Sorry been a way for a while, things are really hectic on campus..tomorrow’s the craziest day and then it starts to settle in a little bit.
Been thinking about truth in the context of a world that is completely built on relationships. God is relationship—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We live and are formed in relationships with family. Our body is a relationship of organs and synapses and muscles. Those are in turn a relationship of things even smaller than that: cells, that are made up of even further relationships. It’s all about relationships. That’s part of what it means to be made in God’s image.
So when sin enters the picture, every single relationship breaks down: with God, with one another, with the earth around us, and even and especially our internal relationships: at some point my body will stop relating as it was meant to and I will die.
What truth does is it points us back to right relationships. Truth about the weather helps me to relate to the weather appropriately. Truth spoken in math class attempted to help me relate rightly to numbers (alas, I was worthless after Algebra 2). Having a truth-full relationship with friends, my wife, my kids enables those relationships to be restored, to grow in healthy ways. The truth about God helps restore me into right relationship with God.
Truth spoken in love is shorthand for the bigger project of God: relationships restored to their right, healthy place.
This is why it is important that Christians not cave into the current post-modern malaise of absolute relativity coupled with a deep ambivalence (or outright agnosticism) about truth. We cannot know all Truth fully on this side of heaven. But truth can be known, engaged with, understood, and appropriately applied to real-life situations that brings the fruit of restored relationships.
There is a deep humility that can be coupled with a passion for knowing and speaking truth. Sometimes “truth people” are arrogant and self-righteous. But that is not a necessary condition. If we understand how desperate our plight and how much we need truth spoken in love to restore relationships to their right place, we can pursue truth and speak it in ways that are gracious, bold, winsome, and loving.
At least, I hope I can do that.
1 comment:
Your site is interesting. Hi, my name is Mark in Denver. i want to become a "soldier of truth" (what Gandhi called Socrates). i have already come a long way but am looking to put together a group for support. my experience has been that real truth-seeking, that is, actually seeking larger and deeper truths as opposed to just self-interested probing to confirm preconceived notions or to make more money or to seek comfort, is rare. indeed, almost nonexistent. Morally speaking, spiritually speaking, if one is not seeking truth, one are fully content with illusion and delusion.
i would probably write different people weekly to seek support and challenge me, it could be email correspondence or something more if desired. i am 59. i could offer others support if desired but mostly want to put together like minded, sincere seekers of truth. is this something you might be interested in? any leads would be appreciated.
thank you for your consideration, Mark Hanawalt communitytruth@yahoo.com
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