|
About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman
The
Battle
Over Truth It was not until the
1960's, when in western Israel, archaeologists discovered positive proof
of the existence of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate who interrogated
Jesus prior to His execution (John 18:28 - 40).
After hearing Jesus say that those on the side of truth listen to
Him because He is truth, Pilate appeared frustrated and agitated, so he
asked the age-old question: "What is truth?" We
don't know if Pilate just muttered "what is truth" under his
breath in frustration or if he honestly enquired of Jesus what is truth.
In Pilate's back-stabbing political world, truth was hard to come
by. Whatever motivated
Pilate's question, what is truth has been battled over among
philosophers, theologians, and the general public since creation, where
the battle began.
The confusion over truth
entered humanity the moment Adam disobeyed God.
To justify himself before God Adam shifted the blame for his sin
away from himself and onto both God and Eve.
Genesis 3:12 reads: "The woman you put
here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree."
The words "the
woman (note, not my wife) you put here" shifts the blame from Adam
to God. If God had not
created "the woman" all would be fine.
The words "she gave me" shifts the blame from Adam to
Eve. It was her fault.
Adam did speak the truth. God
did create the woman and she did offer him the fruit.
Adam, however, used the truth in an untruthful, self-protecting
way. He, not Eve nor God,
was responsible for his sin. Adam's
lack of truthfulness is where the distorting of truth entered the human
condition. Fast-forwarding to
today, truth is seen as being relative throughout our western-world's
moral conscience. That means
truth varies from person to person, from place to place, and from era to
era. There is no absolute,
constant, universal truth that all must embrace, and that is
problematic. Due to our
presupposition that there is no absolute truth, everyone is an inventor
of truth. Our various
versions of truth that are rapidly swirling around our high-tech world
have created confusion. Not
knowing what really is true, we throw up our hands in bewilderment.
Like Pilate we ask: "What is truth."
We thus choose to believe whatever captivates our attention to be
true, or as 2 Timothy 4:3 puts it, "whatever our itching ears
desire to hear." The sad result of our
present cultural confusion over truth is that people are believing the
latest lie to be true, which reminds me of 2 Thessalonians 2:9 through
12. "The coming of the
lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He
will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that
serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are
perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be
saved. For this reason God
sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so
that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have
delighted in wickedness." I can't be sure that
Paul was writing about our day, but it does seem to apply.
Paul predicted a day when God, not Satan, would send a powerful
delusion to those who persist in rejecting truth.
Satan would be the tool in God's hand that causes these
truth-rejecters to believe "the lie," whatever "the
lie" (not a lie) is. As Christians we cannot
afford to be distracted from our mission to make disciples of Jesus and
get caught up in the present
satanic-influenced delusional battle over what is truth that is
consuming our high-tech universe. We
must rise above the fight, simply stand firm as a beacon of God's truth, as God
causes all cultures to crumble in confusion.
It's His battle, a battle that will end with the destruction of
all nations, as seen in Revelation, chapter 18.
|