Jesus Does Not Fit in a Box…

I first remember meeting Jesus in preschool Sunday School, where my Aunt Faye showed us a picture of a kind man with beautiful hair and brown eyes.  She told us the most amazing stories: how he walked on water, healed a blind man, and rose from the dead.  Aunt Faye made sure we knew that Jesus loved us.  This was the Jesus I gave my heart to when I was eight years old. 

When I was in Middle School, I met Jesus again.  One of the periodic “He’s coming soon” panics was sweeping our corner of the world.  I was told Jesus would come like a thief in the night.  This was hard to integrate; thieves, in my world, were not nice people.  But I remember what Aunt Faye said: “Jesus loves you, Clay.”  I was not sure how to wrap all this into one picture.  Was Jesus the kind man who loved me, or the coming King who would judge the world and wipe out the wicked?  I began to be afraid of Jesus. Just to be on the safe side, every night I would ask Jesus to save me, just in case I was not saved and just in case he came back during the night, broke in like a thief, took my Momma, and left me (I was pretty sure my brother Steve would be left with me). 

In college, I was introduced to Jesus, the radical.  Someone put a copy of the Cotton Patch Gospel in my hand, and for the first time, I realized Jesus cared about things like racial division and injustice.  This was new to me.  I grew up in the South with a mild strain of prejudice but thought I was okay because, after all, Jesus was white.  At least he was in the picture in Aunt Faye’s classroom.   Somehow, my brain made the connection that Jesus was a Jew, probably with olive skin, and often mistreated because of his racial background.  I never knew that.  I discovered Jesus really did want me to love my neighbor, regardless of his or her skin color. 

In seminary, I was exposed to all kinds of thinking about Jesus.  Some scholars said he was not really God’s son, just a really good teacher.  Other scholars said we could not know much about Jesus because he lived so long ago.  There were other voices, each with an opinion about Jesus.  The scholarly debates felt odd; they were like talking about a person who was standing right beside you, instead of talking to the person.  The greatest temptation I faced in seminary was to talk about Jesus instead of talk to Jesus.   

It was about this time, in a counselor’s office, that I was introduced to the deep grace of Jesus.  While I was surrounded by theories about Jesus, I began to experience at a soul level the grace of Jesus, pouring over the wounds of my soul, healing the cuts, and transforming the pain of my own mistakes and sins.  It was coming full circle; I was back to Jesus as I first knew Him.  But He was beyond Aunt Faye’s simple picture.  He was the gracious, living Savior who knew me by name and the King with the power to restore what was broken. 

I had begun to serve Jesus as a pastor and a teacher by this time.  People would come to me, telling me what Jesus would do, or telling me what Jesus would say, or remonstrating me because Jesus would make a different choice that would not make anyone mad.  By this time, I knew Jesus well enough to know Jesus could not be fit into a box.  Whenever we try to bend Jesus to be who we want Him to be, we end up with a picture that tells only part of the story. 

In the years I have served and followed Jesus, what I have come to know is this: Jesus is a real person.  You cannot caricature Him with a sentence or a few paragraphs.  He is more than can be captured by words.  He is even more than that picture Aunt Faye showed me when I was three.   You only really get to know Jesus when you do life with Him, when you follow Him.   

Make sure the Jesus you know is not just a picture; make sure He is the one you are following.  If your Jesus can fit in a box, you are not following the real Jesus. 

Done My Time…

Every small rural church has at least one matriarch.  The matriarch told her husband or her son how to vote in Deacon’s meetings, making sure the color of the new carpet was what she wanted it to be, and kept in contact with other strong-willed women in the church.   Mrs. Tucker was one of the matriarchs of the church I pastored in rural Kentucky.   She was a part of a prosperous farming family that had been in that community for over a hundred years.  I knew, without anyone telling me, I need to visit her regularly.  When you are a pastor of a country church, that is part of the job description: visit the older people. 

