Pontius Pilate asked Jesus a question—“What is truth?”—and that has been the core question inside every person before and since. Is truth interpretive? Is truth objective or subjective? Although a modern variant to an old idiom by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford and thinkers like Protagoras and David Hume, the phrase goes “truth is in the eye of the beholder”. What is truth?
To conflict and contradict the desire to know truth or provide truth, Adolf Hitler said that people are more likely to fall victim to a big lie than a small one. Joseph Goebbels said, “if a lie is told long enough and loud enough it becomes truth.” What is truth?
Truth is origin. It is baseline. It is what everything else is measured against. Truth is fact and not subject to interpretation, opinion, or the emotion/feelings of the masses. Truth cannot be ratified over time. Truth stands throughout time and eternity.
For the born-again Christian, we easily directly or paraphrase Jesus’ words found in John 8:32, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Drilling through the Greek for the word truth (225 to 2990) means no concealing. Truth is open and honest; truth is light. Truth is love. Truth delivers or frees. The word free in the Greek (1659 to 1658) means to liberate. The connotation is someone bound in chains or in slavery is no longer bound in chains or is no longer a slave. Jesus read from Isaiah 61 with the event recorded in Luke 4:18-19, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” Paul picks up on this in his letter to the Colossians (3:9-11), “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised no uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” Is truth a gift. Is truth a word? Something given or something said? James the Lesser in James 1:17-18 said, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.” Couple these verses with this short verse in Hebrews 11:6, “…for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Truth is sought after. It is to be actively pursued. Truth is to be passionately pursued. And equally in passion, truth is freely and lovingly given away. Truth is not limited by money, person, background, pedigree, title, political spectrum, modern slants, or gender specific. Truth is simply truth.
While lying in bed last night with sleep not coming to me because I had sadness in my heart again. I, as a born-again Christian, know truth, have truth, have access to truth, share truth, live truth, etc. Although repented of long ago and my choice to behave in such as bad way, I can easily recall from my early years as a Christian of church outreaches I went on were not spent sharing the truth and certainly not by wielding the Word of God properly (2 Timothy 2:15). I never opened the Bible to read it for myself. To me, at the time, the Bible was a book for reference like a book of statistics, not something to actively engage. As such, my truth was only limited to what I received from the pulpit and expressed in conversations amongst one another. On these outreaches I deputized myself and armed with a measured belief in truth. How was it shared? Argued, yelled, demanded, forced, or be used as a weapon for mocking others. The truth I spoke didn’t deliver or help anyone. The truth I uttered bound the hearer instead. My expression of truth offended. That being said and perhaps what I shared relatable to other people, how is TRUTH truly presented (speaking rhetorically and in general)?
I saw a video this evening of a man explaining the news broadcast template for the DPRK. I have written about North Korea before, and I was saddened. My sadness grew enough with my attempt to sleep that it took me out of my bed, me to my knees in prayer, and finally to my keyboard to write this late tonight. And the DPRK isn’t exclusive nor alone. People are presented information all over the world and through many sources. And to borrow from Hitler, Hume, and Goebbels, truth and the amount given or shared is an instrument entirely at the control of its handler and the people (the mass or us) are purely at their mercy to trust they are given the whole truth. Certainly we, today, are no different when the Word of God was intentionally hidden by the church and the crown centuries gone by. Further, this was no different in Jesus’ day as it was no different during 1700s during the period of enlightenment in America (American colonies), nor during the industrial revolution of the 1800s, nor of the 1930-1940s by propaganda teams, to even today. So what is keeping me awake and saddened are the countless people I saw on the screen as well as those whom we come across at the store, talk to at work or in our classroom, to those in another city, to those in another state, and to those in another nation even if across the globe who don’t have the Truth (meaning the Word of God) or that it is limited. We so easily point the finger at government, wicked leaders, media outlets, school systems, etc. to blame them. But what about the Church? In some circles, Truth is manipulated and watered down so much that one cannot even find a half truth let alone the whole truth. There are circles that play on the laziness of Christians and only present the “truth” through the pulpit, TikTok, YouTube, etc. without a single Christian (like the Bereans of old) verifying the truth…let alone reading the Truth from the Bible on their own and to live by it. Sadly this is why there are so many Christians who fall away or allow their hearts to be filled with bitterness and/or pride because Truth (as a seed) never really developed a firm root and grew, even if it took years or decades later in the parting of ways from their church. Recently I heard a young man who was compelled to write a sermon (he’s been working on that sermon for months) but before he could internalize it, he wanted to make sure he was living it out. Although I appreciate his desire for integrity and not be a hypocrite, but if we waited on countless of men to get things perfect or right in the Bible before they finally delivered their message, Peter never would had preached and 3000 got saved (as well as a host of other people). (My encouragement was the message is a message from God and it is to challenge, convict, and lead us all to repentance even if the message delivered was more for the preacher than the pew.) And then there are other limitations to the truth. For example that I will preach to these people but I won’t preach to those people: hostility, too affluent, no money, wrong skin color, I cannot speak their language, fear, or intentional sabotage to take ourselves out of the game (think Jonah). There are cities in our great America who may have a church building on every corner even with the pews/chairs filled with people attending, but is the Truth truly setting the captive free (conversions and repentance)? Further, many of these cities don’t have a Fellowship church (and yes I am really thinking about the Midwest and plains states; Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska more so). There are nations that, to the glory of God, we have a Fellowship church but the harvest work is far from finished and far too much for that lone church. There are nations with a host of Fellowship churches but the work is yet undone because the harvest is too great. Let us believe God for more workers to go in both cases. And sadly there are nations with NO Fellowship church. I am not criticizing. I also do understand that there are dynamics, strategies, and simply hostile nations to gain access to. So I am not sitting on my lofty cloud casting blame or I have knowledge and wisdom that is beyond those who know (far from it). But through all that, what is truth? And why can others who have no truth or access to the truth not be given truth? We are quick to show off our engagement ring, our sonogram picture, parade our favorite team’s victory, but alas the truth is not so easily shared.
Thomas Jefferson, despite his very unchristian testimony, declared in the US Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” Throughout time, men died for truth. Jesus died and gave Himself to bear that truth with His words found in John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Jesus continued in verses 19 and 21, “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil…But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.” Paul bore witness of this light with his life by saying in Romans 9:1-2, “I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.” That sorrow and grief was fueled by the lost not knowing who Jesus Christ was/is and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 1:23 and 2:2) along with his passion for the truth in the churches (2 Corinthians 11:28, one of my most favorite verses).
Whether by intention/deliberate, by apathy, by carelessness, by fear, by pride, by embarrassment, or by other means that when we hold onto the truth and then to not give it, to not share it, and to not live it out through our lives (not just preach it but to live it), we can be as guilty as the countless and countless people who shielded, manipulated, or rejected the truth. Toward the end of the European front of World War 2, Tom Priestley who was a US military cameraman documenting the discovery of the concentration camps, said that the German soldiers who finally came to terms with not only the end of the war but the savagery and brutality they exhibited mostly toward those dead and dying in the camps lamented, We didn’t know, we didn’t know. Truth was finally revealed and sadly for millions, it was too late. Today, as it has been for millennia, the absence of truth, the delay of truth, the lies being told as truth, the masking of truth may leave us all lamenting, “We didn’t know we didn’t know. We could have done something, but we didn’t know.” Even though these words may not be literally said by the man whom we see on his doorstep during a church outreach, the child in a classroom, the dying man in a hospital room alone, or the hunched-over woman in North Korea/China, their hearts ask these three words to you and I, “What is truth?”
What is truth? That all and entirely depends on what you and I will do with it.