All those opinions don’t add up to reality, because opinions vary.  Truth is real all the time. See the column below.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #878

September 12, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Truth Is …

By Bob Walters

“I am the way and the truth and the life …”, Jesus answering Thomas and the disciples at the Last Supper, John 14:6.

“Where are You going? Where are we going? What do You mean??? How can we know?” That was basically the aggregate question disciple Thomas asked Jesus, and what all the disciples were wondering.  What is the truth here?

Jesus had just told them He was leaving, would be back, would gather them, take them with Him, and, don’t worry because you already “know the way” (John 14:4). 

In another context perhaps Pontius Pilate asked the question best: “What is truth?”  In front of both the disciples at the Last Supper and in front of Pilate in the palace stood the truth, the answer to their questions: Jesus, the Messiah, Son of God.

Note that Jesus answered the disciples, for they were truly His.  Note that Jesus said nothing to Pilate, whose “truth” resided in Rome, with Caesar. Regardless, all of sinful humanity asks: What is truth?  For better or worse, it is where our heart is.

I believe truth is a longing akin to the desire God puts into every human heart, the desire to know “beyond” this life to the realm of “Where did I come from?”  “Why am I here?” “Where am I going?” And as we all grasp the reality of death, “What’s next?”

This is the same broad category – ingrained by God in our humanity created in His image – that makes us, as humans, yearn to worship something; ideally the thing that we know is true.  Thing is, God also granted us the freedom to discover what to worship.  And when we worship properly, we discover God’s essential, core being: that He is love, and He wants us to love Him, others, and within that, to know His truth.

Satan corrupted that design for truth by tempting Adam and Eve in the garden.  Humanity’s truth of perfection in paradise became our questioning tarnish of the ages.  Ever since, it has been life’s central drama: What is truth?  We have too many answers.

Consider, as we look at modern American life, “What is truth?”  Survey culture, society, politics, media, education, entertainment, the implied-but-false majority of wokeness, the conundrum of “reverse racism,” the practical insanity of open national borders, assorted spurious public health and climate scares, a politicized two-tier justice system, and a forced absence of God.  Falsehoods and vacant, vile opinions abound.

Akin to a paraphrase of Thomas, we may ask "What the heck is going on?”

Thomas was looking for truth, and in point of fact, Thomas was looking at truth.

Truth is something that is real all the time. Our modern souls still and stubbornly look for truth in all the wrong places. Yet truth resides where it always has: in Jesus Christ.

What philosophers call “metaphysics,” the search/effort/yearning to define and understand “reality” – real reality, the truth, not just the opinion of an age – is a mosh-pit of competing ideas that dependably mirrors Pilate: “I’ll ask what truth is, but I really don’t want to know.” Like Pilate, much modern “truth” is “in Rome with Caesar,” and isn’t true.

Sin resides in this age we occupy, and is a human marker of all the ages.  When we know that Father, Son, and Spirit are real all the time, trustworthy all the time, righteous all the time, and good all the time, then we have the perspective of looking at, knowing, living, and sharing reality. In my opinion, that is truth, and the best way to live.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has opinions about Christ, yet knows Christ is truth.