Mrs. Tucker was always gracious to me.  We would sit in the parlor, a room filled with fine antiques, and she would serve me sweet tea.  We would talk about farming, and she would tell me about her daughter, who taught school in Germany at an American Air Force Base.   

She did not like some of the changes happening in the community.  Farms were being divided.  Fields that once grew crops were sprouting houses.  New people were changing her world and her church.  Her way of life, so familiar, was slowly dying.  She was old-school: she still drank raw milk from the dairy, put up vegetables from her garden, and carried herself with great dignity.   

I was an outsider, of course, and anxious to reach new people.  That meant we needed more space—that required money.  As the church wrestled with these issues, I thought it was important for Mrs. Tucker to be on the committee that would decide these things.  I knew I had to ask in person.   

I made my way to her home.  We sat in the parlor and shared some sweet tea.  Then I made my big ask: “Mrs. Tucker, would you please serve on the Building Team.”   She put down her glass and fixed her school-teacher gaze on me.  “Young man…” she began.  I have learned when a conversation begins with “Young man…” nothing good is going to come after that.   

“Young man,” she said, “I have been a member of our church for over sixty years.  I am not sure we need a new building.  But besides that, I have done my time.  I have been on more committees than you can imagine.  I must decline.  It is time for someone else to carry the load.” 

I had my answer.  We made pleasant conversation after that, and I left.  But her phrase, “I have done my time,” bothered me.  The only other time I had heard that was in reference to being in jail.  Is serving on a church committee really like being in jail?  I am sure she did not mean it that way.  But she was clear: her time of serving was done. 

I thought about Noah.  What if he said, “God, I am too old to build a boat.  I have tried to serve you all these centuries; it is time for a younger person to take over.”  Would anyone have built the ark? 

I thought about Abraham.  What if he said, “God, I am too old to be changing diapers.  How can I be a Dad at a hundred years old?”  In fact, Abraham did say that to God.  God told him, “I am going to do this – believe me.”  Abraham, at a hundred, started a new life of getting up in the middle of the night and changing diapers. 

I thought about Moses.  After his major mess-up in Egypt, he wound up working for his father-in-law.  God appeared to him in a burning bush and told him to go and confront Pharoah, telling him, “Let my people go.”  Like Abraham, Moses tried to duck the assignment.  God said, “No, I am sending you.” 

There is a pattern here: God looks at older people and says, “I still have a purpose for you.”  Where did we ever get the idea we can retire from serving our God?  If you are breathing, God still has a plan for your life.  Finding out God’s purpose for you is your job.  If you ask, God will show you what your purpose is. 

If you are a follower of Jesus, and someone asks you to serve, do not say, “I have done my time.”  Instead, answer, “Let me ask my Heavenly Father.”

My Kingdom …

Kevin Baugh has his own country—The Republic of Molossia—and if you don't mind, he'd prefer you call him "His Excellency Kevin Baugh." After all, he has an impressive khaki uniform with six big medals, a gold braid, epaulets at the shoulders, and a blue, white, and green sash. Oh—and a general's cap with a gold starburst over the bill.

Have you ever heard of The Republic of Molossia? That's understandable because it consists of Baugh's three-bedroom house and a 1.3-acre yard outside of Dayton, Nevada. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, "He has a space program (a model rocket), a currency (pegged to the value of chocolate-chip cookie dough), a railroad (model size), a national sport (broomball), and—in his landlocked desert region—a navy (an inflatable boat)."

The newspaper goes on to say: "Baugh, a 45-year-old father of two, is a micro-nationalist, one of a wacky band of do-it-yourself nation builders who raise flags over their front yards and declare their property to be, as Baugh puts it 'the kingdom of me.'"

It’s tempting to try this: declare my house and my lot an independent country.  I suppose I could tell the US Treasury not to expect any more checks from me.  I wonder if Border Patrol would set up a passport check station at the end of my driveway?

I would do things differently than Kevin, for sure.  I would name my country “Claylandia.”  I would not want to be called “His most Excellency.”  I think I would prefer “The Exalted and Mighty Clay.”  Our official currency would be ribeye steaks, and since I have a pond in my backyard, I would have a better navy than Kevin: a john-boat with a 12 gauge shotgun.  The official animal of my country would be my dog, Moo.

