Thought for Today

1 Kings 17:24 Then the woman said to Elijah, "Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is the truth."  

Psalm 25:5 Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.  

John 8:31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  

“. . . it is important that one thing be quite clear to us and that we let this be said to us by the New Testament: religion essentially comes down to one thing, namely, being true. Truth is the highest value not only in science but even more – and much more urgently – in the religion on which we claim to base our lives.” (I Want to Live These Days with You, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pg. 206.)

Hopefully, everyone reading this is conversant with Pontus Pilot’s  question, "John 18:38 What is truth?" Some of us remember the movie A Few Good Men and Jack Nicholson’s character’s assertion, “Truth! You can’t handle the truth!”

This morning, as I read Bonhoeffer’s words about truth, I immediately thought of those words from our Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . “ Do we? Do we hold the “truths self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?”

I know that we live in the age of “separation of church and state.” Maybe it is politically incorrect for me to even quote Bonhoeffer and Jefferson in the same document, much less to  also include quotes from my Christian Bible. But, I have never been very good at political correctness.

First, I disagree with Nicholson’s character’s assertion. There are many truths I can and do handle . . . often quite well. As an engineer, I was inundated with the truths of mathematics at numerous levels. I know the truth that 2+2=4 every time! If I could remember any of the calculus derivatives or integrals I learned long ago, I could handle their truths. I studied the physical sciences and remember the truths I learned in them all. I also remember that some of what I learned were laws, some were theorems and some were hypotheses. I still remember the truth of the difference between laws, theorems and hypotheses.

Like Bonhoeffer and Jefferson, I am also a Christian. I fully understand that there are truths beyond mathematics and science. I will admit that at times I do approach the Bible in the same manner I approached all of those math and science textbooks I studied in my youth. When I do, I always remind myself that different textbooks provide answers to different questions. If I looked in a physics textbook for an answer to a question in biology, my quest would go unfulfilled. If I searched a geology textbook for an answer to a question in quantum mechanics, I would find no answer.

For me, textbooks on mathematics and science deal with questions about ‘how?’ Admittedly, as a mechanical engineer, I think of such textbooks as dealing with the mechanics of the world about me.

As a Christian, I read my Bible for answers to the questions of ‘who?’ and ‘why?’ It is only in the Bible that I find answers to those most important questions, the basic truths of life and of Creation. The first verse in Genesis offers the truth about who, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth . . .” The truths about which Jefferson and Bonhoeffer wrote are the truths I find in my Bible.

Can I handle the truths I find in the Bible? I’m not perfect yet; I’m still working on it. I do find that for me, the truth is that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life.” For me, the truth is that I come “to the Father . . . through” Jesus. That is my truth. Because of that truth for me, I do “hold these truths to be self- that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” What is your truth?

Research your truth, read the Bible, trust God,

Pastor Ray