The problem of truth

Truth is not a problem.

But that is the problem.

“You’re talking in riddles, David.” I can hear you saying it!

Let me try to explain.

When Jesus encountered the value system that had the power to set him free, it all boiled down to an issue of truth.

Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, was interested in power. And so he posed the question to Jesus: “Are you the king of the Jews?” What he meant, of course, was this: “Are you planning an uprising against me?”

Jesus wasn’t even thinking along these lines. And so he told Pilate his kingdom was not of this world. If it had been, his followers would already have been fighting in the streets.

This puzzled Pilate. And so he put the question to Jesus: “So you are a king?” Jesus didn’t bother to dignify Pilate’s question with an answer, which was extraordinary, given that his life apparently hung in Pilate’s hands.

His answer was this: “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world - to bear witness to the truth.”

Pilate’s answer, to me, is one of the greatest attestations to the accuracy of the New Testament. He said this: “What is truth?”

Pilate was reflecting the beginnings of the decline of Roman civilization. He had given up on truth. And we know that’s an accurate picture of where many of the Romans were at - and certainly cynical, disillusioned and corrupt politicians like Pilate, which is the picture Roman historians paint of him.

We live in a very similar world today.

For Jesus, and hence for those of us who follow him, truth is not a problem. God alone reserves the right to define truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil.

But we live in a world Pontius Pilate would have been right at home in. Laughingly, we call it “post-modern,” when in fact it is as ancient as Pilate himself.

Pilate was bothered by Jesus’ answer - but not bothered enough to take a stand against the Jewish leaders and let him go. For him, truth did not matter. And that is why when he saw the personal embodiment of truth standing in front of him, he did not recognize it.

For the world we live in, truth is a problem. In fact, a massive problem.

Our culture demands that every possible personal preference or orientation be accommodated. Everyone lives in their own personal space as far as truth is concerned. In reality, no one is really interested in truth at all. What they are really interested in is the promotion of their own interests.

Here’s the catch. In the absence of truth, anything goes. But what happens when the interests of one group are hostile to the interests of another?

I’ll tell you exactly what happens. The group with the most power forces its interests on the others.

In the absence of truth, might becomes right.

Those with the most clout gain privilege at the expense of those with the least.

But Christians see things differently. Or at least they ought to.

Our world is living in a mass delusion. The delusion is this: everyone can have their own “truth,” and it won’t cause any problems. The reality is different. The “truth” belonging to the people with the most power will prevail.

In truth, it isn’t about truth at all. It’s about the power to force my views on everyone else.

But as Christians, we believe in real truth. We are interested in truth for the sake of truth, because we follow the man who said: “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

We believe only God has the right to define truth. And Jesus is the only man who ever completely lived it.

That is a problem to the world around us, with its many interest groups trying to force their views on everyone else, to their own benefit.

Jesus stood for truth, and he died for truth.

How about you?

For he was but one: the power of insignificance

Things were tough for God’s people. And worse was coming.

In the midst of it all, Isaiah called the people to look to the rock from which they were hewn, to look to Abraham their father and Sarah who bore them. And then he makes this statement: “For he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him” (Isaiah 51:2).

For he was but one.

How many times have you felt alone, abandoned, misunderstood or powerless in the face of circumstances? How many time have you looked enviously or wistfully at others who do not appear to be in such a hard place?

For he was but one.

How many times does the church regard success in terms of numbers? Speakers are invited to conferences simply because of the size of their church. I once heard a very godly and wise pastor say he knew God had given him one of the largest churches in America simply so that people would listen to his message. He said it with regret that this should be the case. Yet so often it is.

For he was but one.

At Gethsemane, Scripture records Jesus was deserted by all of his disciples.

He also was but one.

Sometimes God strips away our outward success. He removes our popularity. He puts us in a place where it seems we have only him. But here’s why. It’s when we have nothing, when we know we are nothing, when we are but one, that he can begin to bring a harvest out of our lives.

If Abraham had not been one, God could not have been glorified in the miracle of multiplication that followed. Abraham was significant precisely because he was insignificant.

Many years ago and though very difficult circumstances, God brought me to the devastating realization that I wasn’t his greatest gift to the body of Christ. Something in me died, but because of the death, God slowly but surely began a process of resurrection which, I hope and pray, has brought blessing to the lives of others, blessing that would never have come had I found myself in a place of self-defined success.

We so foolishly think God is most glorified in our great ministry gifts and successes. What a lie! Advertising our ministry accomplishments brings glory only to us.

In truth, God’s glorification is found in our desperation. And that usually comes at the moment we feel we are but one.