The truth is most of us actually do treat our lives as our own little kingdoms.  We raise a flag over our souls and declare that we are in charge.  We make decision after decision, thinking we can control people and situations. Then we are surprised when we find out people don’t recognize our kingdom.  We are outraged when cancer invades.  We can’t stand it when laws are applied to us; we think they are for other people. 

When Jesus teaches us to pray “Thy Kingdom Come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,” he’s telling us that we are better off under God’s rule than our own.  God’s soul is infinitely better than ours.  God is far more trustworthy than we are.  Everything in God’s Kingdom may not go according to our plan, but it will go according to His plan.  The question is not if God’s Kingdom will prevail; the question is when it will prevail.

Asking for God’s Kingdom to come means we are also committing ourselves to live in harmony with the ruler of that Kingdom.  Here is what makes God’s Kingdom unique: Jesus pays the price not just for us to enter the Kingdom, but to become children of the King. 

I don’t think I want to live in the Republic of Molossia.  Kevin doesn’t sound like a very appealing King to me.  But I realize I don’t want to live in the Kingdom of Claylanda either.  The King there doesn’t do a very good job. 

The best Kingdom is the one with the best King. The best King is the one who laid down his life for me and rose again with power for me. His is the Kingdom for me. And I hope, for you too.

Carry the Load…

I was carrying a load of heifers to the market.  They had made weight, and I was out of grass.  It was time for them to meet their destiny.  

I have an old gooseneck livestock trailer my Dad bought over forty years ago.  My brother Steve had it reworked and let me have it.  He made sure it had four good tires.  I pulled that trailer from Florida back to South Carolina.  I hauled cattle to new owners and picked up calves to fatten.  The tires were good and solid.  I thought. 

I have written previously about my trouble with tires and trailers.  Once I blew out two boat trailer tires in one trip.  But the tires on this trailer were less than a year and a half old.  I was not worried. 

In the early dawn, I loaded the cattle, eleven heifers, and made my way to the highway.  The first twenty minutes were uneventful.  I pulled onto the interstate and started to build up speed when I heard that awful flapping sound.  I thought: “This cannot be happening.”  But it was. 

I pulled over on the side of the interstate, walked around, and sure enough, one of the tires had shredded itself.  As Yogi Berra famously said, “It was Deja-vu all over again.”   

This time, however, I was prepared.  Thanks to good advice from my brother Steve, I had purchased the biggest cordless impact wrench I could find to carry in my truck.  I had a five-ton jack.  I was about to give my fellow travelers a cowboy version of a NASCAR pit-stop.  I confidently put my impact driver on the lug-nut, pressed the button, heard the electric motor whine, and …nothing.  The lug-nut did not budge. 

These things happen.  I got my stand-by lug wrench and tried the old-fashioned way.  I pulled.  I strained.  I wondered about the price of a hernia operation.  I tried the other lug-nuts.  They apparently had a convention and decided they would not be moved.  Eleven heifers looked at me.  They registered their opinion of my efforts in a rather odiferous manner. 

It was 6:45 AM, and I knew nothing was open.  I decided to limp down to the next exit, where there was a truck stop.  I had one good tire on that side that was bulging, and I prayed for that tire with the fervor found at a Pentecostal prayer meeting.   

Ten very slow miles and a Google search later, I found a tire store that said it would open at 7:30 AM.  Sure enough, thirty minutes later, an older man came up to my driver’s side window and said, “Did you know you have a flat tire?”  I thought about Bill Engvall and almost said, “Nope!  I was passing through and just thought I’d let my heifers see a tire store.  Here’s your sign.”  But I did not say this because I learned a long time ago never to pick a fight with a man who has his name on a shirt.  He can and will whip you. 

