To Tell the Truth

Spirituality Column #112
December 30, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN), Current in Westfield (IN) Newspaper

To Tell the Truth
By Bob Walters

We spend a lot of time on “What do you think?” The far more interesting question is, “What is the truth?”

A learned acquaintance of mine about whose faith I know very little, considered that statement and said, “They’re the same question. I don’t know how you would divide them. The truth is whatever someone thinks it is.”

Mark that spot. Right there at “whatever someone thinks it is” … that’s the dividing line between religion and secularism. I do indeed believe we are all, each of us, believer or not, God’s children, Amen. And I understand that is an opinion.

But to divide an earthly, theological “them” and “us,” we need ask only whether truth exists independent of our opinions.

The worldly “Them” runs on opinions. The worldly “Us” (since we are stuck for now in this worldly realm) worships truth.

Any religion, by definition, is the worship of a truth.

Yet, there is only one eternal, non-manmade Truth; there is only one figure in all of religion or theology or philosophy or opinion or history who showed up on earth and said, I am the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6), and that was Jesus Christ.

When we look at the truth as merely a thing, we can get away with equating it with an opinion. When Truth shows up in the person of God, well … that’s the final answer. The Truth is a separate, objective, complete entity.

In our human limitations, we can haggle over our opinion of what to make of that Truth, but we diminish our existence if God hands us a Truth and we trade it in for an opinion.

People do that with Christ. God gives Him to us, and we give Him back as just another opinion.

I doubt there is a Christian who hasn’t tried to prove the Truth by arguing against someone’s opinion, but the fact is you can’t prove truth with an opinion, because they are separate things.

That’s why a gulf exists between a believer who says “Truth exists” and good people who may believe something but won’t commit to Christ being the Truth because they so highly value their human opinion.

The good news is Christ is the Truth, and we don’t have to prove it.

We just have to believe it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) accepts the limits of his opinions and is thankful for the infinity of Christ’s Truth.