What is truth?

What is truth? The answer to this question quite possibly defines and dictates a life journey more than any other question. One lives what they truly believe.

Back in the year 30 (approx.) in John 18, the Bible records a private conversation between Pilate, the king who ultimately has the power to crucify an individual in that day, and Jesus.

Pilate said, “So you are a king?”

Jesus responded, “You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.”

“What is truth?” Pilate asked.

Then he went out again to the people and told them, “He is not guilty of any crime.” John‬ ‭18:37-38‬

Pilate asked the question sarcastically. One can hear him scoffing as he asked “what is truth?” He did not have a grasp on truth, and he did not rule by truth. After all, after saying that Jesus was guilty of no crime, he had him crucified. Pilate was ruling to please the people. In his mind, there was no such thing as truth. There were no absolutes.

But, Jesus, on the other hand, claimed to be truth. He claimed to have come to “testify to the truth.” Jesus claimed to be the promised Messiah.

The religious people of that day, knowing the Old Testament, believed that there would be a coming Messiah. Jesus claimed that he was that Messiah. He came to fulfill all that was said about the Messiah in the Old Testament.

Scholars have said that there are over 300 prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus. For example, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, written 700 years plus before Jesus came, give great detail of the crucifixion of Christ.

Either Jesus was truth, fulfilling the prophecies of old, or it was all a lie. Truth would come from somewhere else.

Truth determines what path we will follow in life, what we will worship, what will be most important to us, and maybe most important, where we will lead others. If my truth is buried in material possessions, I will worship money. If my truth is buried in power, I will worship my career. If I have no truth, I follow the latest thinking of culture. If there is no God, one will worship the world, people.

Paul, the writer of Romans, wrote, “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,” Romans 1:25.

He said that people exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and, if you read this chapter you see that their life followed their belief. One’s answer to the “what is truth” question defines and dictates one’s life. A person’s life follows their beliefs.

After Jesus died on the Cross, the Bible states in Acts 1 that there were 120 followers of him gathered together. It is estimated that 300 million people lived on earth at the time. Amazing. Out of those 120 people came the message of Jesus known world wide today. What those 120 people believed, their truth, changed everything about them. What they worshipped, what they followed, what was important to them, and how they led people. They influenced a world. The truth dictated their life.

If there is no truth, nothing matters, no decision matters. Like a game of wiffle ball when I was a child, we make up rules as we go. When the twist and turns of life arise, we make decisions as we go. We have no boundaries, leaving the definition of truth up to society and whatever our minds believe is right. New thoughts arise, they seem logical and wise, and we pivot to a new truth, maybe to what we believe is a higher level of truth.

But, if there is a never-changing truth to hold onto, one’s life is radically different. The journey of life has a different look and feel. Decisions have already been made prior to the the twists and turns of life arriving. New thoughts never override the foundational truth. There is an anchor, a place where one leans for direction.

Truth is a controversial topic, and maybe this is why it is easy to kick the can down the road. It requires deep thinking to understand what you believe and why believe it. Few will ever take this journey.

The Bible offers a consistent, detailed, foundation of truth covering topics from marriage to money to a value system. When faced with questions in life, the Bible offers a place to go for a foundation, “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” Ephesians 4:14.
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To understand the Bible, one has to dig in, personally. A sprinkling of a verse here and there may cause confusion and lack of understanding. God gave us the whole book for a reason.

There is no better time to start the journey of understanding the Bible than a new year. The world will confuse, but the Bible provides the Anchor.

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