Truth: that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality
Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
John 18:37-38 ESV
When I hear the term truth, the famous dialogue from the movie A Few Good Men comes to mind. It is where the Tom Cruise character demands the Jack Nicholson character for the truth and the response from Jack is the famous line of “you can’t handle the truth.” Truth tends to be a popular topic, ranging from promoting ones truth, to calling out a political party and how they don’t know what truth is, even if it came and slapped them along side of the head. I just finished up the HBO historical drama Chernobyl which is about the 1986 nuclear plant explosion and aftermath in Russia. At the end of the last episode, one of the main characters gives the speech that when truth is forgotten or altered, it gives us a distorted sense of reality and eventually we no longer know what to believe or who we are. The final punch line in the movie is that when truth is forgotten or manipulated, it creates a debt, and that debt will need to be settled. It often is not pretty and has dire consequences for forsaking it and not living by the universal truths that God has laid out before us. Here are some observation I have made about truth that I think will be helpful.
The first observation is that truth is that there is no such thing as my truth and your truth, because not only does it lead to a moral relativism with no concrete standards of right or wrong, but it also leads to divisiveness. One just has to take a look at our political climate since last November with the Presidential Election. Both sides are digging in to their foxholes with their agendas and launching ammunition of distrust, name calling and finger pointing to the other side. This divisiveness often grows larger as time goes on and we eventually will cut off all relationships with people who disagree with us, or we participate in the civil war that is going on in social media along with where we work, worship and at the dinner table. I will leave you with this thought on my truth. It could make us think that it is our Constitutional Right that we are not wrong and that we can never be wrong, no matter how faulty our reasoning or information is/ My truth often sees things one way and only gains information from sources they agree with, supports their cause and comforts them.
The second observation about truth, especially Gods Truth, doesn’t care about feelings. If you know anything of or follow the conservative author and media personality Ben Shapiro, you know one of his famous lines is that “facts don’t care about feelings,” and the same can be said for truth. Or if you think in song titles, the group Boston, song More Than a Feeling because Gods truth is objective and not subjective. Generally speaking, people turn to things that make them happy or somehow lets them escape reality. This why I think so many of us struggle with some sort of addiction issues, is because we want to be happy, or not face the reality that the truth is pointing out. Truth is that big spotlight that shines on areas in our life that need to change, or improvement, or an action that we either need to stop doing or start doing. Truth helps things us see things as they really are and what they could be, and not what we want them to be. So here is my question, if truth was about comfort, would we ever change?
My third observation about Gods truth is that it is absolute. It doesn’t care about culture, time period, or your gender. It applies to everyone. As much as we try to get out of it, it is impossible to run from, because it will eventually come and catch up with us and the longer we avoid it, the worse the consequences are. Absolute truth is like gravity, cause no matter what we do, it still brings us back to earth. Eventually that airplane is going to come out of the sky and land, due to a lack of fuel or some sort of mechanical issue. When God created the earth, He set up some universal guidelines for it to operate and from collapsing into utter chaos. Absolute truths is the blue print that God has given us on how the world should work and how we should live and interact with each other. When we don’t read or fail to abide by this blueprint, things are sent into chaos, and we become so calloused that we start doing things that are right in our own eyes and not God’s design.
My fourth observation is that cultures change and people don’t. Ever since Adam and Eve ate from that apple and were banished from Eden, the struggle has been real. We are constantly wanting to do things as we see fit, because we think we know as much as God and we can do as good of a job if not better than what He is doing right now. No matter how often rules are changed, or added, or social programs are out there to combat the ills of society, we still make stupid decisions. The ways may have changed, but how often do we try and diminish or take down others, so that we can elevate ourselves, or find ways to escape reality. I could be wrong, but when we lose Absolute Truth, not only do we break off our relationship with the Creator, but we damage our relationship with other people. When there are no absolutes, people lose value and often become a pawn in a game. How often do these pawns become forgotten or disposed of to either meet some sort of need or to cover up some sort of pain or inconvenience.
My fifth observation is that when we deny absolute truth, or push it down the line, when it comes back, the consequences are messy, ugly, and often deadly. According to the movie Chernobyl the reason why the reactor exploded was because of a neglect of rules and because of a known design flaw that people new about but did nothing about. It could be something as simple as unpaid child support leads to jail time or the loss of certain privileges. When we start denying or avoiding God’s absolutes, there will be consequences. They could range from relational issues, jail time, to financial to health issues. Eventually our poor choices will have eternal consequences. The one thing that I am starting to realize is that God’s absolutes have more than just eternal consequences, but they have eternal hope. God’s absolutes bring peace, understanding and it builds solid relationships. God’s truths are designed to bring things together. God is about order, peace, trust, and being in communion with others and Him. Our truth promotes chaos, war, bitterness, and a lack of trust and understanding.
I know it’s a long time coming, but lets finally hit that Bible passage that I started with. The story comes from the Gospel of Johns account of the Passion. I encourage all of you to read Johns version of the Passion of the Christ starting in chapter 14. Quick history on this passage, which is that the Passion of the Christ takes place over the Jewish holiday called the Passover, where they remember their Exodus from Egypt. The Jewish leaders got tired of Jesus healing and challenging their authority. Jesus also claimed to be one with God and King. Within Jewish ,tradition, that is blasphemy punishable by death. Since they were under Roman rule, they could not execute anyone, so they had to spend some political coin to the Romans to show that Jesus was a heretic and deserved to die. This is what lead to the famous meeting between Jesus and Pilate. With Pilates famous phrase of “what is truth” he was washing his hands of the situation, and condemned Jesus to death so the Jewish people could live their truth and have a criminal released from death row. When truth becomes subjective, chaos becomes the law of the land, responsibility is optional and there is no such thing as maturity, value and dignity of the creation goes out the window and it becomes a free for all.
