Every day we are bombarded by advertizing absolutes such as: ?Trust Me,? ?The Best,? No Other?,?? ?Better than Ever,?? ??The Real Story?,? and so on, until we do not know what to believe. ? The Jehovah Witnesses even have a magazine that is called the TRUTH ? which oddly enough, is at odds with Jesus Christ because he said, ?I am the Truth!?? I know that I wonder at times, ?What is the truth about our votes ? are they really counted or just sucked into a digital electronic waste-byte basket, and then some IT crony makes up feigned data.?
And what about the President, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate leadership; do they tell us the truth?? We understand that the NSA, CIA, DIA, Army and Naval intelligence, and the State Department, never, or seldom, tells us the truth! ? Why? ? Because as we are told, there have to be state secrets!
Why need there be state secrets?? Common sense would dictate that we have state secrets, because our government is lying to another government or lying to us, because?..our government doesn?t want placed into the light of public opinion, what it has been doing!
It is noteworthy that Christ made mention of men?s penchant for avoiding light, when he said,
?This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil.? Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.?
So, the truth may be reasoned, concerning the governments of men – that they practice evil, every time they refuse to expose what they have been doing. ?
My title is taken from the remark of Pontus Pilate ? a cynical retort made to Jesus in John 18:38.? Pilot was a Roman governor, who was also a judge.? He did not wish to dispute the philosophy of truth and fact with Jesus with all of its related epistemology and ontology of Greco-philosophy.? Like the old TV program ?Badge 714,? Pilot wanted just the facts.? The idea was ? that if Pilot had the facts he would be able to ascertain the truth of the matter. ? He would render a just verdict, or so it was thought.? When his just verdict of, ?I find no fault in this man,? was disliked by the Jewish leaders, Pilot decided on a compromise ? Jesus would die as a just man for the edification of the Jewish leaders, and would be named the King of the Jews for the sake of Christ?s testimony. Something for everyone!
Truth is not about compromise.? Yet, that is what you hear Speaker John Boehner demanding.? He becomes upset with the few Republican representatives who do not wish to compromise their moral and ethical standards.
What truth is not!
Truth is not a fact.? Facts should lead to truth.? Truths can be benign and overwhelming.? Truths can be first order imperative or the second order consequential.? Facts are meaningless unless they lead to an understanding of a truth.
For example; red is not a truth, it is a descriptor for a wave length of light (color) that men can distinguish. It is a fact. Red is not a truth. However the truth about red is that it can be distinguished (discerned) from other colors.
The police are not a truth, they are a fact.? The truth about police is not that they protect ? that is an expectation ? but that they have power to stop, warn, levy a fine, arrest, and use deadly force.
What truth is!
Merriam-Webster defines ?TRUTH? as: fidelity, constancy; a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality; an original standard; GOD.?
Imagine that ? Merriam-Webster – a secular authority – recognizes that God is Truth.
It is, as I wrote previously, that Truth is an absolute that never changes.? Since everything in the world changes over time, truth is seldom reasoned from the material world. ? Climate, geology and plate tectonics change the earth?s surface.? Stars explode and become dust or shrink to neutron stars.? Numbers and species of creatures die or multiply, and in New England you can count on the weather always changing.? For example, the truth about weather and climate is that they will change.
The Conclusion of the Matter?
Logically, and from a political perspective, since Barrack Obama?s main theme is ?Change,? it can be reasoned that he does not want truth, and neither do most of the so called world experts, and leaders.
The objective of constant change is to produce a fog, where those who wish to reason the truth, can never quite find the facts.? The marketers, politicians, and the elite have designed eternal change, which is just another name for controlled chaos.? Pick a subject ? Bengasi, taxes, votes, the US GNP, the national debt, the cost of any war, what?s in our food, the total cost of Obama-care, who gives money to the DNC or the RNC, who killed Kennedy, etc. ? we will never have an accurate accounting of the facts.
From the natural, it appears that we will never know the truth.? However, from the spiritual we can obtain the overriding truth (the first order imperative) about a man, parties, and ideas, and from that, we can become aware of the effects of that truth (the second order consequential).
The Gospel of John 3:3 states that, ?God is truthful,? because Truth is an absolute ? it doesn?t change! ? Jesus said, ?I am the Way, the Truth and the Life [Jn.14:6].? Do you know of any spiritual leader or supposed god, who has ever said, they were the Way, the Truth, and the Life other than Jesus?? Did Mohammad ever say that – did Buddha, or Shiva?? The reason they didn?t, is because they have always offered a ?Change,? a different way, a different life, a different truth.? Why is, do you think, that all the religions of the world are willing to recognize each other as equal? ? Could it be that none of them are THE TRUTH!
The same approach can be applied goes to politics.? The country singer belts out, ?I?ll put a boot in your eye ? it?s the American way?!?? The Italians strut and crow for their way: sex, and theft.? The English have their way that uses the mantra, ?All things British? – which expresses knowing how to steal political freedom, and bread out of the mouths of people, and do it with gravitas.? The English can make the King of the Gipsy?s look like an amateur, and the Pontiff appear as a backwoods sacerdote.
If you want to be able to discern the truth of a matter, and keep yourself a freeperson, God has the simple answer for you.
?If you hold on to my teaching, you are really my disciples.? Then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free? [Jn.8:1-32].