Truth Decay

"Truth Decay"
John 16:12-15


“...the Spirit of the Truth comes, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is.”

If ever we needed the Spirit of Truth, it is now.  During his trial, Jesus said to Pilate, “I was born and entered thew world so that I could witness to the truth.  Everyone who cares for truth, who has any feeling for the truth, recognizes my voice” (John 18:37-38).  To which, Pilate gave his famous response,  “What is truth?”  Such is the bewilderment of our day--Pilate’s question seems to be everyone’s question.

Just pay attention to the news.  The IRS scandal, and how they made intruded on the privacy of individuals and certain groups.  Who knew what was going on and when did they know it, and who’s behind it?  What’s the truth?
The attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi--why was security so lax, and who’s spinning what story for what political purpose?  What’s the truth?
Is the planet’s climate past the tipping point, and heading for disaster due to global warming?  What’s the truth?
There was even a story about how it really wasn’t Yoko Ono who broke up the Beatles.  That it was John Lennon.  What’s the truth?

A group of students at Harvard once tried to fool the famous professor of zoology, Louis Agassiz.  The students took parts from a number of different bugs and, with great skill, attached them together to make a creation they were sure would baffle their professor.

They brought it to Agassiz and asked that he identify it.  As he inspected it with great care, the students grew more and more sure they had tricked this genius.  Finally, Professor Agassiz straightened up and said, “I have identified it.”  Scarcely able to control their amusement, the student asked it’s name.  Agassiz replied, “It is a humbug.”

Isn’t that what happens in most instances concerning the truth?  A lot of divergent pieces are carefully, sometimes deviously, stuck together, and dished up through the already skewed media as the “truth.”

Even the church is not devoid of its own brand of humbug.  Ongoing debates about Creationism and Evolution, the ordination of homosexual leadership into the church, whether the Bible is the word of God without errors, was Jesus Christ the Son of God or one of many?  And on and on.  All these issues are fracturing the church and the world, and one of the main reasons is we’re not sure where the truth lies.  And those who say they are absolutely sure they know the truth, are some of the scariest people out there.

Doesn’t it get frustrating?  Don’t you wish someone would just come out and be honest about these kinds of things, especially the news stories coming out of the political arena.

It’s kind of like the guy who was on the outs with his golf partner.  “Why don’t you play golf with George anymore?” Pete’s wife asked.
“Would you play with a fellow who puts down the wrong score, and moves the ball when you aren’t watching?” Pete asked.
“No, I certainly wouldn’t,” she responded.
“Well, neither will George.”

It’s amazing how disruptive a lack of truthfulness, and trying to move things around when you think no one is watching, can be to a relationship.

There is an equal sickness, that I just alluded to, on the opposite side of this coin of truth.  That is, thinking you have a corner on the truth, and then pushing something over as the absolute truth, and everyone who disagrees with you is just stupid or ignorant or both.

In August, 1835, the New York Sun newspaper began running a series of articles that would, in the space of two months, increase its circulation by many thousands.

The first article described a new telescope so powerful that the surface of the moon appeared to be only five miles away.  14 species of animal life had been observed on the moon, the inventor of the telescope reported.  These animals resembled buffalo, goats, pelicans, cranes, and bears.

The final article in the series proved to be the most sensational.  The inventor of this huge telescope claimed that he had adjusted his instrument so that the surface of the moon appeared to be less than 300 feet away.  He said he could see four foot tall creatures with faces like apes and wings that extended from their shoulders to the calves of their legs.

The articles were so well written that they were reprinted in pamphlet form and sold over 60,000 copies in one month.  Even the New York Times was taken in and declared the information the truth.  A women’s club began raising money to send missionaries to the moon.

Not too long after that, the truth came out that it was all a hoax.  The series of articles was denounced, but not before thousands of people had accepted the story as scientific fact.  Just Google “The Great Moon Hoax” and you can read all about it.

Makes you wonder how many other hoaxes we continually fall for, especially with such tools as photoshop and computer enhanced graphics that can completely fabricate pictures, video and movies, and make it look absolutely real and “the truth.”

  The same things happens in religion, especially in Christianity and Islam, where some nut looks through their private telescope, right into God’s mind, and starts telling people he or she knows exactly what God thinks, what God wants people to do, what God wants everyone to believe, or how God wants people to act.

So what does Jesus mean when he says the Spirit will guide us into all truth?  Does it mean we’ll be able to see through all the shams and phony-baloney that are served up as the truth?

After the fishermen returned from a day’s outing, the rest of the family gathered around to check out their catch.  As the fish were compared, Grandpa, whose luck was usually poor, was being teased.  “Aw, c’mon, Grandpa,” one of the grandkids said.  “You didn’t catch those fish.  You bought them at the supermarket.”

