When words help, words are offered. But these words are not the final goal; they are merely a means to get us unstuck if we are stuck in our path toward Buddhahood. The text teaches that when it is necessary, the Buddha will “deceive us into the truth,” as Kierkegaard put it, just as in the parable of the magic city the tired pilgrims are lured toward their goal and dissuaded from giving up by the mysterious illusion of the proximity of a yet distant goal. Similarly, if we are to move beyond our habitual and limiting thoughts, perhaps potent new thoughts will affect our moving from our original stance. If a set of truth-claims helps us to move beyond our previous beliefs, the set has done its job. It does not, however, constitute a permanently satisfying and intelligible final answer. Once we are free from whatever delusion to which we were habituated, the tool of our liberation should be discarded rather than clung to. It was, after all, nothing more than a now spent tool. And so, it is that tactfulness requires that what is spoken be effective rather than literally true.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; John R.A. Mayer, Reflectioms on the Threefold Lotus Sutra, Page 156