What Is Truth?

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What is truth?

A commodity to be acquired? Brokered? Bought and sold?
A weapon? Brandished at my enemy? Mastered to win arguments? Twisted for my own end?

What is truth?

A religion? Honored above all? Worshipped? Adored? Venerated?
The ultimate prize? A worthy pursuit? Eternal? Answering all questions?
Is it feasible? Always available? Affected by perception? Modified by additional information?

What is truth?

Who protects it? Where is its repository? Who owns the access codes?

What is truth?

Is it expressed in the reality of an eternal being? A person?

A relationship?

What is truth?

Your truth?


I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true. - Jesus

What is truth? - Pilate

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Maintaining Tradition for the Sake of Truth.

Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked Him, "Why do Your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat."

I wonder if the law of entropy applies to the spiritual and intellectual world as well as the physical world. For example, when people value an idea, they seek to present that idea in a way that will have influence on the whole group. But over time the idea begins to lose its influence. It leaks, or as in the law of thermodynamics, left to its own, entropy takes over. Leaking begins as soon as the idea is embraced by the group and without continued input, entropy leads to a total loss of influence.

Because we live in a reality of decay, it is necessary to reenergize the disciples of the idea. We must work to maintain an idea’s influence. There is inherent danger in this reality. In our attempt to maintain the original idea, we lose the idea in our attempts to maintain it. As we, out of necessity, attempt to prop up the value of an idea, we risk that the prop will become more important than the idea.

Jesus replied, "And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? For instance, God says, 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.' But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, 'Sorry, I can't help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.' In this way, you say they don't need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition.”

I’m pretty sure the Pharisees and the teachers of the religious law didn’t set out to lose the meaning of God’s direct command. They were passionate about maintaining its influence. No doubt a majority of them desired to please God and lead others to live right. Their lives revolved around fighting the entropy of God’s direct commands. Ceremonial hand washing was just one of the props used in the battle to reenergize an idea’s influence. Jesus takes the opportunity to show where their props had become more important then God’s direct command. It had become so convoluted and complex that the prop, like ceremonial hand washing, and not God’s direct command, defined their culture. Instead of being defined by the truth behind their traditions, they were now defined by those very traditions.

You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, 'These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”

As always, Jesus obliterates the prop and lances the heart. I place myself in the Pharisees’ shoes. As one who had given his life to the protection and expression of God’s truth, what would it be like to have this bombshell dropped on your soul? These men took their worship seriously. They took their desire to seek after God seriously. Deadly seriously. What must it have done to their souls to have the Rabbi tell them that their worship was a farce?

Let me make it a little more real. Having been called pastor in the past, I’ve desired to protect and uphold the truth. I’ve desired to live in such a way that people would be pointed to Jesus. I’ve given my life to that idea. So my first response to these words of Jesus is to assume that it’s not me. I’m not a Pharisee. But If I’m honest, I have to say that the main reason I don’t think I’m a Pharisee is because I desperately don’t want to be one. Not really foolproof reasoning.

So I let these words into my own soul. What does the Holy Spirit look at in my life and say “Your worship is a farce”. Where am I teaching man-made ideas as commands from God? What props have I used in an attempt to uphold God’s truth? Where in my life have I tried so hard to follow God that I’ve developed traditions that have become more important than God’s truth? Am I willing to let the Holy Spirit tear down what needs to be torn down without fighting to save the traditions on which I’ve based my life?

I Just Want To Be Right.

The depth of my relationship with Jesus reveals itself when my desire to be seen right in God’s eyes collides with the wrong that expresses itself in me. How I exchange my “wrong” for His “right” reveals the depth of my experience with Jesus.

I was talking with a friend recently about how the process of becoming like Jesus works. We are created to be in relationship with our Creator. Placed in the deepest part of who we are is a desire to be connected to the One in Whose image we are created. In my heart it is expressed as a deep desire to know that I’m in “right standing” with the One Who created me. I have a deep desire for my heavenly Father to look at me and call me “right”. The thought that I might not be seen as right in God’s eyes is paralyzing for me.

This paralyzing fear is often the catalyst for how I represent myself to people, and by extension, to my heavenly Father. The thought of being wrong is so demanding that I end up bending the truth to what I think a person’s idea of what is right would be. I’ll try and present myself such that you’ll believe that I have a handle on being “right”. This can be very confusing. Trying to figure out what you think is right and then telling my story to match that can be very taxing, but I’ve discovered that I do it without even thinking about it. I’m not trying to transfer my stuff onto everybody else, but I think we all might have a tendency to tell other people what we think they want to hear about ourselves.

It would be damaging enough if it ended there, but I do the same thing with my heavenly Father. I present to Him the parts of me that I think are okay so that He’ll see me as right. I’ll even rationalize the sin in my life in an attempt to not be wrong. I’m so afraid that if I’m not right, I’ll lose everything, so I offer God a lie. I then wonder why I can’t seem to get a handle on some sin in my life, so I’ll ask God to change me, or change my circumstances, or grow me, my desire to change coming from my fear of being wrong.

In this cycle of confusion I have learned one thing well. God can’t change a lie, He can only change the truth. What a fully devoted follower of Jesus does when confronted with their sin reveals the depth of their relationship and experience with Jesus. Jesus can’t change the lie I offer Him. I must, in truth, bring Him my sin. My sin is then exchanged for His righteousness. There is no other process I see in which one who is following after Jesus becomes holy. My life won’t change until I’m honest with where I am in my current state. When I offer Him my lie, He waits. When I’m honest about my sin, Jesus moves. The only way for me to be “right” is to exchange my “wrong” for Jesus’ “right”.

It seems that much of my energy is consumed with plowing through all of the confusing wrong that is a part of our daily existence. I am weary not only of dealing with my own sin, but also of dealing with a sinful world around me. So I cling tightly to the promise that someday Jesus is going to return and set things right. Our existence is going to be as He created it to be. A hope I carry in my relationship with Jesus is that one day God the Father will finally say, “That’s it. Time’s over. Jesus, go make things right”. It is then that “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” transforms from a forward looking prayer to an experienced reality.

Questions From The Bottom Of My Soul

How can I fully understand my heart?
How can my heart wander, yet still be useful?
How can faith turn to demand so quickly?
How can truth get so twisted you can no longer recognize it?

Is it possible for me to use you till you’re gone?
Can I out walk your grace?
Is it possible for the hardness of my heart to out last your love?
Can I tell you no until you no longer ask?
Is it possible for my stubborn confusion to disqualify me as a son?
Can I really understand and walk in your truth?
Is it possible for this twisted, stained heart to ever be right?

When does the hard part of my heart ruin the rest?
When does peace need to protect itself from me?
When does mercy become an enabler?
When does the most loving thing to do become to no longer love?

Will I forever be a slave to my emotions?
Will I ever know that it means to be healed?
Will I ever know what it means to “be right”?
Will I ever know what it means to not ask why?

Why Can't I Say No?

Why can’t I say no?

What happens when a young child tells his parents no? I remember when my kids told me no, my first thought was to say, “Oh yeah?!” While I acknowledge the importance of learning obedience, it is just as important that our kids learn to say no. We usually don’t have to teach our kids the concept of no; most pick it up at a very early age. This was true with my own kids, and once they picked up the “no” concept, I began to systematically teach them that it’s not okay to say no to me.

As I walk alongside people who struggle with habitually making wrong choices and those who struggle with addiction, I wonder about the connection between the temptations we face and our learning to say no. I wonder if as children we were taught that it wasn’t okay, and now when facing temptation, needing to say no, we really don’t know how.

When a child learns to say no, they aren’t necessarily being disobedient as much as they are trying on what it means to “become their own person”. It’s our job as parents to guide this process. From my own experience I’m afraid I too often stopped the process with a “don’t say no to me!” Unintentionally, I was teaching my kids that it’s not okay to say no. I think it’s possible that we learn this lesson so well we never learn how to say no in a healthy way. So what happens when we are adults and out on our own and we run into temptation? At best we struggle with a handicapped “no” ability, at worst we just plain don’t know how.

I take great comfort in knowing that our Heavenly Father will teach us how to say no. Where I’ve learned that saying no is not okay, He will teach me how to say “yes” to “no”.