Monday, January 28, 2013
324 - Taking Truth off the Table
Spirituality
Column #324
January 29, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
January 29, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
Taking Truth off the Table
By
Bob Walters
“I
am the way and the truth and the life.” – Jesus Christ, John 14:6
Lance Armstrong is a spectacular
example of the human condition.
The worldly culture witnessing the self-motivated
outing of his sinister, slanderous plots, prickly personality and performance
drug doping is clamoring for “truth.” But
when juxtaposed with Armstrong’s heroic battle against cancer, nearly unequaled
charitable impact, unprecedented but drug-assisted athletic feats, and the not-insignificant
fact that he loves his children (good) but abandoned their mother for rock star
Cheryl Crow (bad) – “truth” becomes a hard commodity to pin down.
Our
sports-minded culture wants good and evil to be on a scoreboard plainly displaying
who’s ahead, who’s behind, who wins, and who loses. But no secular scoreboard can conclusively delineate
“truth” for humanity’s good, bad, and ugly.
Conversely, celebrity-deifying and
God-conflicted modern society clearly does not want an assessment of Lance
Armstrong’s “truth” that dismissively asserts, “This is not a truth that matters; Jesus Christ is a truth that matters.”
In the copious news reporting and
talk-show chatter surrounding Armstrong’s Oprah-facilitated confession, I’ve
yet to hear any testimony as to the existence of the ultimate truth, which is
what we have in Jesus Christ (see John 14:6).
This isn’t to assess Armstrong’s heart or personal faith; it’s to indict
our culture’s misplaced priorities and utter absence of asking real questions
about “truth.” We mistakenly worship human
celebrities and then mistakenly demand from them divine truth.
I heard more than one commentator exclaim, “I don’t know what to believe.”
Well, here’s the truth: Armstrong is
as good and bad as any other human being can be, because each of us carries the
image of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ right along with the fallenness
of worldly sin and corruption. When we
look at Armstrong’s situation and seriously attempt to ascertain “truth,”
“truth” cannot be found if the teaching, life, love and Truth of Jesus Christ have been taken off the cultural table.
But that’s where we are.
When the yellow “Livestrong”
bracelets were all the rage, my pastor noted a danger: it was/is easy to wear
one and think “I will live strong,” implying that I can provide all I need,
that I can do “it” – whatever “it” may be – by myself or by emulating mortal
human heroes … without Christ.
Living strong will never be the
equal of living in truth, and from where I sit, the only truth is Christ.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) believes confession works best when
accompanied by repentance, observes that while none of us wants to be judged,
we vigorously, giddily, judge Armstrong, and reminds all that Christ had
compassion for both the oppressed (blind man) and the oppressor (Zacchaeus), Luke
18:35-19:10.
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