Truth III

Don: We are still looking at the question of what is truth; in particular, the truth about god. 1 John 4:1-8 and 18-21 tell us:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

…

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

We’ve talked about truth being an embodiment of love. We’ve talked about scientific and spiritual truth, about discovered vs. invented truth, about the eternal nature of truth, and about data-driven truth vs. truth driven by something else. New data constantly need to be integrated into our understanding of the world around us. This is the so-called self-correcting aspect of scientific truth.

Since the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution and the development of the scientific method, we have seen a continuous acquisition of data and a continuous integration of that data to provide new understanding of the material world. We know much more, scientifically, today than we knew 100 years ago. But do we know more about god today than we knew 100 years ago? What do we know about god that our ancestors did not? Should we know more than them? Or is the truth about god a revealed truth, a revelation, that does not change with time and is good for all ages and all cultures and all civilizations? If we know more than our ancestors, why? If we don’t, why not? What can we know about god anyway? What must or should we know?

Based on what we know, how do we validate that what we know about god is true? Historically, what was thought to be the truth was passed by word of mouth within a culture, a society, a civilization, a tribe, a people; often in the form of stories that came to constitute what would become known as the tradition of the people.

Later, writing and printing enabled these stories to be recorded in a more formal way. As a result, today we can see from the record how science and discovery have driven our understanding about god. Even as I speak, we are relying on science and technology in the forms of Skype and the Internet to enable us to assemble as a group to talk about god.

The written scriptures are considered by most to be authoritative. But even though they may share common themes, they tend to speak in a variety of voices. We have different scriptures from different cultures, different times, different places, different religions. They all seek to proclaim what they see as the truth about god.

But despite their common themes, each scripture often offers very different interpretations of the truth about god, sometimes even within the same scripture. We are like the six blind men of Hindustan whom we discussed last week, each feeling a different part of an elephant and then jumping to erroneous conclusions about the whole.

To what extent is truth based on personal revelation? Jesus told Pilate he (Jesus) is the way, the truth, and the life, and that everyone who is of the truth hears his voice. In John 5:39 he tells his audience they search the scriptures because they think that in them they have eternal life. John also talks of Jesus as the word of god, a word filled with grace and truth and that lightens every man. John 1:9:

[Jesus] was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.

The real question is whether we must validate the truth just for ourselves or for others as well. If I think I know the truth, am I morally obliged to try to impose it on others, or is it every man for himself? Is truth so immutable that when it is discovered it is self-evident? Job was proclaimed by god himself to be blameless. Yet he allowed Job to suffer great loss and tragedy, so Job sought to discover why—what was the truth about god. His friends sought to impose their understanding of god on him, but he resisted strongly and sought to explain god to himself in his own terms. In the end (Job 42:1-9) god rewarded Job for his understanding and rebuked his friends for theirs.

Then Job answered the LORD and said,
“I know that You can do all things,
And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
“Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
‘Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will ask You, and You instruct me.’
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.”

It came about after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, that the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has. “Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.” So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job.

Is truth about god important? Can it be validated? To what extent is our modern understanding of god different from the understanding our ancestors had of god? Or is truth about god, as opposed to scientific truth, not at all progressive but is instead a revelation, appropriate and valid for all times and cultures? Does truth about god need refinement as new data come in, as science does? Or is it separate from scientific data? What is it about Job’s perception of the truth that makes it right and his friends’ perception wrong? Can truth be rooted in love and embodied in a person or a personality, as John says it was embodied in Jesus? Is truth so personal and immediate that it is for oneself only, or is it something to be applied—imposed upon—all who do not have it?

Harry: We cannot validate the truth of an intangible god. I was raised a Seventh Day Adventist and my source of truth about god was therefore the bible. It helped shape who I am. But my view of scripture has changed. How else might god communicate his truth with us if not through the bible? Is the bible the only way? That would seem to make god pretty small and not very powerful. But scripture itself points repeatedly to another way: Through the heart. I John 4:8-10:

The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

 The author of John is saying basically that we don’t know god directly so can’t love him directly, but god knows us and loves us—that was demonstrated when he sent his son to us. And because of his love for us, he wants us to love one another. Jesus gave us a glimpse of god and god’s love for us. Although we cannot truly know and love god, we can know and love those whom we know god loves—each other. That, for me, is the truth. Tom’s sojourn in Africa to do god’s work is an example of god’s love put into practice. It is “walking the walk” and worth far more than the talking the religious talk. The truth of god is revealed in such instances.

Kiran: I have always thought we are supposed to study the bible then apply in daily life the lessons learnt thereby, and that in this way the truth would be gradually revealed to us. But now I understand that the whole truth is already revealed in the person of Jesus, and it is through the study of Jesus that we can come to know it. I can resonate with the beauty and truth to be found in the Old Testament heroes and in passages such as the psalms, but it is in the person of Jesus that the whole truth is to be found.