I am so glad Abraham did not give up. His greatest qualification for leadership was his refusal to walk out. And because of that, the covenant line was preserved for the Messiah to come and save you and me.

We so often read the stories of the Bible with the end in mind. We forget what it was like for the disciples in the boat before Jesus showed up walking on the water to rescue them. We forget what it was like for Jairus at that awful moment when the messengers told him there was no point bothering Jesus because his daughter had died. We forget what it was like for Peter in Herod’s prison the night before his scheduled execution. We forget what it was like for Abraham during all those long years when he was but one.

If that is where you are today, hang on. Know that God is not deserting you, he is preparing you.

Knowing you are insignificant qualifies you to be significant.

Another day will come. Just hang in there and stay faithful.

You are not but one. He is with you.

The illusion of God's delay

Why is it that God delays? I have thought about this a lot the last several years, as we have gone down a long and often very hard path seeking God’s plan for the next phase of our lives. Does God not care about the situation we are in? Does he not see our desperation? Does he not hear our prayers?

The other night, I was reading that extraordinary story in the Gospels where the disciples were straining at the oars for hours, making little progress. All of a sudden, Jesus showed up, walking across the waters. They took him into the boat, and by supernatural intervention, they instantly reached the other side of the lake.

Like so many Bible stories, we read this one with the end in mind. We already know what’s going to happen. But we forget that those guys in the boat had no idea whether Jesus was going to show up for them or not. They were almost certainly desperate. They were probably near the end of their strength. They were likely terrified of drowning. And you can be sure they had been praying.

But their prayers had not been answered.

What do you think they were thinking? Probably most of the same things we are thinking when God fails to resolve our crisis when we think he should.

But the question we should be asking ourselves is not “Why is God delaying?” but “What is God doing?”

Sometimes God is taking the extra time to bring elements of his plan for us together which are at present unseen to us. The whole world does not revolve around you or me. Other people and circumstances are involved too, and have to be brought into the picture.

Sometimes he is saving us from things we at first asked for. How many times have you thanked God he did not give you that job, that relationship, that accommodation, that place of ministry you asked him for?

Often, he is simply changing and refining us as we pray, because in the process we are drawn closer to him through our seeking of him. Hopefully we discover it is more important to seek God than the thing we are asking for.

For all these reasons, we then look back and thank the Lord that it worked out the way it did.

The fact is that God does not delay at all. The word “delay” implies that something that should have taken place now does not take place until later. But God’s timing is as perfect as all of his ways. What seems to us to be delay is actually God working out his perfect plan for us.

So if you are caught up right now in what to you is a very much in-your-face delay, may I suggest you follow the advice James gave to those who were experiencing the same kind of thing: ask God for wisdom (James 1:5). Ask God what he is doing in your heart and circumstances. Ask him for patience. Cast yourself on him. Cry out to him. But don’t give up.

Because the very point at which you feel like giving up is often the moment God breaks through. When we are at our most desperate is when he receives the most glory for what he does, because everyone knows it is him, not us who has done it.

And when God moves, he often does so with great speed. Isaiah put it this way: “I am the Lord; in its time I will do it quickly” (Isaiah 60:22).

I read that verse the other night. And I read it just at the point where God had intervened in our lives in an extraordinary way, which in a matter of weeks resolved issues we had been facing for years.

More of that next week…

Adrian Smith: What happens when the tsunami hits

In June 2013 I had a heart attack which almost took my life. During surgery I suffered a cardiac arrest and for a short time had a sense of being somewhere else – a place filled with mellow late afternoon light; silent, without dimensions or boundaries. It felt very good. Peace, no pain, then suddenly with a bang the defibrillator kicked me back into the operating theatre, with sounds of frantic activity and anxious voices saying you’re ok, you’re going to be ok. (They were more anxious than I was).

The surgeon treating me said with a wry smile afterwards “you gave us a fright - that one was out to kill you.” Earlier one of the ambulance paramedics and a member of the surgeon’s team each used the same phrase – “you were in the right place at the right time.” It could have been very different but for a weather forecast which made me decide not to go cycling off the beaten track on that particular day.

Just two days before the heart attack I had a vivid dream in which I saw myself swimming in a rough sea when from nowhere a tsunami wave came straight for me. In my dream I knew I only had minutes to live. I woke up with a bang, alive and suddenly wide awake. I went to my office and wrote down what I had just experienced. I dream a lot, mostly nonsense and quickly forgotten. But I have had three highly significant dreams over my lifetime that I can still remember in detail and which communicated something which changed the course of my life, and in one case that of our church community.

