The Erosion of Trust and Truth
Today we consider yet another signal Christians must shine out into this dark world: Truth. The world needs Truth!
Truth is a much more interesting topic today than perhaps 30 years ago because truth is rooted in trust, and trust has completely eroded in our culture.
Years ago, if your doctor told you something, it was true. You didn’t research mRNA vaccinations online or worry about giving your child autism. When the polio vaccine came out, parents lined their kids up to get the shots.
Years ago, if the government told you something, it was true. (Except for Lee Harvey Oswald working alone. Over 60 percent of Americans have always doubted that.) Now, Republicans don’t trust Democrats and Democrats don’t trust Republicans. Finding the truth in matters pertaining to the national budget or our aid to Ukraine or how to fight inflation are based completely on team affiliation, not on absolute belief in any facts. Everyone comes with their own “facts,” and their “facts” all contradict each other.
Years ago, if your church told you something, it was true. Most people trusted their pastors and what they taught, and parents passed it on to their children. Even people who didn’t go to church regularly still believed in God and in the morals and values of a mostly-Christian nation. Not so anymore. People don’t trust their churches or their pastors, but seek out their own way with the help of Google.
As trust in these institutions has diminished, so has belief that what they are saying is true. The result is a proliferation of differing “truths.”
It’s interesting that this erosion of trust has matched up with the expansion of media and the internet – our access to all sorts of “new truths.” And it matches up with the erosion of Christian beliefs and values .(Any surprises there?) You can watch a news station you trust while another news station gives an opposing story line to a different audience of people who trust it more than what you’re watching. You can read all about a health diagnosis and treatment options for your symptoms that contradict what your doctor has told you. On the internet you can find information about any topic and make it support your beliefs.
Rather than making us more informed, all this conflicting information and these different answers have driven us apart. We stopped trusting the opinions of “experts” because we realized the “experts” often don’t agree with one another. And so each person holds to their own “Truth” based on who they are willing to trust. However, few of our truths overlap because who we trust is so diverse. It’s confusing, and it has led people far from one another and from God.
Failure to Trust – The Core of Human Sinfulness
Failure to trust the source of truth is not new to the 21st century. Our human nature causes us to challenge what others say. We are often skeptical. We often want to find our own source of truth.
The first community in the Bible consisted of Adam, Eve and God. God told Adam not to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but the serpent twisted this when he spoke to Eve.
Genesis 3:1-5 – 1Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” 4“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
At this moment, Eve had to decide whom she trusted. Did she trust what Adam had told her God said? Or did she trust the serpent? Placing her trust determined what she thought was true.
Unfortunately, we know how the story goes. Eve chose the “truth” that sounded more appealing – that she could be like God. Her choice led to the broken world we all inherited. Does that not sound familiar? People today are chasing whatever truth satisfies their itching ears. Even people who have been raised in the church are running to find different truths that are convenient and comfortable for them. I don’t want this message to become political, but many of the issues God laid out for us have become political.
People today are chasing whatever truth satisfies their itching ears.
Marriage and gender, established by God in Genesis 1 and 2 have, in the world’s eyes, become open for debate and interpretation. People have shifted the matter of their own life’s purpose to suit themselves. Even Christians have stopped focusing on a life that glorifies God. Instead, they live for their own happiness and joy (however they happen to define “joy”). As they have shifted the truth of why they exist, many find their own happiness more fleeting than ever.
We could sit and talk about this issue for hours. It is becoming the common problem of our time: Truth is being distorted. Instead, let’s talk about where we need to focus our attention if we want to be people grounded in truth.
Where Can We Find a Trusted Source of Truth?
God is the Source of Absolute, Unfailing Truth.
Everything but truth, no matter how solid it feels, may fail you. Nothing in all creation is as trustworthy as God. He created the world. He established the laws that govern our world and universe. He set the world into motion in ways that are perfect. If errors or deviations from the physical laws He established occur, the whole thing falls apart.
Science can describe it, but God defined it. God’s ways will never change. He is trustworthy, faithful, and true, and so everything that comes from Him is reliable and trustworthy.
God gives us two things as the basis of His truth: His Word and His Son.
God’s Word
Psalm 119:160 – The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.
John 17:17 – Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
The recorded Word of God is perfect and without error. It teaches us all truth that leads to salvation and holiness.
I must point out some caveats regarding God’s Word because some portions sometimes get twisted by well-meaning Christians who are trying to prove their point.
First, some people think the answer to EVERY question can be found in the Bible. It cannot. The Bible is perfectly true, but it is not exhaustive. It doesn’t tell you who you should marry, but it does give you helpful guidelines like telling you not to marry an unbeliever. In fact, many of the questions people ask are not expressly answered in the Bible, so we use it to help gain as much truth as we can, and then we move on from there.
