“Living My Truth...”

“My truth...”  “Speaking my truth...” “Your truth...” I have read a number of articles to try and learn what is meant by “My truth.”  There are a number of suggestions such as:

“The way I see things may be different than the way you see things.”

 

“Be true to yourself.”

 

“A pretentious substitute for a non-negotiable personal opinion.”

 

“The way I see and understand something may be different than the way you see

and perceive it.” 

 

“I know some stuff, and it’s likely that may change over time.”

 

In a recent trailer for a show on Hulu titled, Faces of Music, one of the cast members stated what I think is the current understanding of “Your truth” with the following words: “It is not about right or wrong, it’s about your truth.”   

 

Maybe there is no real definition of what “Your truth” really means and maybe that is the point.  The reality is that we live in a day and age when truth is determined by one’s experiences and feelings which is nothing new, just a different dress.  So, is there such a thing as “your truth?”  The good news is that the Bible does address the question of truth.

 

The Unknown but Knowable God

Permit me to begin with a story. About 600 hundred years before Paul ever set foot in Athans, there was a plague that came upon Athens that none of their gods could answer or fix.  The leaders of that city learned of a man who was a prophet of what they called the “unknown God.”  They summoned a representative of this unknown god from Crete, and he instructed them what was needed for the plague to be lifted.  This representative requested two flock of sheep be brought — one white flock and one black flock.  He prayed to this unknown God and asked that all the sheep that he caused to lay down to graze, would be sacrificed to this god on a new stone alter.  Well, there were sheep that did lay down to graze, so they were sacrificed on alters to the unknown God and the plague was lifted as a result. 

 

This unknown god was worshiped and then forgotten over time until two of Athens’ elders found one of the altars and refurbished it.  One of the things they had done to this altar was that they etched into it an inscription that read: “TO THE UNKOWN GOD.”  This was the altar the Apostle discovered while walking through Athens.  This was the only God the Athens had no idols for whom they did not create or know.  This is the God who, according to the Bible, “…has planted eternity in the human heart” (Eccl. 3:11b; NLT).

 

What the altar to “THE UNKOWN GOD” teaches us is that we grope around for something to make sense of our world and to discover something more than what is visibly before us.  The reality is that each of us is born spiritually blind just as the Bible states: “...the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).  It is not all that different with our society’s pursuit of truth. 

 

This whole business about speaking your truth or standing in your truth reminds me of the six blind people who heard about a strange animal, called an elephant, that had been brought into their village.  Because none of them were aware of an elephant’s shape or form they thought they would inspect the creature by touching it. One of the blind men grabbed the elephant’s trunk and said, “This elephant is like a big snake.”  Another blind man felt the elephant’s ear, and said the elephant seemed like the shape of a fan.  Another who felt the elephant’s leg, said, “this creature is a pillar like the trunk of a tree.”  The blind man who placed his hand upon the side of the elephant said it is like a wall that breathes. The blind man who felt its tail, described the elephant as being like a rope.  The blind man who felt its tusk, stated that the elephant is like a spear. 

 

People trying to figure out what truth is or what their purpose is in life are like those blind men. There may have been some truth to what they felt but could not understand what they were touching unless they understood that what was before them was much greater than individual experiences.  We live in a world full of blind men groping in the darkness trying to make sense of it without considering the Creator who made it all.   

 

God is Too Big to Be Manipulated (vv. 22-25)

There was a god to be worshiped for just about every occasion in Athens.  We are told that Paul’s spirit, “...was being provoked within him as he observed that the city was full of idols” (v. 16).  It is important to point out that his spirit was provoked, but it was not because he thought those who worshiped those idols knew better.  The provocation that he felt was not unlike the kind of provocation you might feel if a family was asleep in a house on fire, the provocation you would feel in your spirit would be the recognition that you had a moral obligation to do all that you could to wake the family up and get them out of the house before it was too late. 

 

What we can learn from Paul in the way he addressed the Athens is that he used their culture as a bridge to introduce them to the God they did not know who was too big to be manipulated like the gods they created.  By bringing the gospel to Athens, Paul shared how there was only one true God who was knowable only because He has made Himself known.  He alone “made the world and everything that is in it…” and He, “…does not dwell in temples made by human hands…”(vv. 24-25).  The God who made everything is not served by human hands like the hundreds of idols that filled Athans.  What Paul meant is that the God they thought was unknowable did not need to be cleaned up, polished, or fixed, because as Creator... He cannot be manipulated. As Creator and since He made everything, God is in need of nothing. Not only does the One true God need nothing, but He also cannot be treated as an idol because unlike the idols people create, He alone, “gives to all people life and breath and all things.”  What this means is that God does not adjust or yield to what we think truth is.  Because He is the Creator, by default... we are the creature; manipulating God is as impossible as it is for a statue to manipulate the artist who made it.

 

Apart from God, we are blind and what spiritually blind people are able to see are the shadows of spiritual truth.  People genuinely know that both good and evil exist.  The Greek Mythology of the Athenians proves this as do the stories we read and watch.  I believe that all humans, although spiritually blind, are able to see and sense the reality of the existence of God and his truth.  The Athenians groped in the darkness in pursuit of truth while their only hope was the gospel of Jesus Christ that allows us to know the truth of who God is and how to live in the world He created. 

