As I have written elsewhere, truth has always been important to me. I’ve told you before that as a young person, I didn’t believe in God but I did believe in and was searching for truth. It’s still the same for me. So it grieves me to hear of those today who seem to have surrendered the field to falsehood and now believe that truth is only to be found in the Bible, all other truth is virtually unknowable and unfindable.

I don’t agree. We believe in the love of God, many of us. But we also believe in loving our neighbor, that it can and should be done. That it exists. We believe that God is light. But we also believe that we are supposed to be, are commissioned to be, “the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14) In exactly the same way, we are told to “speak the truth in love.” Christians should be some of the foremost advocates of truth, in all forms.

Truth is part of the fundamental nature of God, along with light and love. Jesus said in one of His most famous sayings, “I am …the truth…” He told Pilate “Every one who is of the truth hears My voice.” (John 18:37) So when my friends (some of whom may be reading this) tell me that there’s no more truth today, it can’t be discerned or found, that things are so bad that we just have no way anymore to know what the truth is outside of the Bible, it greatly grieves me and I just don’t agree.

To me that’s a surrender to the spirit of the times we live in. We should not only be proponents of love, the Lord’s love and our own, but we should also be proponents of the truth. We don’t only believe in a personal gospel, we believe in a social gospel as well. Likewise we don’t only believe in heavenly truth but in truth as it is found and known in this world we live in. Jesus said the Holy Spirit “will lead you into all truth.”  (John 16:13)

So many people nowadays are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore. So they pipe up and spout off but then what do they really say? We are supposed to “speak the truth in Christ and lie not”. (I Tim. 2:7) But Solomon said, “He that answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame unto him.” (Proverbs 18:13) That’s what so many do, just vent their emotions without really knowing, finding and speaking the truth. So they just make another contribution to the spirit of confusion and emotions around us. Wikipedia even has an article on “Post Truth Politics”, it pretty well sums up a lot of things on this subject.

I just don’t see how we can, in good conscience, surrender to the confounding confusion that is strong upon our societies in these times. “Fake news”. “The main stream media”. “Alternative news”. It’s like we were shopping for shoes or a car. Well, how about this? You don’t believe there is any truth left to be found within the news media we have today? It’s all been utterly stripped of truth, accuracy and genuineness? How about then the judicial systems of at least some nations?

In a courtroom, there’s a judge and sometimes a jury. Ascertaining truth is fundamental to a righteous judgment in almost every court of law that’s functioning properly. Jesus even said to people of His day, “Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” (john 7:24) He said, “Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad.” (Luke 8:17)

How can those things be true if there’s no longer any possibility of finding and knowing the truth? How can Christians surrender such a huge fundamental element of our most essential need, truth itself? So I personally believe that Christians should be some of the foremost champions of un-spun, un-factional truth. We know we should be champions of love, of humility, of grace. But should we surrender to the forces that tell us there’s now no way to really know the truth about the daily affairs of our lives? It’s a surrender and capitulation of the worst kind, it seems to me.

So if you read some story that’s outlandish and sensational, what should you do? Just shrug your shoulders and cave in to confusion and double mindedness? Or if perhaps you read something in what is called “the main stream media” that smacks of being the party line of some major agenda, political or otherwise, what should you do?

“Well, Mark, things are so complex now. I don’t have time to really find out the facts. Mark, I’m confused. So I just want to retreat to my little life, my little comfort zone and not think about things anymore or really bother to find out what is true or false.”

I suggest that that’s not a very wise or safe way to conduct your life, even if it seems to be the easiest way to do things. As a Christian, we know we need to love, both God and our fellow human being. But also, I feel, we need to militantly guard the borders of the truth we know and can know, to fight to keep ahead of the encroaching darkness and demonic confusion that’s one of the greatest plagues of our times.

Don’t surrender the truth. Don’t lower the flag of truth over your castle, any more than you’d lower the flag of love or light or faith. “God is not the author of confusion”  (I Corinthians 14:33) but of light, love and knowledge. And truth. As for me and my house, we’re going to continue to believe in the truth, that it’s knowable, findable, sharable and essential, both God’s truth and the truth in the affairs of this life we live. Don’t surrender it.