I got out, and we looked at the tires.  He told me he had that size in stock and went to check.  Meanwhile – and I am not making this up – other employees were coming to work, stopping, and taking pictures of my heifers on the trailer to send to their kids.  They must not have cows in that part of the state. 

The older man returned with bad news.  All they had were radial tires.  For those of you not properly educated in tire-ology, radial tires and bias tires must be segregated.  If placed on the same vehicle, they work against each other.  Like Baptists in a business meeting, they react differently to curves and can cause the trailer to sway out of control.  I knew this.  Now instead of buying one tire, I would be buying four tires.   

The older gentleman – who really was the nicest guy – pointed out the load limit on the bias tires already on the trailer – All four together, they were rated at about 8,000 pounds.  The problem was the trailer weighs 2,000 pounds, and I had 7,000 pounds of beef on the trailer.  Now I understood why I was blowing tires. 

I bought four new tires.  The older gentleman had to jack up the trailer and work with eleven heifers who thought they had entered “The Twilight Zone” mooing their opinion of his work. After an hour, I was back on the road with tires strong enough to carry the load. 

I know I load up my life with more than I can carry.  I jam-pack my schedule, I put unrealistic expectations on myself, and when life throws its little surprises, parts of my soul start to shred.  I bet you know people just like me.  You might even be just like me.  That is why Jesus’ words mean so much to me: “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

I do not know all that Jesus meant when he said this, but I am pretty sure he at least meant he can handle your load if you give it to him.

It All Smells the Same…

I traveled last week to Oklahoma City for a conference.  Accompanying me were three other team members.  We had about four hours before the first scheduled event.  As we traveled to get the rental car, I told them, “Now look what there is to see in Oklahoma City, or you will wind up seeing what I want to see.”  To my surprise, no one pulled out their phone and began looking for interesting places in Oklahoma City. 

We got in the rental minivan, and I said again, “What do you want to see in Oklahoma City?”  There was a pause in their conversation, and then they continued discussing an unrelated subject.  I pulled onto the Interstate to Downtown and said yet again, “Have you decided what you want to see in Oklahoma City?”  This time I was greeted with, “Whatever you want to see is fine.”  I tried to warn them, “What I want to see in Oklahoma City is probably not what you want to see.”  My team said they trusted me to lead them to interesting sites in Oklahoma City. 

They were a little surprised when I headed for Stockyard City, a neighborhood where the Oklahoma City Stockyards is located.  I knew we were getting close when we passed an eighteen-wheeler pulling a cattle trailer. 

I grew up in the cattle business.  Our family has owned the Buckhorn Ranch for one hundred and sixty-one years.  My Grandfather and my Uncle purchased the Okeechobee Livestock Market and turned it into the largest Livestock Market in Florida.  My cousins, Jeff and Todd, still own the market.  My cousin Kelly, along with my Skipper cousins, are cattle-brokers, buying and grading cattle and shipping them to Western feedlots.  During my seminary days in Louisville, when I got homesick, I would go to the Bourbon Stockyards and watch the cattle sale.  It smelled like home. 

I wanted to see the Oklahoma City Stockyards, the largest livestock market in the world.  They have survived for over a hundred years, right in the middle of town.  We wound up on the backside of the Stockyards, driving the only minivan insight.  Stretching over the pens were elevated catwalks.  I parked and said, “Let’s take a look.” 

I am pretty sure the catwalks were not up to OSHA standards.  They were solid but reached by rickety stairs.  A powerline ran next to the catwalk, so close you could touch it.  Stretching out as far as you could see were cow pens, full of – you guessed it – cattle.  About half a mile away was a large brick building, the auction house. 

Men were moving and sorting cattle right below us.  I explained to my team members what they were doing when a cow got by one of the men.  He began to use four-letter words that my team members may not have heard before, but I heard them many times; in fact, I myself use them on occasion.  My Uncle Tiny, a country Baptist preacher, said God made certain four-letter words so cattle could understand you. 

