TRUTH: Subject to Change without Notice by Ken Miller

Forward thoughts by Lance Cashion:
Ken Miller serves as the Grow Pastor and Minister to Men at Christ Chapel Bible Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written a fantastic article on "Truth" and Religious Lies. I have reread this article at least a dozen times and shared with my prayer group at my office. I think Ken demonstrates what we know to be truth and how lies are mixed with pieces of truth to deceive people into believing anything. This mixture is toxic to the mind, spirit and society. If you do not know "Truth", how can you possibly measure a misrepresentation of the truth or a flat out lie? 1 part Truth and 2 parts lie still equals a lie. I applaud Ken for his insight and cutting presentation of evidence that shine a light on the reality around us. You can visit Ken Miller here….

TRUTH: Subject to Change without Notice by Ken Miller
It seems there are fewer and fewer things you can really count on in life. Nothing – from cars and electronics to even our relationships – seems built to last anymore. Obsolescence is painfully inevitable. There just doesn’t seem to be much you can bank on these days, including the banks. Athletes let us down. Politicians disappoint us. Ministers fall from grace. Corporate America takes advantage of us. Friends and loved ones desert us. Our 401(k) plans fail to provide for us.

The one thing we could always depend on amid the instability of life was the truth. But if the truth be known, even truth seems to be standing on shaky ground lately. The postmodern mindset has deemed truth, like so much else in our world today, subject to change without notice. In other words, truth is considered subjective and changing, a flighty, fickle creature of our own making that is no more reliable than the stock market.

Nobody’s Right If Everybody’s Wrong
All this change demands our flexibility. (Or our tolerance, as the politically correct in our society like to refer to it.) We live in a world where about the only thing that isn’t tolerated is a lack of tolerance. Everyone is free to come up with their own version of the truth as long as they don’t try to promote it as the truth. This is a dilemma for us as Christians. After all, we claim to know the truth (1 John 1:21). Jesus Christ Himself professed to be the truth (John 14:6). We believe our version of truth has the power to set us free (John 8:32). This truth resides in us (John 16:13; 2 John 1:2). The Bible is the ultimate source of all truth (John 17:17). And we are called to live according to the truth it reveals (3 John 1:4).

But if we have the truth, what about everybody else? The answer lies in the lyrics to “For What It’s Worth,” an old Buffalo Springfield song from the ‘60s:

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

The battle lines are being drawn. Some say there is no objective truth, but even that is an objective truth statement. It’s either true or it’s a lie. It’s either right or it’s wrong. And nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong. But the truth is that the truth is right. God’s truth. The truth as revealed in His written Word and demonstrated in the life of Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh. Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6 NASB). If this is true, then every other brand or version of truth that does not line up with this statement is wrong. It’s a lie.

Religious Lies
And the lies are abundant. Many are hidden in the respectable guise of religion. Concealed by a thin veneer of truth, these subtle, almost subliminal lies appear to be trustworthy and true. That’s what makes them so dangerously deceptive. They appeal to our common sense. They resonate with our rational minds. They give us plausible alternatives to the truth that are far more acceptable and a lot less threatening to our self-centered little kingdoms of one. Over the centuries, countless lies have been perpetrated in the name of religion. Lies about God. Lies about heaven and how to get there. Lies about hell and its existence. Lies about the Bible and its believability and reliability. Lies about the sinfulness of man and what to do about it. And finally, lies about Jesus and His claims about who He was.

The Father of Lies
Where do all these lies come from? Who is behind all these attempts at deception and deceit? According to Jesus, it’s none other than Satan himself: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44 NASB). Satan is a liar and a deceiver. He is the consummate con man. A smoothtalking shyster and a four-flushing fraud who wants to confuse and conceal the real truth with his own virulent variation of it. His modus operandi from the beginning has been to blend a toxic cocktail made up of one-part truth and two-parts falsehood. It’s exactly what he did in the garden and he’s been doing it ever since.

