Truth; what is truth? Perhaps more importantly, why should we care? Wouldn’t it be easier if we all just went our own way doing whatever seemed best to us? Wouldn’t life be more fun and enjoyable without the pesky notion of truth getting in the way and demanding a response from us? But then again, most of us live as this is the case. We hide the truth because uncovered it convicts us.
We distort it because otherwise it is too piercing and painful. Worse still, we know it, acknowledge it, but have the audacity to ignore it. The truth is we don’t want to live by the truth because we’d rather believe a lie.
The truth is God’s character is above reproach. His greatest desire is to love each one of us and to experience an incredibly deep relationship with us. He never seeks our harm, only our good. He is not the source of evil, but only love. These are truths we want to be believe, but the enormity of them overwhelms us. We don’t mind these truths, but they can seem too fantastical. So we give them lip service, content with using them as platitudes or words of comfort to others, but we never internalize them.
Then there is the uncomfortable truth: God sent His Son Jesus to prove His character to us once and for all. Jesus lived the same kind of life we do. He felt pain, temptation, and loss. He was beaten and betrayed. But He never stopped reaching out to us. He never stopped loving us. The whole point of Him coming was to say, “No matter what else you might hear, no matter what you even may believe, I love you and want you with Me.” That’s the thing about truth; you don’t have to believe it for it to still be true.
And of course the other uncomfortable truth is that Jesus said if we love Him, we will keep His commands (John 14:15). He said there were only two things we really had to do: Love God with all of you heart, mind, and strength, and love every other person in the world in the exact same way (Luke 10:25-28). Love like that necessities that we feed the hungry, get clean water to those who don’t have it, care for the sick, clothe the poor, take in the homeless, and pursue justice for those in peril (Matthew 25:31-46). Those aren’t just good ideas, they are proof that we love as Jesus does.
The truth is too many people profess a belief and faith in Jesus but reject the very truth of who He is. It’s easy to pray a prayer, attend church, get baptized, and even do some good works of service. It’s another thing entirely to let Him in. When we internalize the truth of God’s character it changes everything that we do. It revolutionizes who we are. But that’s more than most of us want because the truth is actually hard. The truth can hurt. But without the pain, you can never comprehend the love. Jesus loves you and only asks that you love Him back. That’s it. And that’s the truth.