Tom: God does not regard a missionary as any different from a mother faithfully serving her family. He measures service by the amount of love one shows to others. There was no greater servant than John the Baptist. He served only six months, but he put his whole heart into serving god in that time. That’s how god measures us.

Truth is not self-evident. If it were, Lucifer would not have fallen and Adam and Eve would not have been deceived. The bible says that if you seek god with a whole heart, then you will find him. Paul said “I know in whom I believe,” as did Ellen White, the founder of our Seventh Day Adventist church. We can know the truth individually.

I have read in testimonies that we should examine our experiences to see whether god is true. I found seven instances in which my life was preserved. In one, for example, I spun out on the freeway in a storm, with my family in the car. Somehow, I did not hit anything and no-one was hurt. The lord preserves our lives. His thoughts toward us are of peace, not of evil. If we were to measure them, they are more than the sands of the sea. So from experience, I learned that god was personally interested in me. That changed my attitude.

Yet recently my friend saw a woman from a distance as she was struck and killed by a car. He soon found out the woman was his mother. So when something is personal, it is altogether different. The truth is not self-evident, as I discovered in trying to show some Baptists I know that god created the earth and the heavens in six days. It was not, as they believe, a long, drawn out creation. But I realized they need time to adjust to this truth, it is not something I can impose on them. All we can do is set a good example.

Pastor Ariel: Hebrews 11 shows that god so set things up that we cannot know him; we cannot fit him in a box. Abel died because of his faith, then the very next person, Enoch, lived because of his faith, then Abraham left his people because of his faith, then Moses stayed with his people because of faith. Paul made the brilliant point that our individual experiences of god may be totally different, but it is still the same god. Abel, Enoch, Abraham and Moses all had faith in the same god. This makes it necessary for god to reveal himself beyond our personal experience, because our personal experience can mislead us.

Job struggled with this issue when god did not reward his service. Faith is the capacity to grow as experience challenges our understanding of who god is. The great advantage of scripture is that it gives us a reference point. It shows us that god may reveal his truth in apparently contradictory ways, yet be the same god. It shows us something that transcends experience when it comes to belief in god.

God revealed himself to us through Jesus, who became what Paul (in Hebrews) calls “the anchor of the soul.” The fact that my mother dies in a crash while my friend is saved in a crash does not affect my faith in god. Job said “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.”

Tom: Love of god is the catalyst that brings us to his service. Nothing else makes any sense.

Jay: Do we have more understanding of god today than our ancestor’s did?

Don: Through science and the incorporation of new data, we have much more understanding of our world than our ancestors did, even those as recent as 100 years ago. Is the truth about god also data-driven? If so, is it mutable; or is it timeless and unchanging?

Jay: The answer seems to me to be that it is timeless and unchanging. As created creatures, we build “truths” about god based upon the limited data available to us. The “truths” tell us how god acts in various circumstances, they show cause and effect at work in one’s relationship with god. Job had to re-evaluate his dataset about god after his experience, and came to a new truth about god. All religions develop their truths and perceptions about god based upon the datasets available to them.

But beyond that, there still seems to be one timeless, immutable truth: The truth of love. It is a timeless component of god. The same understanding of love has existed over thousands of years. Christ’s is a ministry of love for one’s fellow man, not a ministry of doctrine. This seems to be the timeless, cross-cultural truth about god; even so, I think that our understanding of God’s capacity to love us has advanced and will continue to develop over time. The Old Testament shows God’s love in one way, as in the example of Job. The New Testament presents a deeper, more advanced, version of love, such as turning the other cheek to one’s enemy.

Pastor Ariel: In Romans 2:28-29 Paul says:

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.

It seems that Paul was saying something new, teaching us a new concept. In Deuteronomy 30:6… God says:

Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.

The context is to love, and god was speaking and god had already presented to them the concept of heart circumcision being essential, not necessarily outwardly but inwardly. So Paul, in Romans 2:28-9 is not reinventing the old or opposing it with the new: He is saying this truth was here all along.

John 16:12 summarizes human history as far as how god has tried to relate to us, to reveal the truth to us, and how we have responded:

I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

It is not necessarily that truth has progressed. Rather, it is that god has been accumulating human experiences, and that becomes our reference point, our data source, where the truth is not that 2+2=god but that god never gave up on Abraham or Job or Moses or the children of Israel and therefore will never give up on me no matter how badly I treat him.

This truth, this revelation, is presented consistently throughout the Old Testament and is based on recorded and accumulated historical evidence. And even then, Jesus told people versed in these truths of the Old Testament that he had many more things to tell them but they could not bear them yet. So in one sense we are accumulating information, but we all start from scratch even if we were born into the church. As a pastor I encourage people to go back to the bible because there they will find the data—the experiences of other people—that will inform them that god will not turn his back on them, will always be gentle as he was with his disciples.

