Truth

Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. 2 Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. Psalm 12:1-2

    Truth has long ago made an exit from our society, or at least any idea of truth in an absolute form.  Relativity, the idea that one “truth” is as good as another and that for the sake of tolerance and peace no one “truth” can be seen as more true than another.  This is posture of our culture.  Scarier, though, is that these ideas of truth aren’t simply contained to our “secular” culture, but these concepts have found significant acceptance within our current church culture.  Those who call themselves Christians have also chosen to abandon this idea of truth and have traded it for seemingly more gracious concepts like dialogue, acceptance and embrace.  Those who champion the crazy idea that absolute truth exists are seen as harsh, unloving, dogmatic and radical.  In a culture and a church of tolerance and acceptance there is no room for ramblings about truth.  Now, while the argument about how silly and unreasonable this is has a place, this is not my point here.  My point here is simply that this isn’t a new problem.  

    Sometimes we like to feel like we’re living in the worst of all possible times and that we, as Christians who are trying to desperately hold onto God’s truth, are battling things that those before us never had to contend with.  My point is that idea is just as silly.  The struggle to uphold God’s truth has been around as long as mankind.  We aren’t unique and should avoid trying to accept any form of martyrdom for the struggle we are having to undertake in our pursuit of holding onto God’s truth.  Instead, let us take comfort in the truth that this struggle has always existed.  The Psalmist here tells us that this problem existed long before us.  The faithful have vanished, lies are everywhere, through flattery everyone is trying to make everyone feel accepted and good and people are speaking out of both sides of their mouth.  Does this sound familiar?  The abandonment of truth is simply an issue of sin.  Our hearts hate the idea that truth would come from outside of us.  We want to determine what is right and wrong.  We want to steer the ship.  We want to be gods.  This is the foundational problem of the human heart and it was revealed in a garden thousands of years ago.  This was there problem then and this is our problem now.  This understanding doesn’t mean that we abandon the fight for truth…far from it.  We must always seek to be faithful to God and His Word, believing that this is where truth is always found.  This understanding does, though, mean that we don’t lament our situation as different.  We lament that truth is being trampled, which means God is not clearly being seen.  We lament a generation and a culture that is abandoning God and missing out on the joy that is found in His salvation.  We lament people turning from God and we make our cry the same as the Psalmist’s…”Save, O Lord!”  This cry is our hope.  This cry is our assurance.  God saves!  He saves us and we plead that He saves the “them” of our world.  Church, make this our cry today: “Save, O Lord!”  

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Father, we praise You that You are a God who saves.  We pray that Your salvation would be clearly seen in our city!