To seek Christ is to seek good for others. Join us this Saturday at 10:00a (immediately following Men’s Ministry) for a presentation from REST on how we might help staunch sex trafficking in the Seattle area. Come and consider whether this is something to which you ought to be giving yourself — or just come for an education in a regional crisis we ought to be aware of. For more info go to our new website, cpcissaquah.org, (and be sure to thank Rebecca & Aaron Steelman who invested a great deal of time and creativity to make the new website possible).
I’ve wanted to post on “truth” for a while. (I’ll try to make this dovetail with Casey’s comments last Sunday). In a world changing as rapidly as ours, it can begin to feel like nothing is fixed, nothing is true. All the things you used to rely on are gone or marginalized or regarded as dubious. What follows is too brief for such an immense topic, but I’ll suggest that nothing has really changed. I’ll address truth in two ways: personal and public.
Personally, you can always know that being united to Christ by faith, you are grounded in, and are always being guided in, the truth. This is the case because Christ himself is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6) and he indwells you by his Spirit who will “guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak” (Jn 16:13). So, your personal clarity with regard to truthfulness is relative to your union with Christ and his word, “which is truth” (John 17:17). You can say all this more simply: your head will be clearer the nearer you are to God and his word.
You may think all these distinctions are useless out in the world. In fact, though, everyone lives with the assumption of absolute truth. This is a remarkable fact if there is no God and, therefore, no ultimate or absolute reality. Instead, it’s not only the case that people believe certain things are true, but they tend to believe the same truths — not only things like an external world (outside our minds), or past time, or other minds, or the accuracy of language — but also notions of truth, goodness, and beauty.
And love. I’m staggered again and again by the power of unconditional love in the lives of human beings everywhere, regardless of their belief systems.
This is where the discussion comes full circle with my opening paragraph and Casey’s sermon last Sunday. In a post-truth culture, embodying the love of Christ may be the most powerful thing we will do to speak the truth of God. When you love as Christ loves, you bring that other person near to Christ. You are His ambassador (2 Cor 5:20). And when you do that, you bring her or him into relationship with the absolute truth. It may be that that person hates the truth because of the ethical character of his life (no one can bear the conflict). But love tends to disarm that defensive system and gets you past the perimeter. The truth of love in Christ gives you (it may take a great deal of time) a platform from which to speak verbal, biblical truth. But remember, love hopes all things, endures all things (I Cor 13). The life of Christ permanently bound love and truth together in a single human life. And we are being conformed to his image (Rom 8:29), a work that he promises to bring to completion (Phil 1:6).