Tom: Truth is truth, whether scientific or spiritual, whether arrived at through revelation or investigation. The bible says that in the Last Days, knowledge will increase. We learn things scientifically because we study them, and as we study them we find out more about them. Every good idea that has blessed mankind has come from the spirit of god. God has allowed revelations and knowledge to increase so that we could get the point where we are now, at the Last Days. Certain societies have said that if we know more we will become better people. We have everything we could want now. We are more selfish than ever. We have the capacity to destroy the whole world or to take the resources we have and make the world the best place it could be. Truth is progressive but we can all know god personally. If we want to know god, he will reveal to us who he is. It is up to us.

David: To me, ultimate truth is goodness—which I identify with god. We all see and recognize goodness in the world. (Whether we practice it is another matter.) How do we know it when we see it? Only from within, from our hearts. Do we know it only if we have read the bible? Or the Koran, or the Hindu or Buddhist scriptures? If so, then four fifths of humanity could not know goodness or god even if it/he knocked them on the head. But the historical record shows that people in every age and every society of recorded history knew goodness when they saw it, and they know it in their hearts or what Jesus called the inner light.

Since Jesus also said that he himself was the inner light and that whoever has the truth knows his voice, then it follows that nobody needs to know the name of Jesus. We just need to acknowledge that we recognize what is good—the truth of god—on the basis of what our hearts, our inner light, tell us. Job did not know Jesus. He had not read the New Testament. But he knew goodness—he knew god—and in that sense he knew Jesus; just not by name. We make too much of the name of Jesus. It is not the name that matters. It is his goodness/godness that matters. That, to me, is the truth.

Tom: The bible says there’ll be people in heaven who never knew Jesus, and it also says that those who are led by the spirit of god are children of god. If you have an opportunity to get to know Jesus then you can have a revelation, but if you don’t, he still considers you his children if you are led by his spirit.

I have a Moslem friend who prayed for me in Jesus’ name when I was in hospital. To me, he is an example of someone led by the spirit.

Robin: I use two online sources for bible study. Both have been addressing the subject of truth to such an extent I suspect god is giving me the strength to deal with my brief but sharp and painful recent discourse with atheists.

It is foolish to think we can ever know the truth. When Job expressed his anguish and dismay and perplexity to god about the suffering he was experiencing despite being a dutiful servant, god responded as follows (Job 40:8-9):

“Will you really annul My judgment?
Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?
“Or do you have an arm like God,
And can you thunder with a voice like His?

Job 41:11-12:

“Who has given to Me that I should repay him?
Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine.

“I will not keep silence concerning his limbs,
Or his mighty strength, or his orderly frame.

Job 42:3-8:

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
‘Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will ask You, and You instruct me.’
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.”

In the next 4 verses Job rebuked his friends. Job recognized that his understanding was nothing compared to God’s. So we learn truth bit by bit.

2 Timothy 2:15-17 tells us how to discern truth:

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene….

2 Timothy 2:24-25 points out that we sometimes get into arguments and lose our tempers, but we should not:

The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,

2 Timothy 3:1-7:

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

2 Timothy 3:14-17:

 You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

 1 John 4:7-13:

 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.

Chris: To me, the one consistent truth in scripture is the love of god, and all other truths are built upon it. So if a supposed truth does not line up with God’s love then it cannot be truth. We get into trouble and sectarian strife because our doctrinal truths are not based on God’s love. If a belief does not drive me to show my love of god through loving my fellow man then it is not a true belief. The love of god is the test of truth.

Pastor Ariel: As Chris said, the truth should not be of the sort that leads to violence between believers of different faiths. It should be a transformative element in our individual lives.

Kiran: So if one can see that someone genuinely loves others, then one may validly assert that that person has the truth? Such loving people have been around since the creation.

Don: As we noted last week, one principle of truth is that it is true for all times. A second principle is that truth can only be revealed or discovered; it cannot be invented. The world is round, period, and the old belief that it was flat was never true. Truth is immutable.

Yet as we accumulate data, we must try to accommodate that data within the truth, otherwise data can be corrosive of people’s understanding of truth. But our religions lack a mechanism for reaching out to determine how new scientific data can be incorporated together with our religious understanding of immutable truth.

Science improves itself by constantly updating itself to take account of new data and new theories. We applaud that. But religion makes no attempt to update itself despite the changing times and human perception. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul explicitly warned against relying on ancient knowledge and prophecy because all knowledge and prophecy will pass away and only truth would remain. Yet our religions cling to old scriptural knowledge and prophecy because we are afraid to change.

We need to think about how we can challenge the old while being not just non-threatening but even enriching to spiritual life.

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