Day 11

“Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

John 14:5-6 ESV 

Jesus is the truth. Well, if you believe in Him then I guess He is the truth for you. But, truth is subjective, right? 

Well, that is the prevailing philosophy of the day. “What’s true for you is true for you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true for me.” The claim is that truth is relative and those who make this claim will state it as absolute fact… You see how this can be logically problematic? It’s a nonsensical conclusion based in what it rejects and not founded on anything that it holds to. In essence, the concept of relative truth is actually just a simple rejection of absolute truth rather than a positive claim about reality. What they really mean when they make statements like these is, “I don’t accept your truth claims, but I’m pretending to be nice about it and I also don’t have any other grounded position to replace your view.” In other words, “You’re wrong, even though I have no good reason to believe your wrong.” At it’s core, it’s a very infantile form of argumentation. 

So, if they don’t have another established view, why are they so adamantly against the Christian worldview? According to the Bible, the truth of God is made plain to the world. So, rather than being ignorant or unaware of the truth, people instead actively suppress it. In the first chapter of Romans, Paul has a strong word about a people who had done this that sounds almost like he was talking about our current world, today. 

Romans 1:18-25 

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 

People reject Christ as the truth because of what that truth means for how they live their lives. If Jesus is more than a nice or wise teacher, but actually the true Lord of all Creation, then that means that we are not our own masters. 

Furthermore, in claiming to be the truth, not just truth in general or a truth amongst others, He is also making a claim of authority over reality. If we could fully understand this, our lives would look radically different. Our world, the one we experience with our five senses is not the deepest reality. Jesus preexisted on a plane of reality wholly outside of what we know. According scientific theory, if a being were to exist outside of our 3 dimensional universe, they would potentially be able to hold time itself like a physical construct; manipulating, acting and interacting with it in a similar way that we would hold an object or turn a Rubik’s cube. They would be able to see the end and the beginning simultaneously. A being on existing on a higher dimensional plane would be as incomprehensible to us as we would be to a two-dimensional stick figure we drew on a piece of paper. Now, if such a being were to enter into our plane of existence, they wouldn’t cease to be a higher dimensional being, but they would have to simplify their essence and translate themselves into a form that could exist in a lower dimensional state, but they would then be able to give us information from their perspective outside of time, space and matter that was 100% accurate as well as conceivably maintain the ability to manipulate our reality. If our existence is in reality, then they would exist in super-reality. If our universe abides by the laws of nature, they would be able to override those laws supernaturally. Now, this is some nerd stuff, for sure, but in this instance theoretical science might help us to develop a category for what it means that Jesus is the truth. He is so utterly beyond our levels of understanding that it’s not just what He says goes, it’s that our universe was entirely fashioned by His decree. When He makes prophecies, they are not at all predictive but definitive because He has always seen the end from before time began. 

But, as Paul said, men exchange the truth of God for a lie and we worship creation, usually ourselves, instead of the Creator. If we continue to do this for long enough, God will give us over to the lies we want to believe. When I look around in our culture today, it’s hard to feel like that hasn’t already happened in large part. The good news is that Jesus is not just the way, and not even just the truth. Tomorrow, we will see what it means that Jesus is the life!

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