{"id":1897,"date":"2022-08-18T07:46:57","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T11:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1897"},"modified":"2022-08-18T07:47:39","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T11:47:39","slug":"the-message-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/18\/the-message-of-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Message of Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout the month of August, we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.  They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d  <\/em>
 
In 1996, the United States Air Force published a paper describing the technological possibilities of controlling the weather.
 
It\u2019s a decision they no doubt wish they could take back. 
 
Conspiracy theorists immediately floated the idea that the contrails streaming behind commercial jets aren’t water vapor condensation, but are actually \u201cchemtrails\u201d \u2013 toxic, mind-altering chemicals being deliberately sprayed on unsuspecting human populations by an unidentified governmental agency.  The airline industry found this notion to be ridiculous.  And they said so.  Their denials only deepened the convictions of chemtrail believers.  \u201cThey know the truth, and now they\u2019re trying to hide it.\u201d 
 
A few years later, the internet exploded with alleged photographic proof of the nefarious plot.  Conspiracy buffs posted photos of the interior of a jetliner.  The cabin was filled with large metal barrels, each of which was ominously connected to a long tube.  This was the evidence everyone had been seeking.
 
Aircraft designers patiently explained that the picture was innocent.  It depicted a standard test to evaluate jet performance.  Those were barrels of water, intended to simulate the weight of passengers. 
 
But as Mick West explains in his book Escaping the Rabbit Hole<\/em>, many people found that explanation unconvincing.  West \u2013 who happens to be the world\u2019s best-known chemtrail debunker<\/em> \u2013 knows that even the presentation of rock-solid facts doesn\u2019t always have the capacity to open closed minds.
 
The power of social media to rapidly disseminate ideas has made the first decades of the 21st<\/sup> century the golden age of conspiracy theories.  Old conspiracies have gained new life, such as the widely held belief that multiple shooters took down JFK.  The moon landings were faked.  The earth is flat, and the government is covering this up.
 
New conspiracies have rocketed to center stage.  Entire websites are devoted to the notion that the 9\/11 terror attacks were an inside job.  The auto industry is hiding the existence of a car that runs on water.  Jewish satellites equipped with laser beams started last year\u2019s devastating forest fires in California. 
 
Make no mistake: There really are conspiracies out there.  Key leaders at Enron conspired to manipulate their accounting procedures.  The Reagan administration conspired to hide international deals that were expressly forbidden by Congress.  LBJ managed to turn a questionable incident in the Gulf of Tonkin into an acceleration of the Vietnam War.  Subsequent investigations helped uncover the truths behind those chapters of history. 
 
But the danger we currently face is the growing sense that \u201ctruth\u201d itself is an outdated idea, and that we live in a post-truth society in which facts have lost their relevance.
 
Near the beginning of the movie The Matrix<\/em>, Morpheus offers Neo two pills.  If he takes the blue pill, he can go back to his boring, predictable, phony life.  If he takes the red pill, his mind will be opened to the reality that nothing is as it really seems.  He can \u201csee how far the rabbit hole goes,\u201d a reference to the reality-bending journey of Alice in Lewis Carroll\u2019s Wonderland<\/em> books. 
 
\u201cJust remember,\u201d Donald Trump once told a crowd during his presidency, \u201cwhat you are seeing and what you are reading is not what\u2019s happening.\u201d 
 
If we lose the bedrock confidence that we can actually know what\u2019s going on around us, then Christianity will be standing on wobbly legs.  Paul makes that clear in verse 13: \u201cAnd you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>
 
For followers of Jesus, truth matters. 
 
At the simplest level, we need to know whom we can trust.  If I am paying to have my roof repaired, I intend to hire someone who knows<\/u><\/em> what he\u2019s doing \u2013 not someone who believes in roofing with all of his heart.  We want money managers who know<\/u><\/em> how to invest wisely, not men and women who have some interesting hunches as to how the market might perform next year.  
 
In the Bible, trust in God is always based on actual knowledge.  Biblically, there\u2019s no such thing as a leap of faith.  Real faith is a commitment to action based on real knowledge of God and God\u2019s ways<\/em>.  And that is founded on \u201cthe message of truth\u201d that Paul advertises in this verse.
 
It\u2019s worth zeroing in on the verb that Paul uses: \u201cwhen you heard<\/strong> the message of truth\u2026\u201d
 
In a contemporary Western culture like ours, \u201chearing\u201d is chiefly a function of the ears.  I hear a sermon and think, \u201cThose are interesting ideas that I should try to remember.\u201d  I hear my doctor recommend that I should start exercising and lose some weight.  I say to myself, \u201cI\u2019ll take that under advisement.\u201d 
 
Things were different for the Hebrews in Bible times.  Hearing was virtually synonymous with obedience.  \u201cHear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one\u2026\u201d begins the most important prayer in all of Judaism (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).  It is called the Shema, which means \u201cHear.\u201d  To pray the Shema is to affirm that God is God, and we are not.  Jesus declares, \u201cMy sheep hear my voice\u201d (John 10:27).  That means far more than the registering of sound waves on the ears.  To hear Jesus in this context means to affirm that he is the Good Shepherd, and that I must run to him right now<\/em> for security. 
 
When Paul tells his readers that they heard<\/em> the message of truth, he means that they took it in and made it part of their life.
 
Lee McIntyre, a philosopher at Boston University and the author of Post-Truth<\/em>, emphasizes the difference between skepticism and what he calls denialism.  Skepticism is healthy.  When someone makes a claim, we should pause and ask, \u201cIs this really true?\u201d  Skeptics who ask honest questions and are willing to do the hard work of discernment are often on their way to meeting Christ.
 
Denialism, on the other hand, is \u201creally damaging,\u201d according to McIntyre.  It\u2019s \u201cthe idea that if you don\u2019t want to believe something, you don\u2019t have to believe it.\u201d
 
A practitioner of denialism doesn\u2019t have to listen to aviation experts.  \u201cI know the real story.  Those are chemtrails.\u201d  Denialists don\u2019t have to believe public health experts, journalists, Bible teachers, scientists, intelligence agencies, election officials, or preachers.  They\u2019re all selling something.  It\u2019s all fake news.   
 
Denialism is becoming an acceptable approach to reality for millions of people. 
 
Trust in the truthfulness of truth, once it\u2019s lost, is hard to restore.  McIntyre, for one, wonders if such trust will ever return to America\u2019s public square. 
 
So where is our hope that future generations will always be able to \u201chear the message of truth\u201d? 
 
It\u2019s deeply rooted in God\u2019s strategy to reveal himself to the world.  Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer famously said that the best way to send a message is to wrap it up in a person.
 
God\u2019s good news is wrapped up in Someone you can actually meet \u2013 the One who calls himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

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Throughout the month of August, we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.  They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d   In 1996, the United States Air Force published a paper describing the technological possibilities of controlling the weather. It\u2019s a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[480,108],"class_list":["post-1897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ephesians","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1900,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions\/1900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}