My husband has a favorite movie that is played so often in our house that everyone knows the dialogue: "A Few Good Men," with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, about a moral dilemma in the Marine Corps.

Near the end of the movie, Nicholson's character loses his cool under aggressive questioning from Cruise, and he yells out to a crowded courtroom, "You can't handle the truth!"

It is a moment when everything stops. Up to this point, the audience has been drawn into the duplicity and malice of Nicholson's character. Then suddenly he says something that has a ring of truth to it, and the audience is forced to stop and think. Maybe he is right; maybe we can't handle "the truth," whatever that is for each one of us.

Truth is tough. It is reality, it is the facts and it is unchanging although it does have the wonderful capacity to change us. Truth calls people to take responsibility for what is happening. It often means someone has to admit to being wrong and setting about to do the right thing, and that can be difficult and unpopular.

We teach our children from the time they are very young that telling the truth is the most important thing they can do. We promise not to get angry if they will only tell us the truth. We hold the truth up as the highest ideal and then as adults we often twist the truth to exonerate ourselves or promote our way of thinking or behaving.

Jesus tells us the truth will set us free, and in Proverbs (12:19) we read, "Truth stands the test of time; lies are soon exposed."

How many times has the truth set you free? The feeling of relief when the truth is finally acknowledged usually makes us wonder why we waited so long. While it is difficult to move from a position of hiding the truth to revealing it, the internal turmoil involved in not speaking or supporting what we know to be true is much worse.

Avoiding the truth brings sweaty palms, sleepless nights and pounding hearts as our intellectual denial turns into physical symptoms of discomfort. The mind, body and soul of a human being work together as one unit. When the mind and the soul are troubled, the body reacts.

Ignoring the truth or lying always get us into trouble, maybe not initially but eventually. No exceptions to this rule come to mind. So why are we so slow to learn that truth at every level about everything is the easiest and most human way to live? Why are we often afraid of the truth?

There is a growing trend to ignore or twist the truth to fit the situation. Politicians and talk show hosts do it every day, promoting their agendas by twisting facts so they appear to be what they are not. They directly or indirectly criticize individuals or groups of people if their actions or beliefs are different from their own.

Over time, this way of thinking trickles down to the average person, and instead of patiently searching, discussing and reading in pursuit of the truth we find ourselves merely protecting our personal opinion or territory.

There are basic truths that society in general must adhere to for civilization to advance. Two of them are tenets of our faith: Love God and love our neighbor. If we truly believed these and lived them, the truth would not be so problematic.

Anne Hansen is a parent education consultant and a parishioner at Blessed Junípero Serra Church, Camarillo. Her e-mail address is familymail@aol.com.