All of Grandpa’s protests were ignored until a daughter-in-law finally came to his rescue.  “I believe him,” she said.  “I know he caught them himself.”  Grandpa, beaming unwarily, asked her to tell everyone why she believed him.  “They don’t sell fish that small in the supermarket,” she answered.

Or, there was a pub in a small college town that was popular with the students.  They ran an ad in the campus newspaper a week before Graduation weekend:  “Bring your parents for lunch on Saturday.  We’ll pretend we don’t know you.”

Seeing the ad, the campus chaplain ran a similar ad on the campus bulletin boards.  It read, “Bring your parents to chapel on Sunday.  We’ll pretend we know you!”

So maybe that’s a part of what Jesus meant--having a certain wisdom to see through things with double messages, or only are partially true.  Maybe being guided into all truth by the Spirit of God is see what’s true when truth and falsehood are all mixed together.  The Spirit gives us the ability to distinguish.  But ultimately, it seems to me, that would lead us to be somewhat skeptical people, always assuming we are never looking at the whole or unadulterated truth.  And maybe that is the truth--nothing ever is completely true.

Wouldn’t we rather be searchers of the truth?

The significant word in Jesus’ statement may not be “truth.”  Maybe the more important word is “guide.”  The Spirit of God will guide us into all truth.  Buckminster Fuller, the futuristic architect and philosopher once said that, “Truth is a verb.”  That way truth is something active, rather than static.  In other words, truth is not a neatly wrapped up package of knowledge and facts, but more a hide-and-seek game.  We use phrases like, “the quest for truth,” or, “finding out the truth,” or, “getting at the truth.”

In the movie, Missing, Jack Lemmon plays an American business man by the name of Edmond Horman.  Horman’s son was missing in a South American country, after a violent overthrow of the government in that country.  At one point in the movie, Horman discovers our own government officials have been lying to him about the whereabouts of his missing son.

Horman is a religious man.  He comes at the craziness and the lies from the quiet and calm that his beliefs bring him.  An American embassy worker went to a church to pick up Horman.  The worker interrupts Horman’s devotional time and prayer.  The official asked Horman what religion is all about.
“It’s about faith,” Horman replies.
“Faith in what?” the young official persists.
“Faith in the truth,” Horman replied.

Is that what Jesus is getting at?  Is Jesus asking his followers to have a faith in God which embodies a faith in the truth?  That the two are inseparable?

The 18th century playwright, Goethold Lessing said, “If an angel were to appear to me and in one hand he would hold “the truth” and in the other hand “the pursuit of truth,” and if he offered me a choice, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to choose “the pursuit of truth.” Know-it-alls learn nothing more.  Pursuers of truth have the most fun in life.”

The church, and Christians in particular, can live in the truth only if they are pursuers of the truth.  Only God is the truth.  Therefore finding the truth is in the pursuit of God.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Notice the company in which the word truth finds itself.  Way--which is a path or a road or a direction one travels.  You don’t stop on a way.  You keep going.  That’s what a way is for--to travel on.

And “life.”  Life is something lived.  Something active.  Something you do.  Something you also pursue.  Truth is found in the company of way and life, all three active words of pursuit and travel, not being sedentary, inactive or stationary.

Remember, Jesus said we can be guided into truth.  But we can only be guided when we are living and moving and on the way.  Truth, and being guided in truth is not an, “I found it!” kind of experience, where once you think you’ve got it you can sit down right where you’re at and search no more.  Instead, the truth is more of an, “I am finding it” experience, where one discovery spurs you on to find more, which motivates you to keep up the search.

Of course that doesn’t mean that what we have come to know of the truth of God’s ways in the past was any less valuable or has somehow become less relevant.  What it does mean is that what we knew before provided a valuable stepping stone to what we now discover about God and God’s truth, and what we will continue discover as we live the life of God and follow always on his way.

The alternative, of course is to guided by untruth.  Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov was asked in an interview about the kinds of adjustments he had to make after defecting from his native Russia.
“Most of all,” he answered, “I had to learn to tell the truth again.  In Russia, you lie all the time, not only in what you say but in the way you live and do your work.  If you don’t, you won’t work at all, and you might not live very long.  Everything is so different when you come into an open society where, generally, people are not threatened by the truth.  Along with telling the truth, I had to learn to trust people again.  When you have to lie and you know everybody else has to do the same thing, you don’t know whom you can trust--so you don’t trust anybody.”

Imagine living like that.  No truth, no trust.  How fundamental the value of truth is on a relationship and society as a whole.  The only way to value the truth in all things, and the only way to come to the truth, is by the guidance of the Spirit.  To immerse yourself in the Holy Spirit, is to be immersed in the truth, no matter how hard it is to face.  To be guided by the Spirit into the full truth is to live fearlessly and courageously and expectantly, because we have come to the truth through the Holy Spirit, and the pursuit of that truth can truly set us free.