My goal in writing for this blog is pretty simple: I aspire to offer help for people wishing to take their faith in Christ from average to awesome. I can’t sugarcoat things: there’s a lot of aspects involved in this. One needs a strong church family to be involved in, one needs to serve, discipleship is absolutely vital—but I realize that we need to start someplace.
I’ve tried to think about what is the absolute root of deep, growing faith; the kind of faith that produces results, not just parishioners. There’s obviously plenty to choose from, but over and above all else, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that the way we treat the Bible means more than anything. There is no other aspect of Christianity that has quite as much potential to spiritually make or break us. So, in light of that, I’m going to spend the next few weeks writing about the Word of God.
To begin, though, we need to come to an agreement, and because of that, I’d like to bring up the topic of Truth.
We, as humans, have a remarkable propensity to modify our beliefs, to rationalize, and to mitigate. In this day and age, truth is malleable. It can be molded to the situation, and to whomever is speaking it at the moment. The key—from the world’s perspective—is to know what is true for you. We are told at every turn that what’s true is less important than what feels right, or what feels good.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Bible holds no Congress with such ideas. Almost nothing is more important to the Christian believer than the truth.
“For we cannot oppose the truth, but must always stand for the truth.” (2 Cor 13:8, NLT)
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32, NIV)
“‘These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judgment for peace in your gates. Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate,' declares the LORD.” (Zec 8:16, NIV)
The faithful believer knows with an ironclad certainty that there is a line between truth and lie that, no matter how thin, is never able to be bent, changed, or rewritten. Right and wrong are not debatable topics to be decided by group consensus or mob rule.
So, the obvious question arises: what is truth?
“Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” (John 17:17, NASB)
Jesus prays that to his father on behalf of his disciples. You can’t get a better first-party source than that. But Jesus also had some other, equally blunt things to say about where truth comes from.
“Yeshua said to him, ‘I AM THE LIVING GOD, The Way and The Truth and The Life; no man comes to my Father but by me alone.’” (John 14:6, Aramaic in Plain English)
Jesus names himself as Truth, and the bearer of truth. His words are God’s words, and thus the Truth speaks the truth. The Bible says over and over that God is faithful and true, and that no falsehood can be found in him, but Truth goes further than merely not telling lies. God is the sole source of all that is and always will be True.
If you call yourself a believer and a Christian, this is not a debatable term. This is one of the ironclad, fundamental aspects of Christ: that God’s Word is the source of perfect, holy truth for every situation. This means that many things we take as our beliefs may need to be modified in the light of what the Scriptures say. Personally, I’m a big believer that once you’ve taken context and history into account, you must take what the Bible says to be true, no matter what. This could mean that some of your new beliefs don’t fit in with those around you (in fact, if you’re doing it right, they often won’t). It might mean that people label you as “intolerant”, “hateful”, or “arrogant”.
Here’s one of the beautiful things, though: we aren’t called to argue on behalf of the truth of God’s Word. Jesus is Truth, and his truth defends itself as his words and his terms are played out in life. The sight of someone who firmly and rightly handles truth is startling, especially in this day and age. It’s very hard for someone to see it and not have a response to it.
Knowing this, think about what beliefs you take as “true” that could stand to be re-evaluated in light of the Scriptures you claim to believe in. Do you even know what the Bible says about such topics? We’ll cover more on that in the coming weeks, so I hope to see you here again next Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment