As a very young child I watched each day as my father left for work and I happily understood that my dad was an engineer. Of course, my very young brain told me that he was the engineer of —what else? A train! How cool is that?! It wasn’t until he left for Cape Canaveral to work with the space program that I found out he was an electrical engineer. I wasn’t sure what that was but knew enough that I wasn’t going to be riding on a train any time soon! This example may be humorous but what’s happening to accuracy, reality, and truth in our society isn’t. It looks like real truth, as we have known it, is deceased – gone, kaputt. In its place we now have what is called “your truth.” It’s actually an artificial substitute for someone’s personal opinion.
This is becoming popular with our new culture as people can contradict your opinion but not “your truth.” It’s kinda like private property – I have my own truth like I have my own car. The problem is, what happens when “your truth” isn’t truth at all? We seem to be at a weird time in American history, one in which truth and accuracy are in fact frowned upon by many – a time in which real truth is often the new hate speech – which can be a huge disaster for our culture! For those of you who know your history, you know that non-truth has brought down many a nation! And it all starts out so “innocently” — taking down ‘bad’ statues, banning books & movies deemed troublesome, and challenging long held societal norms.
Just this past week, one morning news source headlined this: “School pushes students to stop saying “Mom & Dad.” Sadly, a school in New York is advising their students to avoid harmful language: so terms such as “boys & girls” – “ladies & gentlemen” and “mom & dad” are being replaced with “people, folks or grown-ups.” Pretty crazy, isn’t it?! Like I don’t have a mom! The question is, of course – are these people right? Are these “new truths” good?Something we need to follow? Absolutely not! Our books, movies, phrases, personal opinions, and national history are treasured and unique to each generation and people group!
Are they perfect? No more perfect than the people whose stories they tell. But as George Orwell so noted: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” And if I could add to that extremely accurate quote I would say that putting our long-held ideologies and moral beliefs on the chopping block also destroy people! The Bible tells us in I John 4:6 that there are two spirits at work in our world; the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of deception.
We choose which one we want to follow. John Adams, the second President of the United States gave us this insightful quote as an incentive to follow truth and morality: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Let’s not be deceived – one spirit leads to truth and liberty, the other to oppression and treachery. As Christ-followers we need to understand that if we allow ourselves to unify with “un-truths” and abandon our principles, all we have left is compromise. But in this present climate, more and more people hate hearing truth. Harry S. Truman once said, “I never gave anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.” Those lines could have been written today! John 8:32 tells us if we embrace the truth it will release “true freedom” in our lives.
I want to embrace the truth and be a big-mouth about it. I love how Michel de Montaigne viewed this matter: “I tell the truth, not as much as I would like to, but as much as I dare. And I dare more and more as I grow older.” Score one for old guys! That’s one great truth I always like to tell about The Truth. Jesus Christ is The Way, The Truth and The Life! No one comes to the Father except through union with Him. This is the ultimate truth which leads us to eternal life with Almighty God. It’s like the heavenly American Express card: Don’t leave earth without Him! As Rick Warren says, “Standing courageously for an unpopular opinion isn’t easy, but the rewards of standing courageously for the truth will last forever.”
Bob and Susan Beckett pastor The Dwelling Place City Church at 27100 Girard Street in Hemet, CA. For more information you can contact them at DPCityChurch.org
Susan Beckett • Dwelling Place City Church
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