Thursday, June 23, 2011

Truth Project Week One

The Truth Project this week looks at what is truth and introduces us to a new word (read that Truth Project created Latin) that the lesson calls veritology, or the "study of truth." Dr. Tackett shows us what we will be studying over the course of the Truth Project, which ranges from God to Man, Truth to Social Order and a lot in between.

There are several questions that are asked during the course of this lesson that really stuck out to me. The first question was, "What is Truth." His answer for this was from an 1828 copy of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language that defined truth as "Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be. We rely upon the truth of the scriptural prophecies."

Wow, right there in Webster's Dictionary we are told that Truth is found through reliance on the scriptural prophecies. That is a huge statement, and one that assuredly would not go over in today's touchy, feely mainstream. It looks at scripture, which might leave some people out. It even looks at Biblical scripture, which not only leaves out atheists and agnostics but also those who do not use the Bible. That means that not only are some people left out, but some people are wrong. Acknowledging that fact makes some people mad (mostly those who are left out and/or are wrong).

I am sorry, but life leaves some people out. Some of us are right, and some of us are wrong. Case in point, I am an Illinois fan that lives in Missouri. I am surrounded by Mizzou fans who are as proud of their team as I am of the Illini. We both want our teams to win when they play each other. Last year I stated proudly, as I always do, that the Illini would win the Battle of the Border. My friends argued that Missouri would win it. No matter how much faith each of us had in our position, one of us was wrong. In the end, even though we both used statistics and history to validate our claims and postulate them as facts, one of us was wrong (Sadly enough, it was I who was wrong last year).

The next question I liked was "How does man react to truth?" The Bible gives us numerous scriptures, such as 2 Timothy 4:3-4, "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."

It is becoming less and less popular to be Christian. We go off to school and are taught by a lot of the professors in the secular institutions that evolution is a fact, and only someone uneducated would believe in God. Even worse, we have those who profess to be Christian who do not teach fundamentally sound doctrine. They take parts of what Jesus said and use it out of context in order to gain followers, or to get more money into their coffers. I think of many of the evangelists that I see on television, or those who teach that God loves us just as we are and is happy with us even if we continue to sin.

The Bible warns us of these people. In fact, the Bible states that man will suppress the truth (Romans 1:18), distort the truth (Acts 20:30), reject the truth to follow evil (Romans 2:9) and even exchange the truth for a lie (Romans 1:25). This tends to be the popular choice, to live a lie even when we know the truth. There is a battle that is being fought constantly today. The Truth Project refers to it as the cosmic battle.

The cosmic battle is the ongoing fight between God and Satan, the truth versus the lie, reality versus illusion. There is a battle of worldviews that is erupting in our culture, and we need to be more than evangelists and ministers. We need to be ambassadors of the message. Think of us as the public relations department for Jesus. Are we living in a way that brings people to God or are we polarizing people because our works do not match our words? Do we follow the truth, or do we live a watered down version of the truth.

Even a half-truth is a lie, and lies are from Satan. The Bible clearly tells us this in John 8:44, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." Are we living as children of God, or does the way we live our lives indicate that we are living as children of Satan. So we need to live our lives by not lying. We need to live our lives by telling the truth. So, what is truth?

Ravi Zacharias says that the single most important question that we can ask ourselves is what is truth.  Zacharias defines it as, "That which affirms prepositionally the nature of reality as it is." R.C. Sproul defines truth as, "That which corresponds to reality as perceived by God, because God's perception of reality is never distorted." As defined early, truth is not subjective, but objective. Just because I believed that my team would win did not make it so. If you say that the sky is blue and I say that it is yellow, one of us is surely right and the other is wrong. If you say that there is no God, and I say that there is........one of us is wrong and the other right. I know that God exists, period. I can prove this fundamentally, historically, philosophically, scripturally as well as logically.
The final question that is asked in Week 1 is this, "Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?" If you do believe that it is real, can you intelligently defend your beliefs? Do you have the knowledge to defend your position and the ability to do so civilly and intelligently?

Even more importantly, if we do believe it to be true, than we would follow the truth that Christ laid out for us. So if what God tells us is the truth, why do we shy away from it? Most of us would argue that we do not, and that we follow God's commands. If that is true, does your life truly reflect that you follow God's commands? Have you allowed your faith to become watered down? Do you treat the word of God as your guide book, or do you constantly look for loop holes so that you can do as you please and feel that you get away with it? Do you listen to the authors and preachers/pastors who tell you what you want to hear and not what the scriptures truly say?

Examine your life, and ask yourself this question: Do I really believe that what I believe is really real, and do my actions reflect that what I believe is real really matters?

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