*THE TRUTH DOESN'T NEED TO BE DEFENDED* There was a time when I was absolutely certain I had found the truth. Not just a truth. The truth. The one path. The only way. I didn’t call it a belief—I called it reality. Everyone else had perspectives. I had revelation. That’s what made it feel so unshakable. I wasn’t clinging to an idea—I was standing on “the Rock.” At least, that’s what I thought. Looking back, I can see how much of that certainty was wrapped in fear. Not the obvious kind, but a quiet, buried kind. The kind you don’t even know is there because it’s dressed up as faith. I was afraid to question, afraid to wander too far from the approved script, afraid that curiosity might somehow lead me astray. So I clung harder. Not because I was free, but because I didn’t know how to be safe without certainty. And that’s what I see now in so many others who do the same. The tighter someone holds their beliefs, the less likely they are to recognize that what they’re holding is a belief. They say it’s not dogma—just truth. But that’s exactly what dogma does. It convinces you it isn’t dogma. It doesn’t come wearing a label. It comes dressed as God. And once you’re convinced that your belief is God, you’ll defend it with everything you’ve got—because questioning it feels like betrayal, not just of the system, but of the divine itself. I didn’t feel rigid. I felt “on fire.” I didn’t feel closed off. I felt “set apart.” I didn’t think I was judging people—I thought I was helping them “see the light.” But I couldn’t see how much of that urgency came from my own buried need to be right. How much of my mission to save others was really about saving myself from doubt. If I could get others to believe it too, maybe it would make it more real. Maybe I wouldn’t have to sit with the quiet questions I had learned to silence. It’s wild how blind we can be to our own conditioning. How quickly we confuse agreement with truth. How easily we mistake being surrounded by echoes for being led by Spirit. And the more people affirm what you believe, the more you start to feel chosen. Special. Set apart from “the world.” Until one day you realize… you’ve been living inside a bubble. One where everything is certain, everything is black and white, and everything outside of it is either lost or deceived. But here’s what I’ve learned: the truth doesn’t need to be defended. It doesn’t demand conversion. It doesn’t punish questions. And it certainly doesn’t shrink when you hold it up to the light. What does shrink, though—what can’t survive that kind of light—is the need to be right. The identity built around being the one who “knows.” The belief that you’ve arrived, and everyone else is just catching up. And the wildest part is that I didn’t lose anything real when I let go. I didn’t fall into deception or drift into darkness like I feared I would. I just stopped mistaking familiarity for truth. I stopped calling inherited ideas “revelation.” I stopped needing my framework to be the whole sky—and that’s when I finally saw how big the sky really was. Not everything I once called truth was a lie… but so much of it was too small to hold what was waiting for me beyond the walls I didn’t know I’d built. And truth… real truth… doesn’t live inside walls. ✨🙌🏾💫 © Logan Barone