You will find that I talk about truth a lot. The following is my framework for truth, and why I think it is so important to find truth.
We need the truth, as humans. If you do not have the truth, you live a deluded life. Every lie that you believe is a step in the direction of Satan, every truth is a step towards God. An extreme example is the criminally insane; they believe an untruth (the lie that they can/should get what they want through criminal actions) to such an extent that they are certifiably insane. Knowing the truth about everything leads us to right actions, and the lack of truth leads to wrong actions.
That makes truth vital to a Christian's life!
Truth tells us about grace, love, faith, hope, God, and many other pivotal ideas. If you are uncertain about the truth of your eternal hope, will you be certain that you need to keep trusting God? If you are ignorant of the truth of God's love, will you love the way he says to? We must find the truth about our own faith as well: what is it that we believe in? What part do we play in God's story? In short,
Truth Matters! It is also hard to get.
How do we find the truth then? Where can we get it? Which teacher has it? What denomination or sect has it? Thankfully, in the vast wilderness of advertised truths, God has given us the truth in the form of scriptures. Yet, how do we find the truth in these scriptures?
There are a couple ways to read and interpret the scriptures:
- Having a teacher tell you what it means before/as you read it.
- Reading it to find out what the author was trying to say.
Having a teacher tell you what scripture means is the easiest answer. You read the Bible, and then a person tells you what it means. Or they tell you an idea, and give you the scriptural support. In both cases, a person (Wayne Grudem, John Piper, Jonathan Edwards, John McArthur, C.S. Lewis, James Vernon McGee, Chuck Swindall, a parent, a mentor, a pastor, etc.) is telling you what the Bible means. I think this system is a bad idea.
The alternative is reading the Bible with the intention of hearing the author. You read the scripture, and you find out what the author was trying to say. If he never says it, he is not trying to say it; if he says something repeatedly and clearly, he is trying to say it; if he talks about it in a certain way, he means it in that way, etc. etc. It sounds simple, just reading what the author says, and yet that means that if Paul never mentions Heaven as the place you go to when you die, then he probably doesn't think that.
This means sacrificing the group thinking, and sacrificing the safety of the herd. YOU must be responsible for the truth of what you believe, if you are figuring it out yourself.
But what if we need these teachers? What if we CAN'T find out what those obscure Apostles and Prophets meant? No, we can do this; scripture is meant for the common man. God has given us scripture in our own language, with the study resources to explore the original language too. It isn't rocket science to go to your Bible and look for what Peter, John, and the rest were trying to say. Those men were qualified, trained by Christ to teach the gospel. They were no dummies, they knew the story and the plan better than anyone. In fact, you could say that since neither God nor Christ directly wrote those books, these men own Christianity. We need to find out what they believed, it just takes time and a willingness to sacrifice what you already think. Not easy, but not complicated.
This is something we all need to grapple with, and determine: are we going to sit and listen to a teacher telling us what the Bible says, or are we going to go find out ourselves?
