What is Truth?

When Lynetta and I were teenagers, there was a man that we both greatly admired (we still do) He was one of the best Bible School teachers that we have ever had the privilege of listening to. I remember that he would always begin a new study with these words:

“I believe that there is such a thing as truth - and I belief that truth is attainable.”

I still love those words. To think that the right answers are really out there, and that they are still readily available to any sincere seeker, is reassuring and comforting.

I wish that I could still just accept those words and be content - but, you know me…..
I still believe the “truth” part. I do believe that the right answers are out there. It is that silly “attainable” part that keeps giving me so much trouble.

The classic, most quoted Bible verses concerning this subject are of course:
1. The question: Found in John 18:38 (Pilot’s question to Jesus; “What is truth?”)
2. The answer: Found in John 17:17 (where Jesus refers to God’s word as truth)

There was a time when all you had to do was start your sermon with these two scriptures and it automatically qualified the rest of what you had to say as “truth”. It implied that from that point forward everything you were about to say was directly from God’s word and therefore truth. That of course was a ridiculous and baseless assumption, but in our innocence we did not seem to notice or mind. This tactic actually seemed to work for awhile - that is until I started hearing the “Truth Scripture Trump Card” quoted and claimed by preachers with distinctly opposite points of view. Both were appealing to scripture. Both were holding up God’s word as the final authority, but they obviously did not interpret “Truth” in the same way.

The short sighted Pollyanna answer would be that one preacher was right and one was wrong. One was a true soldier of the cross, and the other was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You simply choose which one you tended to agree with, or which one your particular church was affiliated with, and claim him the winner

But who is really to say which one is which? Scholars, men who were much wiser than me, who have dedicated their entire lives to the study of The Scriptures, who know more than I can even dream of knowing, have argued, debated, and disagreed about this stuff for the past 2000 years. How do I even stand a chance?

It is a subject that has caused me much grief. To flirt with the notion that “truth” was somehow so exclusive as to be out of reach for the common man was almost faith ending.

But, as always, God came to my rescue and showed me a better way…..
(To be continued)