The Power of Truth

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.....You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up and believe...whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill.....you stay in wonderland...and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes."

Neo takes the red pill offered by Morpheus and "awakens" from the Matrix to a world of stark, harsh, painful reality. But, it's a world of truth.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me," Jesus says to his disciples. They accept the way and life becomes harsh and painful for them. Most of the apostles are martyred for their faith in Jesus. But, they have something no one else has. They possess the truth. They see the world as it really is - as the providential kingdom of God - beset, of course, by the "powers and principalities" of the world all vying for control and power - but it is God who wins. This is God's universe. They know the end of the story. They've seen the answer pages at the back of the math textbook. They have had a vision of the light. They know the truth. And the truth is beautiful - it is deep joy - it is peace - it is awesome!

A student at Union wrote me in an email this week likening the culture we live in to a "trance." It's a trance she writes wherein we believe that in order to have any esteem at all we must all look alike, act alike, dress alike, speak alike, believe alike - and the values demanded are those of the rich, the powerful, the glittering, the "influential." Amazingly, Jesus, in his ministry, spent little time with these people. I suppose as far as Jesus was concerned, they had chosen their "truth."

What is the truth? The truth is the world as God has created it to be. It is experienced most profoundly in moments of sacrifice and love, honesty and transparency, community and fellowship, integrity and seeking, discipline and obedience. How do we know the truth? Through the ways God has revealed that truth to us: scripture, prayer, inspiration, creativity, love, community, joy, insight - but most of all - most powerfully of all, in the person of Jesus.

Truth is not an idea. Even though when I was a philosophy major in college I spent an entire semester on the "question of truth" in my "epistemology" class. Truth is not known through one's intellect, nor through one's senses. Truth is known only as it is revealed by God to us. The rest is usually just "educated" guess-work on our part.

Paul says it most eloquently in Romans 1. "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." God's been revealing truth since the moment he created us. Truth is obvious. Truth is clear. Truth resonates deep within us.

We complicate the truth because what we want often differs from what we know is best for us. Human beings have been given an incredibly powerful brain allowing us to do an amazing number of calculations and carry out an amazing number of functions. We can also rationalize just about anything based on our preferences and desires even to the point of making the most obscenely silly idea seem credible.

For Christians the truth of reason always takes a back seat to the truth of relationship and particularly one's relationship with Jesus. If our worlds seem like darkness, following in the way of Jesus provides the needed light. John says, "in Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." (John 1:4)

Are you tired of the darkness? Sick of the trance? Ready to exit the "matrix?" Take the Jesus "pill" and you will see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.