Second, we have to be careful about saying something is true because it’s in the Bible. The words that are written are true, but we have to interpret God’s Word, and this sometimes leads to error. No matter how faithful we try to be, we can misinterpret the Bible. Here’s an example. Roughly half of all Christians sprinkle babies for baptism. As Baptists, we disagree with this. Both groups are are looking at exactly the same TRUE words of God, but we come to differing interpretations of how we are to do baptism.
We must have humility when we talk with others about what we see in the Bible. We must recognize that our conclusions may not be true. We can’t just say “It’s in the Bible, so it’s true.” I once had someone quote to me the words of Job’s silly friends as being the truth of God for their life. I thought, “Clearly you didn’t read the rest of the book.” (At the end, God tells Job’s friends how wrong they were!)
God gave us His Word, which is fully true. We have to carefully work to understand the truth that God is communicating through it – no more and no less.
God’s Son
You may remember from last week that John chapter 1 tells us that when God sent His Son, Jesus, He came “full of grace and truth.” Then, in Jesus’s ministry, He often refers to the truth He brings from God.
John 14:6 – Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
John 8:31-32 – 31So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Jesus is the embodied Truth of God. People can twist the words of God to suit their desires, but it’s harder to twist what Jesus did, how He lived, and how He taught. When you want to know the truth about something, look at Jesus first. He lives out perfectly the truth we are all searching for.
So How Do We Live in God’s Truth?
Rightly handle the Word of Truth
2 Timothy 2:15 – Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
Will we ever know we are perfect in how we handle scripture? Probably not. There will always be Christians who hold the Word of God as truth and try to follow it but come to differing interpretations. However, that doesn’t stop us from trying. So we study, and we humbly listen to the Word, to the understanding of faithful Christians, and to what the Spirit speaks to us. Within that community, we seek to know God’s truth as clearly as we can.
Put on the Belt of Truth
Ephesians 6:14 – Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth. . . .
Truth is the belt that holds our whole armor of God together. Without truth, everything falls apart. But also notice, it is not the “club” of truth, so let’s not beat people up with God’s truth. Instead, follow this next verse.
Speak the Truth in Love
Ephesians 4:15 – Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.
I want to spend a bit of extra time on this point I think is the main message of truth we must demonstrate to the world.
Probably none of you disagree with me that God is the source of perfect truth. However, the world does disagree with that. They don’t trust God, and they don’t trust us. Our secular culture has come to a version of truth that is completely different from what God established.
Here’s the conflict
We believe in one set of facts and truth because of the One we trust, but the world believes in a contrary set of “facts” based on their trust in themselves. The situation reminds me of Romans 1:25 – They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.
Now we live in this world surrounded by people who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie! And we have to figure out how to live among them even while we have a totally different version of truth. That’s tough! Sometimes it seems like when we say “up” they think we mean “down.” It’s that backward!
So how do we interact with these people? More than that, how do we try to help them see the truth? We neither beat them up with the “club of truth” nor concede to their truth and keep quiet about the truth of God. Everything we do must flow out of a love for people and our desire for them to know the truth and be transformed into who God wants them to be. This is where the consistent phrase “grace and truth” has to come into use.
Remember how Jesus came, “full of grace and truth”? When we interact with people who see the world completely differently than we do, we need the truth and the grace to be balanced.
Grace says God loves us and gave His Son to die for us. It says we can be forgiven. We can experience God’s love and salvation even though our lives are a mess.
Truth says God has given us a standard to live by. How the world lives or how culture changes over time doesn’t move God’s standard.
This is a challenging line to walk; but, fortunately, we are given help as we choose our steps.
John 16:13 – But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
Worship in Spirit and Truth
John 4:24 – God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
When we worship God, we aren’t to just sing songs to an image of God we conjure up for ourselves. That is idol worship, and too many people have done that through the millennia of time. We can’t just turn God into an image we find safe or appealing and then worship that version. Instead, our worship is to the TRUE God as described in the Bible. That’s why our worship is rooted first in our willingness to rightly handle the Word of Truth, searching to learn who God truly is and then giving Him glory for His goodness and truth.
Conclusion
The people of this world are running around looking for a foundational truth on which to base their lives, and there is no shortage of available answers as to where they should place their allegiance and trust. Unfortunately, all these answers are just idols, and they all come up short.
As Christians, we know the only place absolute truth can be found. We have the only solid rock people can build their lives on. Our job is, first, to know the truth by rightly handling the Word of God and, second, to put on the Belt of Truth, thereby living our lives according to the truth.
When we come to a place of conflict where our truth and that of our friend (or child or neighbor or coworker) don’t match up, we must lovingly and graciously speak God’s truth to them. We can’t come across as angry or judgmental, but we must show them how our very foundations are different and that we want God’s best for them even if they don’t want Him. As long as we have breath, we are to shine out the signal of truth into this dark world, no matter what it costs us.
Maybe this message has shown you that you have not been putting your trust in God but in the many different “truths” of man. I encourage you to ask God’s forgiveness. Invite Jesus – who is “full of grace and truth” – to be the center of your life.
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