The Truth

I love a good mystery anything from Sherlock Holmes to the police procedural, from books to movies. One thing I have noticed is the central trait that all the investigators typically have is an unswerving commitment to the truth. In the sign of the four a Sherlock Holmes mystery he is quoted as saying, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” This is something we admire in our heroes, be they fiction or actual…an unswerving commitment to truth, no matter who turns up guilty or exposed. I think we wish to see this trait in ourselves, we fantasize our lives to be such ignobled expressions of virtue that we desire to imbibe the pinnacle of honesty. However is this really true? Do we really pursue truth at all costs? How much of our commitment to our theological convictions is based on this weighty devotion to truth and how much is based on our true love…tradition. Scripture actually makes a division seen very poignantly in the example of the Pharisees and their commitment to tradition over truth in their relationship to the Son of God. It also blatantly points this out in factual statements, one of which is the very clear text: 2Th 2:7-12 ESV  For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.  (8)  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.  (9)  The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders,  (10)  and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (11)  Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,  (12)  in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

What a scary text, to not love the truth is to not be saved. What does it look like when someone does not love the truth? Well, it can look like many things, it can look like a very deeply religious person committed to a set of principles, but in the end their love is their comfort zone and not truth. They tend to be the kinds of folks who can hear the best arguments concerning the truth and yet refuse to believe. They tend to see the truth when it is presented but they never latch on to the truth and would not at all suffer discomfort in abandoning the truth for blatant error. They tend to be swallowed up in what others would think of them or how they would lose their status in the community or a circle of friends. They have not joined themselves with their whole heart to a pursuit of the truth come what may, they have not aligned themselves with the proverb to “buy the truth and sell it not.” Why in most cases they flounder in between two opinions never settling on the truth based on a love for truth and a steadfast refusal to exchange it for anything else. To not love the truth can also look like a person who is very distant and apathetic about most of life, to them any deep commitment to truth is typically dismissed as someone being ‘fanatical’ and the assumption that the person will settle down eventually. These are of course only two demonstrations of people who are not lovers of truth. I think of Jesus’ parable of the sower and the soil for more examples of the types of soils as He later explained and how in one way or another the rigors of life overcome their commitment to the truth.