CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH?

John 8:31 – 32 says, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
“What is truth? Well the dictionary defines truth as:
the quality of being true, genuine, actual, or factual; a proven or verified principle or statement; fact…
The truth is something that is indisputable. It can be proven by facts and it stands the test of any challenge and the test of time.
Going deeper, there is absolute truth and relative truth.

Matt Slick wrote, “That which is absolute is always true. That which is relative is not necessarily always true. For example, it is always true that the number seven is greater than the number five. It's always true that something cannot bring itself into existence.

On the other hand, one person may believe that blue is a better color than green where another person may disagree. In this case, what is true for one person is not true for another. Therefore, there can be truths that are relative that change. The person who believes that blue is a better color than green may change his or her mind later on.”

A quote by Mark Twain says, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." My spiritual father, Pastor Walker, used to ask the question, “Why does the truth travel slower than a lie? Because lies have wings and can travel quickly, while the truth has feet and it takes time to get there. The difference is, the lies will eventually have to come down and will have nothing to stand on.”

The truth is a very funny thing. Often times it is really hidden in the details that are right in front of our faces. “So if that’s true, then why don’t we see it right out the gate?” Perhaps it’s not that we don’t see it. It could be that we see it but dismiss it. A mother can see that her daughter is getting heavier and knows that she has been wearing big clothes and knows that her daughter is acting strange. Her mother’s intuition kicks in and she knows that her daughter is pregnant, but she dismisses that because she does not want to accept that. This is her baby girl. She cannot fathom that her baby has engaged in sexual activity. So her emotions override the truth.

Other times we already have the “truth” that we want to hear, so we lie ourselves past the truth so that we feel better.

-We know that we are being cheated on. The signs are all there.                                       -We know that we don’t have enough money to get the new iPhone for eight or nine hundred dollars but we find a way around it by borrowing the money knowing we can’t pay it back right away or writing a check knowing that it will bounce.                                           -We know that we are going to be late to a commitment. When asked if we can make it on time we lie and make people believe that we will be there and on time.

Instead of us accepting that as the truth, we decide to put that on trial in our minds. We put our feelings on jury duty and hire a judge called the honorable “Desired Truth” and have a complete trial in our heads to dispute what we already know to be the absolute truth.

We also try and protect others from the real truth. If you see someone with a bad haircut, their outfit is not quite fitting them or they have bad hygiene you should tell them the truth. Of course, do it in love. Pull them to the side and have a loving talk with them as if they are your brother or sister. Disclaimer here, some people really don’t want to know the truth. You can tell them in the most loving way, but they will take it the wrong way or just will not hear you. At least you did tell them the truth. People will always respect you for telling them the truth whether they say it or not. Besides, “The only people who are mad at you for telling the truth are those people who are living a lie.”

Also, because of the inability to trust, we have so often sentenced people to an incarceration of separation from us because of our accusations. Because of our inability to trust others, we choose to not believe what is the absolute truth.

The absolute truth is that the truth can be hard to swallow. It can be difficult to accept what is really the truth. How do we find deliverance out of this predicament? Let’s look back at the scripture I shared earlier.

John 8:31 – 32 says, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.”
What is a disciple? A disciple is someone who follows another. They are devoted to trusting the one they are following. The disciple is learning from that person. They are being disciplined. This is not necessarily meaning to beat or chastise. Disciplined actually means to be taught and trained. Jesus was saying that if I am really your teacher, then you should be holding on to what I am teaching you without disputing it. His words should be life to us. We should declare as Paul wrote in Romans 3:4 “Let God be true and every man be a liar.” If you look back in the third verse it says, “What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all!” Just because God allows evil, doesn’t make Him evil. So in a quest to find truth, there are some things we should do.

1.    ASK QUESTIONS
When you are trying to find the truth, there are times when people will not tell you straight out what the truth is. You have to ask questions sometimes. And don’t just ask ANY kind of questions. You have to ask specific questions depending on the situation. *

2.    SHUT UP and LISTEN
A man I knew in ministry in San Diego used to always say, “If you let people talk, they will eventually hang themselves.” I never realized how true that was until I started listening attentively to people. Don’t listen with a convicting ear. Listen openly accepting and embracing what they are actually saying.
John 8:32 says, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That word “know” means to recognize. This is also known as discernment.

3.    USE DISCERNMENT
Discernment is the ability to judge well. You have to discern things without allowing your emotions to cloud your judgment. For those who are Gladiators, you know Ms. Olivia Pope talks about this in Scandal. Listen to the details and recognize what is true and what is not true. As stated earlier, the truth is often hidden in the details.

Slick, M. (2014). Are there absolutes or is everything relative? Retrieved October 3, 2014, from http://carm.org/are-there-absolutes