Why Is It So Hard to Tell the Truth? with Dr. Monique Gadson

Most of us say we value the truth—until it unsettles us, costs us something, or asks us to change. Truth has a way of disrupting the stories we use to survive.

That's exactly what we're talking about on the podcast today. Dr. Monique Gadson joins Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen to explore why truth-telling feels so threatening—personally, relationally, and culturally. 

Drawing from systems theory, theology, and her lived experience, Dr. Gadson names anxiety as the central force that keeps us from truth. When we lack the capacity to tolerate the discomfort truth brings, we turn to projection, delusion, scapegoating, and certainty as coping mechanisms. What begins as an inability to regulate anxiety within families and relationships spills outward into institutions, churches, and society itself, resulting in polarization, blame, and a deep resistance to accountability.

The conversation presses especially hard on the role of Christians in this moment. Rather than leading the way in humility, repentance, and truth-bearing love, the church is often entangled in systems that suppress truth to protect power, purity narratives, or a false sense of goodness. 

Dr. Gadson speaks candidly about the cost of being a truth teller, particularly as a Black woman, and the reality of being scapegoated for disrupting dominant stories. Yet she also offers a grounded hope: freedom comes through differentiation, integrity, and the slow, courageous work of managing anxiety rather than projecting it onto others. Truth, she reminds us, is not about annihilating one another, but about creating the conditions where real relationship, responsibility, and repair are possible.

Ultimately, this episode invites us to ask not only what is true, but what does truth stir in us—and can we bear it? 

As Dan reflects, the truth both attracts and repels us—and our prayer may simply be, "I believe; help my unbelief." 

This is a conversation for anyone longing to live with greater integrity, emotional maturity, and faithfulness in a world that increasingly struggles to tell—and receive—the truth.