Navigating the Currents of Truth, Trust, and Power

By: Ted Lewis
A window into the ways that truth-telling and trust-building can work together symbiotically (or not) and why they are necessary for relational transformation.

Image by Tim Nafziger

It is hard to think of a situation these days in which you wouldn’t find the interplay of truth, trust, and power. Lately I have been assisting a young Somali man through a tangled and unjust court process. As a mentor figure in his life over the past seven years, he and I have struggled time and again with the bureaucratic complexities of the American justice system. I have witnessed the unfortunate maelstrom of disinformation, distrust, and disempowerment that is endemic in this system. I’m amazed that he is not more bitter and jaded.

Specifically, an alleged and spurious charge of theft led him to an interesting dilemma. Does he risk telling the truth that he did not steal anything and likely face a rural county jury trial that would predictably convict him of something he did not do or does he falsely admit guilt and thereby avoid the likelihood of jail time which would cost him his job? His job is his means for paying the bureaucratic debt piled on him. He is also at risk of deportation, not having full citizenship yet. On top of that, he has a criminal record.

He pled guilty, which was a choice I affirmed. He was disempowered by the unjust circumstances, his truth had no place to be told, and he consequently lost trust in the justice process. What other realistic option did he have?

We first met seven years earlier through a 12-month restorative justice process designed to resolve an incident where he was an accomplice to an armed robbery. That process, which kept him from going into a juvenile prison, re-empowered him by allowing him to be truthful, to take responsibility, and to earn the trust of others. This in turn allowed him to place trust in others. In this more recent situation, however, the opposite proved to be true. Through this experience I have come to see more clearly how difficult it is for offenders of color to get a second chance in the adult justice system.


Let me advance this topic to another level that involves a whole community. I’m currently working with a congregation that is going through a conflict resolution process. Several circumstances involving church leadership and hurtful rumors resulted in some people leaving the group, thus leaving everyone else either divided or confused. Hurts and wounds abounded on all sides. Altogether, the situation left this community with a huge debit of trust and a constant mood of anxiety.

My role as lead facilitator is to guide them through a series of meetings where relational healing and institutional restructuring can happen. What I learned early on is that unhealthy power dynamics escalated to the point of great intensity. It was a perfect storm created by multiple factors that were rooted in anxiety, fear, and unhealthy communication. To be sure, these dynamics will need to be named and unpacked so that history will not repeat itself. Truth needs to be told! And yet, timing is everything. Why? Because where there is no trust, it is tricky to have people come together when they are emotionally stuck in the past.

Without some degree of rebuilt trust, it can be quite risky to have the truth of harms and conflicts made known. This is partly because truth, when told from places of intense and personal emotion, can often create greater anxiety, indeed, greater walls. The real issue, from my perspective as a facilitator, is how truth and trust can weave together so that bridges are built between people rather than thicker walls.

What I have to remind people who are impatient with this resolution process is that the disclosure of truth alone (as information) will not resolve the matter. It most certainly will not heal relationships. Truth-telling is very important, even empowering, and it is very much a part of the healing journey. But it needs to be done in full harmony with trust-building between people who have to coexist with each other. Ultimately it will be the mended and renewed relationships that will allow this group to be strong and healthy in the future. And that will only happen when people speak and listen from the heart and connect with each other deep down.

Truth-telling can be understood on two levels: an informational level and a personal-narrative level. The later is often understood these days as “telling your truth.” When that sort of truth is told out of an I-orientation rather than a You-orientation, it tends to be a source of life to others. Whenever someone speaks authentically out of their own experience, it generally builds a bridge of understanding. But when truth-telling is about someone telling you that you need to change or that you caused the whole problem, it tends to create walls of misunderstanding.

What, then, builds trust between people? Earlier I used the term debit of trust which draws from a banking metaphor. This can also be understood as a deficit of trust. The flip side of this is a credit of trust. People naturally lose trust when they have been impacted by a conflict or a harm. Trauma reverberating from past situations obviously can compound this mistrust. Most people naturally protect themselves from being hurt again. Without any level of regained trust, people cannot move forward in a resolution process.

Before I say more about practical ways of trust-building, let me include a third scenario that I have witnessed. Over the past several years I have observed a number of incidents at conferences where someone, typically a Euro-white person, was called out by a person of color for making an insensitive comment. Certainly these situations rightly open a door for conversations that are hard, though very necessary these days. Issues of privilege and implicit bias are center stage in our society. Even when painful truths are expressed in these settings, it’s important to know that the discomfort people of privilege may experience is not something to avoid.

In addition to these emotional moments of spontaneous truth-telling, I also observed how the larger group responded to these situations. In two instances, the follow-up got tenser with escalating dynamics, generating more hurt and confusion. Two other incidents, however, resulted in de-escalation and bridge-building conversation. By comparing all of these situations, it helps me to unpack some of the communication dynamics.

What I noticed is that the two episodes that had more transformative opportunity had something in common. Intentional containers were created by leaders or facilitators who were sensitive to the needs of everyone involved. These containers essentially amounted to subsequent dialogue opportunities where everyone could process things in greater depth, but in a setting that did not feel as risky or emotional as the initial exchange. Since there was some formality around this, people felt like both sides were being respected, and at the same time, there was a communal stake in the matter.

