Searching for the Truth ...

Monday, Nov 12, 2012. Often, discussions about faith or truth take place on the background of our modern society. I am a child of this modern society, and so are you if you grew up in western Europe or in the United States, in Canada, or perhaps in Southern America, Australia or New Zealand and many more countries.

Judging what is true …

Searching for the truth is one of the driving forces of our societies. Science has evolved strongly over the past 500 years, leading to increased insight into natural laws, into the physical and chemical processes on this planet as well as the biological processes in our body, mental processes in our mind and social processes in our societies.

We have learned how we can judge what is true. We need to be able to see ourselves, we have a mind to judge. Everyone can take part in this - at least in principle, if he has time to understand and carry out experiments and think about theories. Truth is accessible to everyone, and it is judged by a community of individuals who are critical and careful about it.

The topics of faith, however, are much more difficult to judge on this level. God is not a part of creation, he is above creation. Thus, he is not directly accessible by classical experiments nor by statistics, where you can repeat and will see. The role of Jesus, forgiveness, hope, the hidden but mighty power of the Lord, … all this is not directly accessible to our scientific mind. Theology has partly fled into a kind of literature study. But it is a reasonable question to ask for truth in faith!

The offer of Jesus …

The New Testament, however, claims that truth can be found and seen. Truth is very important to the writers of the bible. Search for “truth” in the bible, you get hundreds of passages. Standard experiments do not work with God. But we are nevertheless invited to see the truth. Jesus says:

“Anyone who wants to do the will of God will know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own. 18 Those who speak for themselves want glory only for themselves, but a person who seeks to honor the one who sent him speaks truth, not lies.” (John 7: 17)

When we want to do the will of God, we will see. That is the way truth about God can be seen. It is not an experiment, where you can test it independently of the individual. Many can see, but they all need to go the path of faith. It is experience, for those “who want to do the will of God”. It cannot be achieved lightly. You need to want to do the will of God. This way of insight into the truth is highly interesting, and exciting when you start to go the way of faith! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts