What is truth?

A dark winter’s day gives an excuse to light the stub of a Christmas candle, which flickers beside me as I write. Artificial light brings cheer and a cosy feeling: lighting a fire adds warmth. Makes me want to snuggle down with a good book and get lost in a story.

 

Nothing wrong with that. But.

When I am ‘home’ with Mom in southern California, even in November or March, the sun is up by 6 and so am I, eager to embrace all that the day offers. There’s something about natural light, the real thing, that inspires and encourages activity. There’s a clarity; there’s an energy.

I’ve been reading a lot about ‘fake news’, a label which, when bandied about by politicians we want to trust, eventually undermines our confidence and causes us to question the truth of any news story. There were an inordinate number of shenanigans during the last presidential election in the USA, many of them originating in a foreign country, and most of them aimed at disseminating fake news while calling into question things that were true. The electorate was confused; the candidates were confused:  What news contained the truth?

Pilate looked at Jesus, the light of the world, and asked pitifully, ‘What is truth?’ 

A cry that echoes down the centuries and reverberates loudly in the 21^st century. What is truth? He is alive and well and living in his followers. Time to let the light shine, because the darkness is certainly deep.

Fake news ... or Good?

Fake news ... or Good?

The white-gowned ‘doctors’ probed and cut and slit open the wide-almond-eyed cadaver as an inept cameraman filmed the autopsy. The autopsy of an alien invader, filmed in Roswell in 1947, the film makers claimed. Hmm.

‘God told me we should get married,’ the woman told our bachelor friend at church one day. Our friend blanched and blurted out, ‘Well, he didn’t tell me!’

Fake news, or good? Jesus spoke to the Father daily, and encouraged his followers to do the same. But our hearing can be a bit like a game of Chinese whispers. We hear something, perhaps a distortion of the truth, because we are hearing only with one of our senses and not corroborating it through engaging another sense. We hear in prayer, perhaps, but fail to corroborate it through Scripture or through the wise words of praying friends. 

God doesn’t want us to hear ‘Chinese whispers’ from him. He spoke loud and clear in Jesus, and he still speaks through his Spirit in us, but our hearing is imperfect, distorted by our own experiences, our own desires, our own understanding. 

‘Delight yourself in the Lord,’ Scripture advises, and don’t rely on your own understanding. God’s Word to us is Good News, and his Name is Jesus. May I be careful every day to pass on the Good News, by living out his precepts and endeavouring to follow in his steps, and by speaking out his words when they bless and encourage others. But may I be circumspect, too, and never pass on a version of the truth, imperfectly heard as if through a game of Chinese whispers.