The stockyards smelled like… stockyards. Cows tend to have loose bowels when they are nervous, and believe me, cows get nervous in a stockyard.  There was about eight thousand head of cattle in the pens, give or take a few hundred.  Believe me when I say there was a lot of nervous material left on the ground.  Underneath all this material was brick.  More than once, we saw a cow slip on the muck and fall.  It is hard to get much traction. A front-end-loader went by, hauling out a load of the accumulated material. 

I could have stayed there all day; I was in my element, I was among my people, I was smelling the smells of home.  But it was suggested to me there might be other interesting things to see in Oklahoma City.  Before I left, I took a picture of the Stockyards and sent it to my brother and my cousins Kelly, Todd, and Jeff.   

Kelly sent me back a picture of his wife Elizabeth, standing on the same catwalk.  They had visited a few years earlier.  I told Kelly he really knew how to impress a woman.  He replied she would have rather been shopping.  My cousins Jeff and Todd have made that trip too.  Jeff texted me back, “Big place! But smells the same as it does everywhere.” 

I thought about that.  Processed cow digestive material smells the same in Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and just about everywhere.  Processed grass is processed grass. 

I thought about sin.  It is so easy to look at my sin and think “It’s not so bad.  I’m not hurting anyone.  I’m not as bad as that guy in the news.”  But the truth is, sin is sin.  It smells the same.  When it gets processed through our souls, we wind up standing in it.  Sin makes it hard to get traction in life.  Sin accumulates over time. When we attack sin ourselves, we would be like one man in the Stockyards with a shovel trying to clean it out while more is being made every day. 

I think my life is like the stockyards.  I have accumulated a lot of sin in my life.  It limits me.  But the good news is I have a Savior who cleans out my sin, who cleans me up, and who sets me on a different path.    

Have you done a smell test of your soul lately?  Maybe you need to turn over your life to the Savior who will clean you up.

Why There Must Be Justice; Thank God for Mercy…

I was in Oklahoma City this week for a conference, which happened to be the twenty-sixth anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. 

To refresh your memory, on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh drove a Ryder rental truck loaded with 4,800 pounds of explosive materials into a drop-off zone under a day-care center located in the building.  A few minutes earlier, he had lit a fuse.  He locked the truck and walked away. 

The bomb exploded at 9:02 AM that morning.  Within seven seconds, one-third of the Murrah building collapsed.  One hundred and sixty-eight people died, including three pregnant women.  I was told by a local pastor that the church he served, located across the street from the Murrah building, had its building lifted nine inches off of its foundation and then slammed back down.   

Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, were quickly apprehended.  They were tried in federal court for murdering federal officers.  McVeigh was convicted on eleven counts of murder and conspiracy, sentenced to death, and was executed on June 11, 2001.  Nichols was found guilty of constructing a weapon of mass destruction and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter of federal officers.  He was sentenced to life in Federal Prison. 

Shortly after Nichols’ conviction, family members of other victims began to agitate for a state trial.  Their contention was the crime of murdering Federal Officers had been recognized, but their loss also cried out for justice. 

Wes Lane was the District Attorney for Oklahoma City at that time.  Since retired, he spoke at the conference I attended.  He talked about the pressure he faced.  “It seemed like everywhere I went in Oklahoma City, people wanted to talk to me about bringing charges against Nichols.  Many people had grown weary of the tragedy and wanted to move on.  Victims’ families said they could not move on until there was justice.” 

As he spoke those words, I understood.  Though I have never lost a family member to such a tragedy, it was not hard to feel profound empathy for victims’ families.  Imagine kissing your spouse goodbye in the morning, not realizing in ninety minutes their life would end and your world would change forever.  There would be daddys’ chairs forever vacant, mothers who would never again hold their children, and little children who had just begun to walk, who would never take another step.   

You cannot let a crime like that go unpunished.  There is something in our souls that demands justice.  The most fundamental understanding of justice rests on the idea of equality.  If you make things unequal between yourself and another, say, by robbing another person, justice demands repayment in the form of money or time.  If you rob another person of their life, justice demands something to equalize the relationship. 

