If you’ve read my about page you know that I enjoy U.S. presidential history. Currently I am reading An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek. Most of you probably know that the Cuban missile crisis in October, 1962 was the closest the US and the USSR ever came to actually engaging in a nuclear war. And it was really close.
The lack of truth was in large part to blame for this crisis becoming as serious as it was. Chairman Khrushchev repeatedly insisted to President Kennedy that the weapons they were bringing to Cuba were solely for defensive purposes. Kennedy had seen the aerial photos and knew that this was a bold faced lie. At one point Andrey Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister, met with President Kennedy in the Oval Office and also insisted that they were only defensive, all the while the photos (which Moscow didn’t know Kennedy had) were sitting in the president’s desk drawer. This made it more difficult for Kennedy to trust Khrushchev when he committed to dismantling the missile sites inside Cuba.
As I read this I was struck by how necessary truth is for peace. There can be no real peace that is built on lies. Khrushchev’s lies made it impossible for Kennedy to trust him at his word. This is a big deal when you are trying to avoid a war that would catastrophically destroy the world.
But it isn’t just in international crisis where truth is so important. It is essential in all relationships. What happens when a son repeatedly lies to his parents? What happens when a wife can no longer trust her husband? What kind of peace will they have in their relationship? Trust is essential for peace. Truth is essential for trust. If we want to be effective peacemakers we must first be truth tellers.
Jesus Christ is the ultimate peacemaker, for God calls him the Prince of Peace (see Isaiah 9:6). It is no wonder, then, that he says this about himself in the Injil, “I am the truth” (John 14:6).
