So...What ?

 A Sunday-school teacher 40 years ago told us about the "So...what ?" principle of studying.  Read the Bible, he said, with the question "So...what ?"  Scripture's words have immediate personal applications for our lives: ask yourself what those are.

The verse of the Bible always in the forefront of my mind is John 14:6, where Jesus proclaims He IS Himself "...The Way and The Truth and The Life."  Believing He is Who He said He IS  has absolute, total, implications: that in every situation of life we must follow truth, for there is no other way of following Jesus

Truth not just propositional: Truth in its fully-"Life" context, what we'd call reality.  Or rather, since Jesus IS All of it, "Reality."  Every unreality offers us "alternative facts" (as Donald Trump's press-secretary put it) that all things in heaven and earth are other than the way God created them: and offers us, as satan offered Eve, a different way than His.

"Truth in the innermost being" (Psalms 51:6) must pour out in all our "issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23): it is the measure Jesus set for His followers.  Any who love Truth will pursue Truth, obey Truth, and live Truth in every way.

The question for the American Church today is why Truth is not every Christian's criteria in ALL things ?  How can a Christian ever follow the lies of consumerism, or the empty deceit of fame and wealth, or the propaganda of the world's myriad false ideologies and "life-styles" ?  How can any Christian ever follow politicians' lies...as so many do ?

Jesus is The Truth.  He promised the Spirit will lead us into All Truth...if we will follow Him... and The Truth will make you free indeed.

Amen.

Monty Python on Reality

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I remember a Monty Python piece . . .

A grubby industrial city in the north (Leeds, as I recall) had hired a magician to help put up new public housing.  One Python, dressed as a magician, was standing in front of a screen on which a film-clip of an apartment-building demolition was played backwards.  As the magician waved his wand, a pile of rubble lying on the ground leaped into the air, and formed itself into a tall apartment-building.

In the skit that followed, a resident was being interviewed in his apartment.  He extolled the amenities of the magical building, and how much he enjoyed living in Leeds.

The interviewer asked (quoting from memory), "Where did you live before ?"

The resident mentions off-handedly that he formerly lived in the manor-house at his estate in Devon.

"But", says the puzzled interviewer,  "Wasn't that much nicer than a one-bedroom apartment in a public-housing block ?"

A quizzical look crosses the resident's face, and the light of thought begins to show in his visage.

"Well, yes," he says, as he seems to suddenly awaken, "Yes, that was ever so much nicer."

Camera-work makes the walls of the apartment seem to slowly lean to the right, slightly out-of-plumb at first, but at a greater and greater angle as the resident comes to his realization, and an ominous loud creaking grows.

The resident and interviewer both rush to the opposite wall, and throw their weight against it.

"NO, NO !" cries the resident, "I like it here much better !"  The wall begins to reverse itself toward plumb.

"It's much nicer here !  Much nicer."  And the wall returns to vertical.

It's a pointed parable for our time.  Reality stands by itself.  False realities, peddled by all varieties of con-men, collapse when the victim wakes up and stops believing in them.

The con-man's guiding adage was always that "you can't cheat an honest man."

Today's political landscape of "alternative realities" probably says a lot about the honesty of most people's political thinking.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

"Conservatives" and Their "Reality"

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Had to compress my comments, talking on a local site to a guy bloviating all the standard "conservative" talking points and attitudes.

Rather liked that the short-form comment seemed to get to the point (better than I usually do):
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Bob: did you notice I strongly recommended, above, a belief in "objective truth" ?

If so, you can see why you're wrong-footed from your first statement, that "there [are} facts and there are Liberal facts."  Objective truth is, by definition, the same for everyone: and not under the control of any faction.

No, Bob: there are facts, and there are lies (or as "conservatives" like to call them, "ALTERNATIVE facts").

Reality is what it is: not what ANY human being ("liberal" or "conservative," since those seem to be the poles of your worldview) wants to conjure it.

To live in objective reality, you have to admit it exists; and you have to acknowledge reality is sovereign to your personal interpretation of it.

Those who aren't God, but want to believe reality is their own creation, really REALLY need to repent.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Boiling It Down

Sometimes you get a lightning-strike insight.  An idea comes "out of the blue;" about something you're not even consciously thinking about; whole and complete and right (the Biblical term for which is "perfect").

Those are the kinds of moments that probably gave rise to the word "inspiration:" an idea is literally "in-spirited" to our minds.  That's probably still as good an explanation of the phenomenon as anything cognitive science has come up with.

