What is truth?

Tonight I went to Koinonia with a bunch of other students (college-age church group) and we started the Truth Project video series. It really got me thinking because they just ask these simple questions and we know the Sunday School answer but there is so much more to them than we think. Like the question "Why did Jesus come into the world?" The professor got so many answers and though they were good answers (to save us, to set the captives free, to redeem us, etc), they were not the Biblical answer. Jesus himself tells us that he came to "testify to the truth" (John 18:37) as if "truth" was on trial. In reality, it would seem it really is, when you think about it. The whole Bible outlines this cosmic battle between the truth and lies. God is Truth, He embodies Truth, He is the source of Truth and Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44). He's been lying from the very beginning, perverting God's truth.

It was also interesting the answers they got to a survey of random people for the "simple" question: "What is truth?" Most were like, "Truth is...um....well it's hard to describe..." Some Unitarian lady was like: "Well it's like we are all inside this giant cathedral and there are many many windows in the cathedral, all different and the light comes in a different angles and is refracted differently and depending where you are or where you look, you see something different. That is what truth is like. It's the way you see the light" and I'm like...here's an idea: walk outside the doors of your giant cathedral of confusion and refraction and look at the source of the light! Get to the bottom line! There isn't multiple truths - there is only ONE - it's just perverted (or refracted if you put it her way!). Interestingly, a 13 year old boy had some interesting points such as: "there has to be an ABSOLUTE truth for the world to function at all." Indeed there has to be something for us to base wrong and right off of, for us to base our morals on, but who defines it? and where does it come from?

The only answer is God. God is truth and the anchor of all we believe in. More specifically, when you think of hope - what do you hope in? what do you have faith in? what do you trust in? You don't hope in HOPE or have faith in FAITH...you have to have some concrete, something to anchor yourself to and that is TRUTH and the only truth is "that which affirms reality as perceived by God".

My final point will be the same challenge as they gave us on the film:

"Do you really believe, that what you believe is really real? If so...are you living it out? From where I see it, if I truly believed EVERYTHING in God's Word, then why do I live the way I do? Why do I have so much fear and trepidation? Why am I afraid to share the Gospel with everyone I meet? Part of the problem is probably that we don't even really KNOW what it is this that we are believing. I mean, we know the Gospel and believe it and we know some theological points, but the average Christian doesn't know the half of what the Bible contains and therefore is missing core pieces of the Truth. The more I learn here at JHBC, the more my faith is affirmed and I see how it all works together. The more I learn, the more I realize that God's word is ABSOLUTE TRUTH and the truth has the power to SAVE, to REDEEM, and to set us all FREE.