Last week’s release of the “Twitter Files” is only the latest exposure of the countless lies that darken out world. Similar revelations have shaken our confidence in media, government, education, and medicine. Each individual falsehood undermines our confidence in the next claim that we hear. It is confusing and troubling. Many have come to doubt that we can know the truth at all.
That is a tragedy on two fronts—the personal, and the divine. Any loss of confidence in the words we hear from other people makes meaningful relationships impossible. Lies isolate us and make us feel totally alone in a disorientating vortex of competing claims.
Worse, when we give up hope in the existence of truth at all, we can have no relationship with Jesus who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Faith in God is more than a vague positive feeling. We trust in Jesus only to the extent that we have confidence in the Truth that He speaks.
God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not give false testimony,” boomed forth from Mt. Sinai to battle both evils. What should you do in a world permeated by lies? God says: Don’t tell any, yourself! Don’t tell them for financial gain. Don’t tell them to preserve your reputation. Don’t tell them to go along with the crowd. Absolutely refuse to contribute even one more lie to the cacophony.
Your personal resolve to speak only truth will have two effects on your own well-being. First, it will give you practical training in how to discern between truth and lies. As you train your mouth to speak truth, your mind will grow more and more discerning. Second, by being a personal purveyor of the truth, you daily prove to yourself that truth does, indeed, exist. This counters the crippling, nihilistic notion that there is no such thing as truth.
Both the certainty that truth exists, and your own ability to discern it, will strengthen your faith in others and in God. Remembering your own personal efforts to speak the truth, you can more easily believe that your spouse, child, friend, or acquaintance is desiring and capable of speaking truth to you. And your ability to discern falsehood will also chase away unfounded doubts.
As you apply these lessons to God, you will grow in the added conviction that He is perfect both in willing to tell you the truth, and in His ability to do so. Banish the thought that Truth does not exist! Also banish the thought that you would have no way of knowing it, even if it did!
Even though God is so utterly transcendent that we could never rise to know Him, He is also all-powerful and fully capable of coming down to us. That is what Christmas is all about. When the transcendent and unapproachable God was born in Bethlehem, He brought the Truth with Him. We have it in His Holy Word.
The same Moses whom God used to bring us the Ten Commandments also brought God’s promise: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you [Moses] from among their brothers. And I will put my words in His [Jesus’] mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command Him.” (Deuteronomy 18:18).
This promise was fulfilled when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
In Christ God has chased away every lie and restored our ability to know the truth. Merry Christmas!
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