Wes Lane told us the decision to prosecute Nichols was his alone to make.  He decided to prosecute Terry Nichols in State Court on 161 charges of murder.  A jury of twelve took five hours to decide he was guilty of all charges.  They deadlocked on the question of the death penalty.  Judge Steven Taylor sentenced Nichols to 161 consecutive life terms without parole;  Nichols will never leave prison alive. 

After the trial, the daughter of a woman killed in the blast came up to one of the prosecutors and said, “Thank you.  Before now, no one has been held accountable for my mother’s murder.  Thank you.” 

A heinous crime demands justice.  We see it so clearly in the cases of McVeigh and Nichols.  But imagine you are a God who is pure, without fault.  You create a perfect world, put people in it.  You give them one rule.  They break it.  You reach out again and again.  They keep breaking your rules.  They deny your existence.  You offer love and grace.  They laugh at you.  You send messengers.  They ignore some and kill others.  Finally, you arrive on the scene yourself, having taken a human body.  The best legal system of that time and the best religious system of that time conspire to murder you. 

What does justice require?  How can the relationship be equal?   

This is where we all start.  Paul, the great thinker, said it like this, “All sin and fall short of the magnificence of God.”  It means in my own way, and in your own way, we make our relationships with God unequal.  You and I have known the right thing to do and done the wrong thing anyway.  We make rules for ourselves that we cannot even follow (“I will never drink that much again…”).   

So God, who is rich in mercy, lets his own death, the death of Jesus, be the payment to bring the relationship back after we have broken it.  He knew there was no possibility we could pay the price to make the relationship whole again, any more than Terry Nichols can serve 162 life sentences in a row.   

If I compare myself to Terry Nichols, I can feel good about myself.  When I compare myself to God, I realize how far I fall short.  It takes God’s mercy for both of us. 

When you realize this, you begin to understand how rich God is in mercy.  If you do not understand that God has enough mercy to cover Terry Nichols’ sins as well as your own, you really do not understand mercy at all.

Which Man Do You Want to Be?

I’ve known some great givers in my life.  I can’t tell about some of them because they are still living.  They would be embarrassed if I called them by name.  God blessed them, and they blessed others by their generosity.   But I would like to tell you about a great giver and a man who could have been a great giver.

My stepfather, Lawrence, was a great giver.  Lawrence came into my life when I was eight.   He married my mother, who had been widowed.  I knew Lawrence was generous when he bought me milkshakes that my mother wouldn’t allow me to have, mostly because she couldn’t afford them. 

I remember every Sunday Lawrence writing out a tithe check.  This was a step of faith because we only got about 8 checks a year from selling oranges and cattle.  Yet, Lawrence trusted that God would provide.  In our home church, when the preacher needed a new car, Lawrence would talk to a couple of other church members, they would come up with the money, and the preacher would get a new car.  The preacher also got a side of beef and a new suit every year for Christmas. 

But Lawrence was not generous with just money.  When our cousin Willard was done picking watermelons from his field (usually about 200 acres – which is a big field!), Lawrence would take me in the truck and say, “I hate to see those watermelons go to waste.  Let’s go get a couple.”  A “couple of watermelons” would turn into 77 piled on the back of a Ford pick-up.  We would stop at every widow’s house in our community of Lemon Grove and drop off four or five melons. 

Lawrence would see young ladies come to church dressed in old clothes, and he would arrange for them to shop at the Red Apple.  The girls never knew where their new clothes came from.  Lawrence saw needs, and he wanted to meet them because he knew God had blessed him.  He was like a mainline pipe that brought resources to other pipes so God’s work could be done.

I knew another man who could have been a great giver.  His genius was making money.  He started with next to nothing and built a business empire.  But there was still an emptiness in his life that his wealth couldn’t fill. 

God had begun to work in his life, and he had returned to the faith of his childhood.  He made the decision to join our church and then offered to take me to lunch.   Over lunch, he asked me about tithing.  I explained it the best I could.  Tithing, I told him, was giving 10% of your income to God.  Doing this simple spiritual discipline showed you put God first in all areas.  You were using what he had given to you to bless others.

