I’ve found consistently that sharing truth is the most unpopular thing you can do, and the least lucrative. If you want to get anywhere in this world, tell lies and tell them with conviction. Just ask the President, or anyone around him, or those in the media. But then, in answer, they will tell you a lie: “We only speak the truth, for your sakes”.
(Photo by Jaime Spaniol on Unsplash)
Most of us are not looking for the truth in all things. We’re looking for something we like, something that serves our plans, something we want to be true, and something that appeals to our senses:
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Timothy 4:3).
Yes, this fact is as common in the church as out of it, unfortunately.
What is truth? The prevailing opinion is that whatever is true for you is true. A woman I know shared that view with me recently. So I said to her, suppose you came home one day and found your house full of men you don’t know. They’re lounging around on your furniture, eating your food, and making a noise that can be heard down the street. You indignantly exclaim that this is your house, but one of the men tells you no, it’s his house, and you are the intruder. Do you accept his view of truth and leave the premises, never to return, or do you call the police and demand the men be removed? In this case, as in all other situations in life, there is a real, genuine truth, and denying that fact isn’t going to change it.
I didn’t intend the subject of this blog post to be truth, but truth is a subject, I find, which occupies my mind in one form or another most of the time. I will confess to being fooled by my own desire for an alternative truth sometimes. But then hard, cold reality pushes its way into my mind, probably courtesy of the Holy Spirit of God, whose job it is to guide us into all truth (John 16:13). The problem in our world is that we all resist truth to varying degrees, and some, such as those I mentioned at the start, build their entire existence on lies. Within their sphere of influence, which is huge, millions of others are drawn into the lie. Here’s that mass psychosis some people have attempted to point out, to no avail, because the majority do not want it to be pointed out.
No one has seen evidence that life came from nothing, or that some dog-like creature evolved into a whale, or that we are descended from ape-like creatures: it’s a narrative which appeals to the appetite for self-gratification rather than having to answer to a holy, omnipotent creator.
In the Church self-deceived ministers (not all ministers) push the idea that if their congregants will just part with enough money, they will become wealthy. If they will just work up enough faith, like working up the determination to go out in the cold, they will be well and healthy. If they will just believe what they’re told to believe, they will be able to tap into immense power and wield it like a club: all lies created by the greedy and the sensuous to appeal to the same in us all.
Like it or not, there is a day of reckoning coming, for all of us. The Mind which created us all and the beauty and majesty we see all around us, isn’t likely to let His creation-His work of art-decay endlessly. And this is what we find in our Scripture, that the ruler of all ages and of all things, has set a Day in which all of us will give an account for the lies we have chosen to believe, and in which those who have sought the Truth, and accepted it, will be rewarded.
Notice that when Pilate asked Jesus Christ, “What is truth?”, Jesus didn’t give him an answer (John 18:38). Pilate wasn’t looking for an answer, because he didn’t think there was one, and he really didn’t want to know if there was one. But Jesus didn’t hide the answer from his disciples, who did want to know:
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Fuel for Faith 