Truth

I recently heard a reporter interviewing a Presidential candidate’s representative…

Interviewer: Your candidate doesn’t seem capable of consistently telling the truth…

Interviewee: The other candidate lies, they all do. There is nothing to see here… Move along.

OK, so I didn’t exactly hear that interview – not word for word – but I am hearing variations of it and reading it on social media, and my heart is breaking that no one seems to care that truth has fallen by the wayside. I know, this is a political year, but come on… is it OK to abandon truth?

There’s a lot of fact-checking on both sides of the aisle (and I’m sure fact-checking businesses have no problem meeting their payroll), but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone from lying. Why? Could it be that we are more than willing to accept, indulge, forgive, and even embrace the lie as long as the right letter comes after the name: D or R.?

Overlooking a stretch of the truth here, pandering to a candidate there, even giving oneself over to the occasional lie is easier than looking for truth and taking a stand for it – that requires courage. We don’t seem to have a lot of courage these days. We prefer comfort.

Comfort is kind of like that old pair of sweats in the bottom drawer. You know the ones – the worn out and readily accessible pants that we grab when we don’t care what we look like. It’s just so easy to pull up what’s familiar and live in the comfort of darkness.

Does anyone really want to stand for truth? Can we even know the truth? Have we become skeptics who, like Pilate when he questioned Jesus asked, “What is truth?” Have we succumbed to the idea of a completely subjective truth? Most people would say, “Yes. What you perceive to be true is truth for you, what I perceive to be true is truth for me.”

However, that begs the question: if our perspectives are opposite, which of us is right? Whose truth is true? Can there be multiple truths? No. That makes no sense. Just because we think something is true, or want it to be true, or – worse yet – merely feel something is true, doesn’t necessarily make it true. Nevertheless, there is a way to know what truth is, what absolute truth is.

Truth is found in the one true God, the God of the Bible, and his one and only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. What God has declared to be true is always true and will always be true. God is the final standard of truth. God is the definition of truth. It is impossible for God to lie, therefore, we can know that every word he speaks and every revelation of himself that he gives is eternally and perfectly true.

“And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times.” (Psalm 12:6 NIV)

Our faith is based on the fact that God is true, and that his words are true. Faith is simply believing God and acting on it.

Therefore, it is our responsibility as his children to further our faith by furthering our knowledge of truth – our knowledge of God. As our faith grows, so does our courage; the two go hand in hand. The more we learn about God, the more we understand truth, and the more courage we have to stand for truth.

It is the absolute and eternal truth of God’s Word that gives us courage to stand firm in a world that is collapsing under the weight of lies. When truth is subjective, everything becomes shifting sand, and our courage evaporates.

No matter how many times a politician repeats something, or spins it, or flat out lies, the facts don’t change. Either something is true or it is a lie.

It is the same with God’s revelation of himself in the Bible – either it is entirely true or it is entirely a lie. We can’t pick and choose which of God’s words we want to believe. We can’t say, “you believe what you want and I’ll believe what I want.” Either it is all true or it is not.

This election will end in a few months, and until then lies will continue to be told, challenged, fact-checked and uncovered. Will that make a difference for you? Why or why not? Are you willing to accept the lie because you like the person who told it?

What about with your religion? Have you become so calloused by the constant barrage of lies from the world that you have stopped checking and double-checking what you hear from the pulpit? From blogs? From Face Book memes? From songs on the radio? Do you readily accept something as truth because it makes you feel good, or because the person who said it has the right letters after his or her name?

Have you unwittingly embraced lies about God because you aren’t sure what the truth is? There is a way to know the truth about God, but it won’t just come to you without work. Many Bible studies and churches are beginning their fall sign-up now – will you make the effort to learn truth by studying God’s Word?

If you want the courage to stand for truth, then you must stand in truth – in God.

This summer (2016) I have chosen to highlight an attribute of God each week in the blog posts. For the entire catalog of attributes, please click on one of the following links: 
Spirit
Knowable
Creator
Wisdom
Father
Good
Just
All Knowing
Unchanging
Eternal
Beautiful
Light