Knowing his wealth, I told him that God had probably blessed him with all his resources so he could begin to know the joy of giving.  There were people whose lives would be forever changed by his generosity.  He looked uncomfortable and changed the subject.

A few months later, the rich old man suffered a stroke and passed away.  When he died, he had given nothing to God’s church, to the work of Jesus.  Whenever I think about that man, it breaks my heart.  He died with his fortune intact and his gift of giving unused.  Sometimes when I am at the cemetery doing a funeral, I walk past his grave.  “What a waste,” I think.  He could have done so much for so many. 

Which man do you want to be?

Truth and Reality…

My mother had a simple way of teaching me the value of the truth.  If she caught me lying, she spanked me.  In those days, it was assumed children had enough padding on their bottoms to enable truth
reinforcement.  Telling what really happened was important. 

Truth was conveyed in simple ways: touch a hot stove and you will get burned (I did, and I was); stick a fork in an electrical socket and you will be shocked (I did, and I was); and slow your horse down before you turn for the barn or he will run away with you (I didn’t, and he did).  There was a “cause and effect” quality to the truth.   

Some things we just knew: what goes up must come down; the sun rose in the east over the Old Grove and set in the west over the Estate Grove; and we had a full moon every twenty-eight days. 

It wasn’t until I took my first Philosophy course in college that I learned defining “truth” was necessary.  I read Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Kant.  To me, it seemed like they used a lot of words to explain things we just knew.  Along the way, I was introduced to Hegel and Marx, who declared truth was a social construct.  In other words, truth was whatever the majority said it was.  To my rurally educated mind, that was nonsense.  If the majority of people thought a ball fell up, it would still fall down.  Truth is not what the majority decides; it is what is real. 

In Western culture a popular philosophy has risen claiming truth is what you want it to be.  That’s why you hear people saying, “This is my truth.”  What they are really saying is, “This is my opinion, or my preferred version of reality.” 

There is something appealing about getting to make your own version of reality.  It means you get to make your own rules.  It means you get to decide right and wrong.  This, of course, can have disastrous consequences.  You leave your parent’s home, and you decide you get to make the rules.  You decide your truth allows you to sleep with as many people as you want, and it will be okay.  After all, the sitcoms show you a reality that says people are okay with multiple partners.  But -news flash – sitcoms aren’t real.  Just because it is on TV (or Social Media), doesn’t mean it is real.  You discover there is emotional pain, soul pain.  Why?  The reality is physical intimacy has soul consequences.  That is the truth, validated by the reality of millions of people through centuries of human history. 

I remember in High School seeing the play “1984.”  George Orwell was warning us of accepting something as true just because it is repeated over and over.  Two plus two is never five.  Just because CNN or Fox News repeats something, doesn’t mean it is true.  Truth is harder to find in our culture these days.   

Sometimes the truth works for us; sometimes it works against us.  If the truth doesn’t make you uncomfortable at times, it probably isn’t the truth.  Maturity is what happens when you accept truth is a reality you cannot move by your own willpower. 

Followers of Jesus understand something deeper about truth.  Jesus made a bold claim: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Jesus declared ultimate truth is not found in a philosopher’s book or a media report; ultimate truth is found in him.  Truth is a person.  Jesus is the definer of reality.  When you know him, when you experience life with him, your outlook on the world is different.  Jesus brings reality into focus. 

In John’s gospel, Jesus also says, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  There is freedom in knowing reality.  You stop fighting to make your own truth.  You accept realities of the way things are.  You follow Jesus closely so he can lead you in the way of truth.   

I’ve noticed that people who keep trying to make their own truth live stressful lives.  It takes a lot of energy to manufacture a version of reality.  There is a much smaller subset of people who find great peace in life, who let Jesus be their truth.  These people have a centeredness, “a peace that passes all understanding.”  

Two types of people: stressed creators of their own realities or people who accept Jesus as the truth.  Which person are you?