 

Our Purpose Is Too Significant to Be Ignored (vv. 26-29)

When God created mankind, He created us with a deficiency that could only be met by Him.  Why else would the Apostle write that God created men and women, “if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us” (v. 27).  God has created in us a deep longing for Him because He has made us in His image.  In verse 28, Paul said to the Athens: “for in Him we live and move and exist...”  Think about that statement for a moment.  Our living and moving and very existence is found and experienced in God.  In other words, our purpose in life is found in Him.  Every study out there that has been done about the importance of finding your purpose in life reveals how important having purpose is. 

 

We humans are like the farmer who was seen by his neighbor shooting at his barn. As the neighbor got closer to the farmer’s barn, he noticed the many targets panted onto the side of his barn, and at the center of every single target was a bullet hole put there by the farmer’s gun.  The neighbor commented to the farmer: “Wow! You are an amazing marksman, your ability to hit the bullseye from that distance is impressive!  What is your secret, and can you teach me?”  To which the farmer replied: “It is really not that hard, for I first shoot my hole and then I draw the target around it.”  To live life like the Athens or to make up truth as you go without any consideration of who God really is, is to shoot for what we think is important and then draw the meaning of life around it. We shoot for security and then draw the meaning of life around it.  We shoot for relationships and then draw the meaning of life around it.  We shoot for what we think truth should be and then draw the meaning of life around it.  When we do that, we are like the blind person groping around in the darkness only to left with a creation out of our own imagination!  

 

Because the people Paul was speaking to probably had little understanding of the Hebrew Bible, he used the pagan poets of the day to illustrate the truth of God.  So Paul told these guys: see, even those whom you respect have said: “for in Him we live and move and exist...” Which was a statement probably taken from the same guy who 600 years ago introduced the Athenians to the unknown God.

 

The point is that we are not the creator, we are the created.  We live and move and have our being in Him because He is the One who fashioned us, not out of necessity, but out of love.  The most loving thing God could have ever done for you and me is that He created us that we might find our joy in the One in Whom we “live, and move and exist...” (v. 28).  Paul then quoted one of their poets to show that although such poets groped in the darkness, God was not far from them: “for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His descendants.’”  Paul did not stop there: “Therefore, since we are the descendants of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, and image formed by human skill and thought” (v. 29).  In other words, God is not what we make of Him, but instead our purpose, joy, and satisfaction ultimately can only be found in and through Him. 

 

Conclusion

God, the Creator, the Ancient of Day, the One who has and is “declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done” (Isa. 46:9-10) has invited you and I to know Him and to enjoy Him on a level far above the rest of creation, and He did it through His Son, Jesus Christ!  Jesus Christ, the all-sufficient payment who was sacrificed for our sins to reconcile us to God the Father.  What Paul said in conclusion to those gathered on Mars Hill is the equivalent of a mic drop: “So having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now proclaiming to mankind that all people everywhere are to repent, because He has set a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all people by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31).

 

God did not nor is He currently overlooking sin in the same way a negligent parent overlooks the bad behavior of their child.  No! God has and is currently overlooking the sins of people since that salvation is still available to sinners, that the offer of redemption and reconciliation through Jesus Christ is still offered to sinners everywhere. To suggest truth is what you make it is ignorant, to grope for this religion and that religion is to grope in ignorance.  Here is what Jesus said about groping in the dark:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him.... And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed. (John 3:16-17, 19-20)

 

Today is the day to quit groping in the dark and to take hold of the same Jesus who has declared: “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life” (John 8:12).  He is Him who said: “I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades” (Rev. 1:17b-18).

 

When the people heard this, some believed, but most were dismissive.  Think about the message of the cross for a moment.  For those of us who consider the gospel to be the power of God because we have experienced it as such, ours is a hope that sounds like it was torn right from the pages of mythology.  God got a young virgin girl pregnant by His Holy Spirit so that the child of her womb would be both a god and a man to defeat the forces of evil, fix all the ills of our world, then rule as a King on earth and the way that he would do this is to first allow His god/man child to die the most painful and humiliating death possible.  No wonder the word of the cross sounds so foolish to most people.

 

Yet it is through the message of the cross concerning the historic facts that Jesus both died for our sins and rose for the forgiveness of sin, as outrageous as it may sound, that God is rescuing sin-cursed humans from His just wrath.  Paul had shared the greatest news in the universe with the Athenians, and some, like those in our day, dismissed it as foolish.

 

Truth is truth! Whatever you think “your truth” is, if it is not shaped and informed by the God for Whom, “we live and move and exist...” (v. 28a) is to grope in the darkness of our sin and ignorance. 

 

When it comes to those who do not know Jesus, they are still groping in the darkness of their sin and ignorance.  You cannot expect people who do not know Jesus to do anything but grope in the darkness, but you can point them to the light of who Jesus is! 

For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be Put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? But how are they to preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

 

You, dear Christian, are that preacher God has sent into your home, your neighborhood, into the circle of your friendships, your work, and into your world!  The apostle Paul had beautiful feet.  How beautiful are your feet?  God has called you to bring the light of Jesus into the darkness of your world.  That, my dear friend, is your truth.