My initial reaction to the dream was that’s not for me, it must be a warning for someone else. I don’t feel as though I’m out of my depth or in rough water at this moment, life is busy but that’s normal and I feel fine. So that morning I typed up the notes made at 3am and emailed them to about half a dozen people I thought might bring some sense out of what I had experienced in the dream. One of my friends replied by return – “that was for me I need to get out of the deep water I’m in right now before the wave hits.” Great, I thought, that’s a result.

Another of my friends had a different reaction as he read my email – this is for Adrian, he is going to die. How do you share something like that, fortunately he didn’t but prayed instead.

Like the dream, the heart attack came totally out of the blue. I was finishing off a job at a property half an hour’s drive from home. I recognised the classic symptoms - intense pain in the chest and arms, the feeling that I was about to pass out, difficulty breathing. But part of me was arguing back - I don’t do heart attacks, I keep fit cycling, the medics say I’m low risk….

The ambulance reached me within minutes of my call and two hours later, surgery completed, I was fixed. By the time my wife Nicky reached me I was sitting in bed drinking tea, feeling as though I had been run over by several buses. I truly love all the wonderful people who work in our National Health Service.

On the first anniversary of the heart attack I visited what is for me a special place of meeting: St Michael and All Angels Parish Church in Felton, Northumberland. Why would God communicate with me through a dream which mirrored the heart attack experience but did not include sufficient detail to send me scurrying to Accident and Emergency to avoid it?

As I sat in St Michaels I had a sense of Jesus saying that he was with me when the tsunami wave hit and left me defenceless and completely vulnerable. He showed me that we were both in the wave and then we beached and stood together on the shore watching as it receded, its power spent.

The dream had been sent to show me he knew the wave was coming. It came and he didn’t stop it, but he was with me, my journey and his were intertwined.

I feel as though I have been given some “extra time” and I want to use it to grow in friendship with the one who was with me in the “wave.” I trust him more now, even when bad things happen.

Sarah Galloway: Incomplete but in complete

Today's post is by Sarah Galloway.

Are you discouraged? Are you weary? Are you simply still and stagnant in your faith? Have you been suffering?

I have been all these things and more. It leads me to ask constant questions of life and of God.

Why is this happening? When will it stop?

In late 2013 I woke up on a consultation floor blissfully unaware that the life I had known and loved had been broken beyond repair. The moment passed and I remembered. Shocking things, unimaginably strange and scary things that would haunt me in flash backs for years to come.

Psychosis is not an experience that is easy to describe. But it is a categorically bad experience.

Attempted suicide, in some cases very nearly successful suicide, is not an experience that is easy to live alongside. But it is a categorically bad experience.

Memory loss both short and long term is easier to describe - it’s like living in a fog and a constant state of surprise. I’ve got nothing to anchor myself to, it affects my identity as well as my ability. It too is a bad experience.

Seeing your life and the lives of those you love sucked in around you because of this invisible illness, this disease that works like a black hole drawing in the light and life and resources is a scary thing.

The uncertainty of everything has been the hardest burden to bear. Many times I have come to God with the simple prayer ‘Make it stop, make it stop.’

But it didn’t and it hasn’t. I still suffer from a form of encephalitis whereby the body attacks the brain. I can’t work, I can’t cook, I can’t live alone, I can’t concentrate, I can’t control my emotion... in fact let's go to the can do list, as that is shorter. I can eat. I can sleep. I can paint. And I can pray.

So what is it that keeps me going? What’s the driving force? What has God taught me through this suffering? A very simple thing. I have learned that I don’t always need to learn something through my suffering. Some things are bad and wrong and grieve God’s heart as well as mine. Some things steal from you. Some things break you. And that’s ok.

I can rest and not stress about finding that silver lining, or finding more faith. If I can’t feel God’s presence in the middle of my struggle I know that’s just another form of theft; it’s not my fault that it happened and it’s not my job to fix. There is such relief in this way of thinking and being before God.

Suffering draws you into the immediate, the now, the moment of pain. God works through the big picture, the journey, the long haul. I might not win this battle, I may yet suffer psychotic episodes, I may yet feel so low that life is too much. But I know the real battle is won.

I don’t have to strive, or struggle, or suffer under suffering. I can lean into God and rest. I can find that feast amid fear, that sleep through the storm and that resistance against temptation. God has given me an identity and an inheritance that no sickness, sin or suffering can touch, not even death. So in my incomplete, disease ridden life I can be in complete and hope ridden faith.