Truth and Personal Relationship ...

Thursday, January 26, 2012. When we read some text, what is our reason to read? In particular, when it is a text about facts? When it is a scientific text, why do you want to read it? When you read the bible, why do you read?

Eternal truth and personal involvement …

I have been looking into the Gospel of John recently. It talks about the origin of Jesus. There are beautiful images about “the word” and “the light”, which has been with God at the beginning and then came to us. On one hand, these are texts about the truth, about facts. They talk about where Jesus comes from.

Is it enough to just know those facts? It can be true that Jesus was with God at the beginning of the world. But perhaps it is completely meaningless for us! Why should we be interested in such a story? We are interested only if it has a relationship to us personally - directly or indirectly!

Even in science there are two main streams: we want to know and we want to do. We want to understand, and we want to control. We want to gain insight and we want to gain the capability to do things! It is about science and engineering.

The biblical mixture …

The bible also offers us a mixture. It is an integrated concept, which contains basic truth as well as action, relationship and emotions. But to make sense of the truth, we need some relationship to the truth. We need faith!

It is interesting: faith brings us into a relationship with God. Faith means that we trust God. And we are linked to him. The New Testament talks of believers to become “children of God”. They live in community with the Lord.

In this community the truth makes sense. Here, truth is relevant. It is more than a story. It is more than something abstract. It is something important for us. It is something linked to us. With faith truth is relevant! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts