love the truth

I wonder if any of us really prefer the truth.

People avoid the doctor because they fear they may have high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. Until they know for sure, they can live as if they don’t. The problem is, their ignorance doesn’t change the truth, and their concern suggests they might have an inkling anyway.

We also seldom enjoy the truth about what people think of us. Occasionally we hear a comment or see something written for someone else about us, and we get a hint that we’re not as universally loved as we would wish to be. Even those closest to us have thoughts about us they don’t share. Do we really want to know?

I don’t think we have to know every unpleasant thing there is to know, but I do think we should try to be active seekers for the truth. That’s a defining characteristic of Christians, that we believe there is an absolute truth. In fact, Jesus said the truth will free us.

Paul repeated that truth in the opposite, in 2 Thessalonians 2:10: “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” In Paul’s view, salvation is closely linked with not just truth-finding, but truth loving. That’s because truth is what is real about God and his world. All untruth is an attempt to obscure God.

That’s hard these days. We’d rather let our tribe, defined by ethnicity and political affiliation, tell us what to believe, and which side to champion. We don’t want to hear and defend the truth that there are only two genders and only one way to do marriage right. We don’t want to acknowledge that Jesus told us to look after the marginalized, not brutalize or take advantage of them. We prefer to lock down our borders and carry our guns rather than believe Jesus when he tells us not to fear people who can only hurt our bodies. Jesus says fear the one who will jeopardize your soul, possibly by getting you to consider other people animals or at least expendable law-breakers. 

We all have hard truths to face. Our favorite sin is as bad as the sins we condemn in others. Our favorite candidate doesn’t love America any more than the other side. Our Lord would not choose for us most of the fights we spend our energy on.

This morning, Paul gives us a choice. We can continue to go along in order to get along, or we can learn to love the truth and thereby save ourselves. But how can we love something we won’t even acknowledge?