What is Truth?
Pilate’s famous question to Jesus “What is truth?” suggests that truth can’t be known or doesn’t matter.
His attitude contrasted with the words Jesus had just spoken: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).
Jesus’s followers are to be of the truth—yes, truth about him, but also truth about everything.
Paul’s well-known passage defining love says it “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). We should rejoice in investigations to uncover the truth and wrongdoing—even when we are skeptical of the purpose or fear the consequences.
When Paul traveled through Berea on his second missionary journey, he found its people to be noble searchers of truth, “examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:10-11).
Sadly in our day many in the church show little care or concern about truth, while at the same time evangelizing others to consider the claims of Jesus. We call people to search out the truth about who Jesus is while we fail to search out truth for ourselves. No wonder our culture considers us idiots and fools. We have shown them that we gullibly believe anything that supports our personal position—politically, monetarily, and even in church—by willingly turning blind eyes to truth. Since Jesus called the devil the father of lies, we should be the last to lie, applaud liars, or promote lies. (John 8:44).
To restore respect to Christianity we must follow truth where it leads.
That means that we don’t speak, post, or like anything that we haven’t dully checked out. If the truth really sets us free (John 8:31-32), why are we so scared to discover it? If truth sets us free in Christ, I believe it sets us free from darkness everywhere. We may find it inconvenient or even face consequences when darkness is uncovered. We may be forced to change an opinion or own our failures. Yes, it may impact us, our lives, our church, or our country. But we can trust our God with whatever comes.
God is truth. We can stand on nothing less if we want to faithfully image him to a watching world.
Kay Daigle
Kay is a life-long Texan whose favorites are Tex-Mex, books that feed her soul or make her think, good movies and travel to new places. Her great joy is to serve God by teaching the Bible and developing women as servant-leaders. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries, which provides free videos, podcasts and articles as well as low-cost Bible studies to prepare Christian women for leadership. (beyondordinarywomen.org) Kay spent ten years leading women’s ministries on church staffs, most recently at Northwest Bible Church in Dallas. Kay is the author of From Ordinary Woman to Spiritual Leader: Grow your Influence, a practical guide to help Christian women influence others by applying foundational leadership skills to their lives and ministries, and a number of Bible studies for women, some are available at bible.org and the newer ones are found at beyondordinarywomen.org. Kay earned an M.A.C.E. from Dallas Theological Seminary and a D.Min. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Effective Ministries to Women. Kay’s family includes a husband, two grown children, one son-in-law, two hysterical granddaughters and a Goldendoodle.