I call these kind of containers “safe and brave spaces” for conversation. Restorative justice practitioners, for years, have spoken about the importance of creating “safe spaces” for dialogue. In more recent years, though, with the increased interest in people “telling their own truth” to others, I think it is important to add in the concept of a “brave space.” Safe space is about trust-building; brave space is about truth-telling. Safety and bravery truly need each other in the realm of communication if people in tense situations want to end up at a better place where they can coexist in the same setting.

Does the convergence of safety and bravery mean that there is no discomfort in the exchange of ideas? I don’t think so. Discomfort itself is something that is often necessary to help push things beyond the cognitive dissonance that often justifies the status quo. Jesus’ ministry is certainly a strong example of how he activated moments of discomfort as a way to challenge the rigid thought patterns that protected people with power and privilege.

How then does all of this translate into the practicalities of creating such spaces? Much comes down to the innovative capacities of people who can facilitate these spaces. I would also add, intuitive capacities. This sort of work requires a high level of listening not only to the actual words spoken by people, but to the underlying ‘energetics’ of a situation. It is not uncommon for people with trauma histories to be very sensitive to various triggers, and seasoned facilitators will be able to sense those sort of reverberations that manifest themselves in group settings.

Along with reading people well at the heart-level, facilitators also need to adapt a process to the unique aspects of the situation. Containers for dialogue will be strong enough for trust-building and truth-telling when there is a balance of forecasted structure and non-directive elbow-room. Too much structure will dampen the spontaneity of sharing, and too little structure will heighten anxiety and prevent people from opening up. Again, a good facilitator knows how to fashion this container for it to maximize relational trust-building as well as honest truth-telling.

Thirdly, facilitators understand the value of preparing people well before they are brought together for joint dialogue. In preparation meetings, people who are highly protective or defensive (due to having a deficit of trust) can build up a credit of trust with empathetic facilitators. When they are ready for joint conversation, they can then draw from this new bank account of trust in order to share more openly with another party. This level of preparation is routine when it comes to victim-offender dialogue, and it can easily be applied to dispute situations or incidents of disrespectful communication. As the word ‘facile’ implies in French, facilitators “make it easy” for people to trust the container of a process and take the positive risk of entering a difficult conversation.

In my experience as a restorative facilitator, I have witnessed the amazing pattern of people moving from guardedness to openness. What happens is that as one party shares a truth, hard as it may be, the other one listens and responds with a new sense of understanding. This becomes a gift to the initial teller, which allows them to be more open in their sharing. As this gift-exchange goes back and forth, both parties experience the common humanity of the other person. This in turn allows trust to rise, which helps to diffuse all of the negative feelings that kept the two emotionally separated from each other.

All of us have experienced this same kind of reciprocal empathy when we’ve had a good “heart-to-heart” conversation with a close friend or family member. An apology is given, a validation is received, and the walls come tumbling down. In these safe-and-brave moments, we see the coming together of honest expression (truth) and human connection (trust). And how life-giving it is when we find ourselves more at peace, even able to sleep better at night!

Power issues certainly play into this discussion. When mistrust is high between people or between groups, it is common for people to develop narratives of protection. These narratives can often put us in the ‘right’ and put the other side in the ‘wrong’. Such narratives usually rely on half-truths. They also involve defensive and offensive elements, since things are usually framed as a contest. Court processes actually operate according to these dynamics. Altogether, clashing narratives are powerful because they lock up the past in a way that maintains a wall between people, obstructing what I call a shared narrative that allows people to coexist better.

From a restorative perspective, authentic truth can only happen when people stop being competitive and start being cooperative. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) work the best when truth-telling is matched with trust-building, which is the best recipe for connecting people together who need to live in the same community. If the T-factor out-paces the R-factor, chances are that not enough trust was experienced by all sides involved. But when they do balance out, the old power dynamics are more likely to give way to the dynamics of humility, mercy and love.

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As you read the articles in this issue of Rock! Paper! and Scissors! I invite you to reflect on a few things. All of the articles are held together with the theme of human relationships that are affected by the quality of communication. First, pay attention the the relational dynamics of people who are either estranged from each other or embracing each other. Consider how truth-telling and trust-building work together in those situations. Secondly, pay attention to narratives of protection (as well as narratives of openness) that reveal power dynamics. What sustains those narratives? How are protective narratives changed? 

Also, I invite you to reflect on any challenging relationships that you are currently navigating in your life. It’s truly amazing how our own personal stories align with other stories of harm and healing. The more we learn about the intersectionality of truth, trust and power on the personal/micro levels, the better we will be able to make sense out of the same dynamics which are mirrored at political/macro levels.

Bon voyage with your reading!

Ted

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Ted Lewis is a restorative justice mediator, consultant and trainer, working for the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking (University of Minnesota). He also provides workshops and reconciliation services for church communities. Ted runs the Agapé Peace Center in Duluth, MN where he lives, and also serves as Executive Director for the International Jacques Ellul Society. (www.restorativetrainer.com)

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