the prophet’s words, he must know that God is behind it. Nevertheless, he foolishly tries to outsmart God and avoid being killed.

God cannot be outwitted

Although he is specifically targeted by the king of Aram (1 Kings 22:31), the passage goes out of its way to emphasise that the king’s death was not due to human intentions. Rather, the random nature of a bowman shooting an arrow at no one in particular (1 Kings 22:34) points to the mysterious work of God. The Lord cannot be outwitted. Ahab lingers on, slowly bleeding to death, and does not die until evening (1 Kings 22:35). One wonders what he thought about in those hours as his life was ebbing away. Significantly, however, there is no acknowledgement of God or the truth. The king resists the Lord to the bitter end. Thus, the prophecy made after Ahab took Naboth’s land is fulfilled (1 Kings 22:35, 38; 21:19), not because God predetermined the king’s fate but because he refused to submit to Him.

Seeking to face the truth

The dynamics in Ahab’s story, the suppression of the truth yet its partial recognition is one that finds echoes in our own lives. It is hard to admit God’s verdict of us when we are unwilling to change in certain areas. This reminds me of what a counsellor friend shared with me after she participated in drama therapy in her training and had to explore difficult emotions through role play and storytelling. Seeing how her findings took her unawares at times, my friend asked the therapist if she was not afraid that people might discover more about themselves than they were able to cope with. People cannot recognise those things that they are not ready to tackle, was the therapist’s reply. While such a protective mechanism is necessary when one is faced with deep hurts, it is also illuminating about our internal processes generally. Sometimes we cannot face a truth because its full impact would destroy us, but other times we do not want to because it would require change and the giving up of our will and desires. Thus, our ignorance is often wilful, and our only hope is to ask God’s help to be honest and to enable us to let go of our stubborn desires.

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