And Satan’s favorite targets are the religious. He doesn’t waste time trying to get us to deny God’s existence. He simply convinces us that God is detached, demanding, unknowable and too big and too impersonal for man to have any kind of relationship with Him. This is the god of most of the religions of the world: a divine, distant deity who’s more of a force or a disembodied power than a real being who longs to have a relationship with man. And the truth is, some of us as Christians struggle with knowing God. We have a hard time talking to Him. We don’t feel like He listens to us. In essence, He seems unapproachable.

Another favorite lie of the enemy has to do with the Bible and its reliability. “It’s just another religious book,” he persuasively pleads. “Sure, it’s got some great tips for living and some timeless wisdom, but it was written by men, not God. It’s full of errors and man’s opinions and is way too out of touch to be of much use in today’s more complex society.” While most religions of the world admire the Bible, they don’t view it as the inspired Word of God. But the same could be said about countless Christian denominations today. They reject the notion that the Bible is inspired and without error. They question both its accuracy and veracity.

Then there’s the topic of sin and man’s depravity. Satan has this one down. He appeals to our intelligence, convincing us that the very concept of sin is both illogical and irrational. Even some of the world’s leading religions reject the idea of original sin or man’s moral depravity. Some refer to it as negative karma or the unenlightened state. Even those that refer to it as sin only believe that it’s an act done against the will of God, but not a state of being. They have bought Satan’s lie that man is inherently good and sin is nothing more than the consequences of a bad environment, poor education or inequality of opportunity.

What about heaven? Satan isn’t really interested in getting you to doubt its existence, but he does try to confuse the means by which you get there. This is probably the most common lie among all the world’s religions. Christianity is the only religion not based on man somehow earning his way into heaven. They all feature some form of rules-based, god-appeasing system by which man reaches heaven, Brahman, Nirvana or whatever state of enlightenment he’s trying to attain. Self-effort rules the day. Good works and good intentions are the standard of measurement. There’s no need for a savior, because you can save yourself. And this lie has taken on an even more subtle form for many Christ followers today. We confess that we are saved by faith alone in Christ alone, but then we spend our entire lives trying to keep God pleased by our good works.

Of course, Satan’s least favorite topic and the one where he spends the greatest amount of his effort at deception is hell. He knows the existence of hell is a tremendous motivator to mankind. So he spends a great deal of time trying to convince us it doesn’t really exist. He even appeals to our belief in a loving God as evidence against the existence of a place of eternal torment. How could a good and loving God create a place like that? But the enemy’s greatest efforts are reserved for denigrating the deity of Jesus and denying His role as the Savior of mankind. In reality, the first five lies culminate in this final one.

If God is unapproachable, He wouldn’t have bothered sending His Son. If the Bible is unreliable, then everything it tells us about Jesus being the Son of God is a fabrication of someone’s fertile imagination. If sin is irrational and man is inherently good, then no one needs a Savior. If heaven is attainable through my own good works, then I don’t need what Christ did for me on the Cross. If hell is inconceivable and everyone goes to heaven, then Jesus becomes nonessential. Now while most of us as Christians would never embrace this lie knowingly, we may struggle believing in the virgin birth, the stories of His miracles or the historical reality of His resurrection. There are Christian churches in this city that downplay all three. But without them, you end up with a nonessential Jesus. A good man, but not the Good News of God’s grace and mercy.

Truth of Consequences
We live in a day when truth is in short supply. We are surrounded by falsehood and constantly bombarded by the lies of the enemy. But Jesus told His followers “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32 NLT). We don’t have to believe the lies,religious or otherwise. We can know the truth and we can live in the freedom it brings. Freedom that comes from knowing our God is approachable and longs to have a relationship with us. Freedom that comes from knowing our sinfulness is real, but so is our Savior. Freedom that comes from realizing that heaven is attainable, not based on our own feeble human efforts, but on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Freedom that comes from knowing hell is a real place, but that we have been saved from it. Freedom that comes from knowing the Bible can be trusted because it is the Word of God. And the Word of God that reveals the truth of God is not subject to change without notice.
-Ken Miller (Oct 2009)