But more often  we have to meditate on a matter, concentrate to think it through, if we want to come to the wisdom of it.  I think of that process as "boiling down" a matter to get its essence.  

Every question comes before us with its own details, antecedents, examples, implications and repercussions: some of which are always irrelevant, contradictory, or misleading.  We can't deal rightly with any question until we think clearly about its core reality.

But that kind of meditation is necessary, in whatever mode an idea comes.  Even "lightning-strike" inspirations need to be analyzed, and tested.  There are more spirits at work, in the world and in human hearts, than just the Holy Spirit.

That's where our input makes a difference.  We don't come to wisdom by our knowledgeability of the details, or our skill in logic.  God is the sole source of wisdom: whatever other personal cleverness we cobble together is "worldly wisdom."

We make the difference in which we will get, by what we choose to accept.  The bench-mark we set ourselves makes all the difference.  Right understanding is righteous: wisdom is a moral quantity.  My takeaway is that the Spirit, in Person and in scripture, is the only infallible Standard by which righteousness and wisdom can be accurately measured.

My experience is also that the Spirit's wisdom is the only thing which ultimately works in the real world God created.  It's no good trying to play hockey with a tennis-racket.

We choose the standard by which we will think, and by which we measure our thoughts.  That is our deliberate part.  But it doesn't feel like something extraneous imposed on the process.  It feels like a natural fit.  I consider the Spirit, as Inspiration and Standard, is how God intends, and crafts, every human being's mind to work...if they will.

"But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him."  (James 1:5)

The Spirit of Reality

The blog-post by our Australian brother Tim about "post-truth" Christianity, which I re-posted a couple weeks ago, included a particularly striking insight

"It’s sad fact that many (even professing Christians) really have no love of the truth, preferring to mould a more appealing (to them) version of 'reality' to live by."

His linkage of "truth" and "reality" is spot-on.

We know there's a profound sense in which "truth" and "reality" are somehow the same kind of thing: though we can't easily say how that's so.  "Reality is the manifestation of truth" is the working definition I've come to: though I'm certain there's a lot more to that equation than my formulation takes into account (or that limited human understanding can take into account).

Another way of putting it might be that "reality" and "truth" are both what really and truly IS.  And that makes both, to my understanding, theological quantities, since God IS "I AM THAT I AM."  Theologians who have opined that God is "Ultimate Reality" are probably close to the mark.

Jesus' Own Person seems to bear out that equation.  He used God's Own Name when He revealed His Being is exactly Truth: "I AM...The Truth" (John 14:6).  Jesus is the Word (Logos) of God through Whom "...all things were made," and without Whom "...nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:3).  "Truth" and "reality," including the physical reality of creation, are joined in Who Jesus IS.

The confirmatory "flip-side" is that the enemy, rebel against All that God IS and does, is, in Jesus' words, "the father of lies" (John 8:44).  From the first time we meet him in scripture, he is working to deceive human beings by questioning God's Truth ("Has God really said . . .?", my emphasis) and denying the reality God made ("You surely will not die . . .", my emphasis).

The enemy has not changed his tactics.  They still work.  Even though, as Tim notes, refusal to love truth necessarily means relinquishing reality as well...and forces people to invent their own.

I find it interesting that the political faction Christians have followed for 40 years is the premier anti-Truth and anti-reality voice in America.

Like all political factions, it's always "spun" truth to achieve electoral success (the only "good" political factions serve): though rather more outrageously than other factions.  But the surprising election of its "post-truth" candidate this year has hugely confirmed that faction in the "wisdom" of post-truth politics: that truth doesn't really matter for electoral success.

It's no accident that the same faction also champions various kinds of reality-denial.  One major example is that "climate-change denial" is a virtual litmus-test for members of that faction, a legacy of their demi-god founder, Ronald Reagan.  Other varieties of reality-denial, including some very "fringe" ones (white-supremacy, for example), also make that faction their ideological home.

Tim's observation that "truth" and "reality" are linked seems sound theological insight: both are established by God, in His Own Being.

It should tell us something that American Christians have followed factionalists whose spirit is contempt for truth, and denial of reality: the same sins Adam and Eve fell for.  To those with spiritual eyes to see, that faction...and the Christians who do its will...abundantly show their spiritual patrimony.

May deceived Christians repent !  May God destroy those who deceive His people !!

Amen.