Thursday, July 10

Living as a child of the Manor....

"So Jesus said to those Jews who believed in him, "If you live by what I say, you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They replied to Jesus, "We are Abraham's descendants, and we've never been anyone's slaves. So how can you say that we will be set free?" Jesus answered them, "I can guarantee this truth: Whoever lives a sinful life is a slave to sin. A slave doesn't live in the home forever, but a son does." John 8:31-35 GWT

We've all heard the phrase bandied around, "The truth will set you free", for a variety of reasons....even to sell a product on the t.v. It is often used in prophetizing to those lost souls in the darkness of the world and its confusion and pain.

But, as I've written...and what has been commented on.....truth seems to be an illusionary thing, subjected to a mirage of ideas, theories, and assumptions.
Jesus Christ said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light." End of discussion.

He didn't say, "Hey, I think"...."Look deep into yourself for truth".

He said, "I AM TRUTH".

When man decides he can define truth, it is relatively easy to dispute and corrupt that definition. We each want to be important within the communities in which we live, play, work, and breathe. We want weight in our being, we want to stand for something (even if it is our own self-importance). We spend our lives in a quest for truth, because the truths we discover are dependent upon the culture of the times and the mood of those who we interact with.

Truth is as illusionary as our happiness. "Once let a man become persuaded that he is a hero in quest of the holy grail of truth and he becomes a victim of a pretty and pleasant delusion that inflates his ego and blinds him to the very truth he claims to seek." A.W. Tozer comments about this search, "And if he is later forced to admit that he has not found it he absolves himself from all guilt, for has he not searched? Has he not hunted through the years for the precious treasure? Where is the stone he has left unturned? Where has he not drilled or digged among the philosophies and religions of the world? Why then has he not found? To him there can be only one answer: The Spirit and Wisdom of the universe has let him down."

If Truth is so illusionary and simply Don Quxito's windmill when it comes down to it, why do we continue to seek it in everything we do. Why don't we just give up, declare the world against us and, if there is indeed a 'God', then He has too abandoned us. We become disillusioned by this constant failure to find truth, that absolute truth that cannot be changed, adapted, or defined by others but meets the criticisms and derision of those opposed to its utterance.

We can place a litmus test upon each of the 'debatable' sins and commandments of the Bible and the utterings of this 'God-Man' Jesus by simply looking at the past, when the moral and spiritual fiber of this country was in good health and compare it to today, where society is king and culture has shifted truth to fit the needs of the multitude.

In each case, we can see the destruction and continued decay of the moral and spiritual fiber of the world as we allow each of those sins to 'be accomadated' so that we won't be called intolerant. We can look to the life-living philosphies of our faith in action and point to the problem of why this life doesn't always work. If we pretend there is no accountability, cause and effect, action and reaction, then we become a slave to that which we ignore.

As Christ said, "A slave doesn't have the solid place to be that a child of the manor does." It is important to speak the Truth, regardless of the circumstances. It is even more important to live it.

As A.W. Tozer concludes, "Disillusioning people is a thankless task and quite plainly does not come under the category of making friends and thinking positively. Nevertheless it must be done if we are to rescue lost men from the consequences of their delusions. So let me say boldly that it is not the difficulty of discovering truth but the unwillingness to obey it that makes it so rare among men."

If we obey the words of Christ, we will be set free. The Truth is available to us to know, will we chose to follow it?