“The price of truth must be your life.”
— James O’Keefe
It’s the kind of statement that doesn’t just make us think; it makes us examine what we’re living for.
If the price of truth is your life, then you are unbuyable. Your integrity and the raw purity of the truth you stand for are not for sale – not for comfort, money, followers, reputation, or anything else. It means you are willing to sacrifice everything, even your life, for what you know to be true.
Truth will never lower its price to match our comfort. If the price is anything less than our life, we will compromise.
Every compromise begins with the hope that no one – not even our own soul – will notice. We compromise because, secretly, we hope truth will bend and twist to fit our lives. What once was a foundation of unwavering principle becomes malleable, negotiable. Little by little, we dilute it to gain from it, until the truths and motives we once held sacred are nearly unrecognizable.
Truth, in its purest form, will always cost us something; but those who are willing to pay the price find they still hold what nothing can take. It is a great paradox: those who are bound by truth are the ones who are truly free.
Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou my inheritance now and always.
“Buy the truth, and sell it not.”
— Proverbs 23:23
