The Truth, Nothing But the Truth.......

[HKHaugan]

The Truth, Nothing but the Truth…….

 One of the great memories of my life was when my parents would take me to Maine in the Summer to fish.  It was not only the place but the excitement, the anticipation of the trip, taking the trip and arriving at the lake, the beautiful mountains, forests and just being in the out-of-doors.  A local railroad had a train stop at a clearing by the lake, where we were picked up by the cabin owner in his boat and dropped off at the cabin which was about five miles down the lake.  No electricity, running water or bathroom.  Just kerosene lamps, an outdoor water pump, a wood stove and a buggy outhouse.  While my father got the fishing equipment read, my mother dealt with the food.  My job was to row out into a nearby cove in the early morning and catch bait for the daily fishing along the lake shore.  It was an all-day, packed-lunch and expected-catch experience. We ate fish for breakfast and dinner cooked on a wood stove with the smell of bacon hovering around us.  The lakes we went to, the occasional storms soaking us to the bone but feeling great, the sound of the oars sloshing the water, the eagles swooping and the loons crying in the night; all of it wonderful. The treks through the woods, spotting bear, deer, moose and wildlife of all kinds with the plain sounds of nature both in the day and the night, are still very much a part of me. 

 Reminiscence stays with us, but things change.  The people who owned the cabins were older, some died, and the cabins were either rebuilt or done away with.  It was now bordered by a paved highway and the train doesn’t go there anymore.  Civilization interrupted my romance with what once was.  But it was the ‘once-was,’ a lasting quality, that I wanted for my teen age boys to see, feel and embrace in their growing years hoping they would appreciate the value it brought me.  When they were older we did a canoe trip there and camped on the lake’s islands.  They tell me it did something for them.  Thank you, Lord.  I’ve revisited those places at later times and though they look the same, the way I now perceive them is different.  Their value lasting.

 What does all this have to do with truth?  It’s this. What was a pleasant distant memory is not remembered in complete detail with all that existed at that time.  What I felt about it did remain but has taken a different shape from the reality it once was.  That too is lost in a misty past.  Memory is neither accurate nor objective.  It is shaded by the emotional values I gave it. 

 What really was the experience of the moment?  It was the subjective way I valued it; the truth as I chose to believe it.  Subjective memory and objective reality parted company the moment I left that experience.  When I got back home, the fish I caught were bigger, the forests were larger, the mountains were taller, the animals were wilder and everything was magnificent because it is what I experienced.  Snapped lines, losing a fish, mosquitoes, black flies, ice cold lake baths, cuts and skinned knees, unhappy moments denied, my filtered ‘truth’ was more important than the reality of what was taking place around me.  

 This is where the problem of truth without God is finally fixed.  For the secular mind, truth is that which is in accordance with goals shaded by self-defined satisfaction. Truth is what I wanted it to be.  The assumption is that what we perceive as fact or reality is how we arrive at a conclusion.  However, the problem is that what we perceive is filtered through an imperfect receptor. The imperfection is sin.  If we reach into our personal past, what we remember is what sin embellishes with what we wanted it to be or not be like.  Sin is self-justifying.  It is not the eyes with which we see the physical world but the eyes of our sinful heart, the attitudes then constructed, that sift every moment and govern our inner vision.  Sin rationalizes experience. This is when we realize that memory many times is what the pain and pleasure of any event dictated, judged, desired it to be, or even denied its existence.  So, to what do we turn to arrive at a basis for thought, analysis and response?

 Ultimately, the secular mind and heart, the mind and heart without God, sense and respond subjectively, that is, self alone.  It processes life not in terms of what is real but through self-protecting self-elevating attitudes.  Belief without God is subjective and imperfect.  How many times have we not observed TV shows that feature court room scenes in which facts have been shown not to be what they seem?  I’m talking about the reality of witnesses having a bias, an emotional reaction, faulty vision, hidden agenda, or their own conclusions shading their testimony.  I know in my own experience I have an inaccurate recollection and subjective view of my past. What the secular mind, the mind centered on self and self-analysis does, is not really truth or true.  It is whatever the present external social pressures demand for a response.  There is nothing there but reacting safely to whatever is necessary to survive or impress, at any given moment, conforming to an ever-changing culture.

 If all of us operate from a fractured perception, a faulty subjectivity, is it not logical we need a faultless external source, the values of which are perfect, permanent and foundational?   The secular world has a false god called change.  So, change is truth.  Human society, aka the world, is in constant movement regardless of the fact that a cohesive universe is its constant container.

 The world’s truth has its function.  An individual adapts to whatever works at any given moment.  Values are derived from whatever works.  There is no objective truth only momentary function that protects and promotes self-indulgent thinking and behavior.  Goals like love, kindness, happiness, peace and so on, are focused on what is best for me at any moment of my existence.  Truth is neither personal nor permanent. The world is a god.  Society in motion is a god.  So, the task of religion is faith in cultural conformity.  Behavior is whatever is emotionally satisfying and mutually acceptable. Relationships are fluid, their values self-defined.  Objective morality is immoral and subjective morality is moral. 

 It is necessary to note that the above is totally devoid of God and derived completely in the midst of human imperfection.  World truth is not only change, it is a process that uses humanity’s law, accumulated knowledge, scientific awareness and even religion as means to arrive at what is believed to bring us to ‘the truth.’  Subjective belief again, found in a less than perfect human process.  Institutional truth is no truth unless it is perfect.  There is no such thing as imperfect truth which, by definition, is not true.

 It means we need an external truth, a revealed truth from outside humanity’s flawed boundaries.  The only possible source is spiritual revelation.  By this I look outside of religion which only attempts to conclude by demanding obedience to those who are willing to submit to a human idea about the spiritual.  I’m talking about looking and taking on a perfect personal, relational revelation revealed in human form and human terms that is consistent for everyone everywhere for all time.  Namely, Jesus Christ.  He is spiritual, personal and relational, the exact image of God who alone can fulfill those needs in us, the broken imperfect images of God.  Ditch process, take up belief in Jesus.  He is the perfect spiritual, personal and relational experience.  Everything has a spiritual base.

 Human beings are made to function from belief to trust to faith. That living function is built into every human being.  But its center, its critical mass, is spiritual.  Truth is not process.  Truth is a permanent spiritual reality found in the Person of Jesus.  He is a living loving Person who directs our spiritual traffic through His Word, the Bible, which carries the timeless lifestyle of eternal truth in its words.  They are not subject to change.  They have neither fault nor compromise attached.  Truth, which is the character of Jesus, gives us a permanent stability and standard by which we sort out the difference between what is good and what is evil.  Eternal truth is alive as we relationally function the way Jesus did.  Truth is the Word of God being lived out day by day by day, the Holy Spirit actively moving in our heart by the faith we give it.   Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever…….so help me God.