Saturday, January 21, 2023

Speaking Truth to Power ...

Pilate once asked, “what is truth”?  Jesus once said, “I am the truth, the way, and the life”.  I wonder when we talk about speaking truth to power, are we talking about the ever popular “my truth”, or are we talking about “the Truth”?  Our society seems bent on creating a version of truth that finds its center in “me”, that is to say, in each of us.  It is as if facts, viewed through “my” lens of perspective, create a version of truth that could care less what anyone else thinks.  Somehow, we come to believe in “my” truth with near total certainty ignoring the possibility that an application of the slightest degree of objectivity might actually result in revealing “my” truth as being nothing more than an amplification of “my” selfish desire.  What “you” want does not matter to “me”, only what “I” want, since after all it is “my” life.  We then get pretty brazen about our discovery of this new personal truth and share it ad-nauseum with any who cares to listen.  But none of this is speaking any kind of real “truth” to any kind of real power.  It is just another form of narcissism masquerading as self-discovery.

The idea of being true to one’s-self, is tantamount to the idea of coming to accept ourselves “just as we are”.  Usually when this bright idea occurs to us, we are in a much less than perfect state.  Our failure to reach perfection just looks too permanent, it is just too hard to get there.  So instead of trying and failing over-and-over again, we just give up, and discover that being true to ourselves means accepting our shortcomings and just embracing them.  We usually take that a step farther in the spiritual domain, by insisting that since we accept us “this way”, that God too must accept us “this way”, after all He made us “this way”.  It is then easy to believe that since God can forgive us literally anything, we can just rely on that forgiveness, and somehow we can save changing until He remakes us at the second coming.  This philosophy then adds spiritual credence to the idea that “my truth” is surely “OK” with God as well.  But when Jesus said that He was the Truth, He never mentions anyone else in that same sentiment.  It is not like Jesus says He is the truth, even alongside Moses, David, or John the Baptist.  All of those patriarchs of the faith were famous for their service, and their messages, but none of them qualified to be “the Truth”.

Even though scripture is inspired by God, and is our best method of coming to know God, Jesus is higher than our scripture.  For Jesus did not say, the scripture is truth, and I am just the author of the words in that book of truth.  Keep in mind, the Pharisees had scripture, and still managed to miss Jesus (the inspiration, author, and God of scripture) entirely.  And what happens when our interpretations of scripture, wind up coming in conflict with what God wants?  Do we apologize, submit, and change our way of thinking?  Not when “my truth” is more important than “the Truth”.  Not when being true to myself stands in obvious conflict with the changes Jesus wants to bring into my life.  When I am not looking for a new way of thinking, anything that comes my way different from what I think, just makes me mad.  I would submit the angrier the response, the more mistaken the thinking is in conflict with “the Truth”. 

Case in point; the Pharisees put Jesus to death.  Despite all the evidence they were warring with God, they did it anyway.  They thought that would end it.  It didn’t.  And the miracles that followed Jesus, did not follow Him into the grave and stop.  Instead, they were back in full force from the followers of Jesus who merely used/called on the name of Jesus to see them done.  Ask yourself how hardheaded you have to be to keep fighting that fight after all those miraculous signs that just will not go away?  But then, before we get too critical, perhaps we should ask ourselves how hardheaded we have to be, to keep trying to find perfection by our own strength and will, failing every time, instead of letting Jesus do that work for us?  It is not perfection that is elusive, or giving way to “my truth”.  It is the means by which we go about pursuing perfection.  We keep allowing “self” to have a role in our salvation from ourselves.  This is not what Jesus needs.  He just needs your permission, your willingness to let Him change you however He sees fit.  That’s all.  If you are willing to let Him change it, it will change.  If you try to do it yourself, or try to help God out, count on failure in your future.

It might make you mad to read these words.  The Pharisees sure did not want to hear that Jesus could end even your desire to sin, that Jesus could make you free from sin, from the inside out.  Pharisees had the law of Moses.  They believed that you lived your life according to the Law, and that was “how” you got saved (and rich by the way).  If you sinned, that was on you to fix.  Having some upstart Nazarene Hippy come claim to release you from sin just by freeing your very desires, sounded like pure apostacy to Law keepers who wanted no other way to win, even when that method only showed them the failure of our lives.  The secret they could not grasp was the idea that the Law of God points out our need of a Savior, to write it on our hearts and minds.  The Law is not the method of salvation.  It is the results of salvation.  We keep it, because we want to, because we cannot imagine any other way to live, not because we “have to” in order to be saved.  The Pharisees did not want any part of that thinking, it was too radical a shift for them and would up-end their whole way of living.  So you can imagine when Peter and John perform a miracle in the name of Jesus, then preach in His Name, convert 5,000 folks, and don’t stop doing this.  The Pharisees were angry beyond belief.

Luke gives us the account in Acts chapter 4 picking up in verse 1 the story continues saying … “And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, [verse 2] Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. [verse 3] And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day: for it was now eventide. [verse 4] Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.  The Sadducees had only one main difference from the Pharisees and that was around the entire idea of resurrection.  They did not think it was part of Gods plan ever.  You lived, you died, end of story.  So having Lazarus be resurrected was a living, breathing, example that their doctrine was wrong.  Jesus doing it too, made it worse.  And all the others who were raised from the dead just kept putting nails in the coffin of this obviously mistaken ideology.  They did not respond, nor do we usually, by admitting they were wrong.  They did not apologize and embrace “the Truth”, because that Truth conflicted with “their” truth.  So they grab Peter and John and throw them into prison for the night.

But it didn’t matter. 5000 folks were converted by the power of the Holy Spirit moving through the words Peter said about Jesus.  The church leadership still hoped this might not be about Jesus.  They still clung to the idea maybe something new, or something else, was driving the miracle.  So on the next day they got together to flush out the details and find out what was going on.  Luke picks back up in verse 5 saying … “And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders, and scribes, [verse 6] And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem. [verse 7] And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this?  This was the last desperate hope that the Jesus thing was dead and gone in the grave.  But in their hearts, they already knew it was not.  The Roman guards at the tomb already told them the truth about the resurrection and there was no way around that truth.

Peter then responds, again He is filled with Holy Spirit, it picks back up in verse 8 saying … “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, [verse 9] If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole; [verse 10] Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. [verse 11] This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. [verse 12] Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.  Yikes.  Now that is an example of speaking real Truth to a room full of what we call power.  This was the head of the church, at least the head of the original one.  These men were rich, powerful, full of influence.  They could have Peter killed if they really wanted it.  And this was certainly NOT what they wanted to hear.  My guess, these old church leaders would have rather heard that Peter was on team Satan, than on team Jesus.  At least Satan could not claim to be the Son of God, well, without lying anyway.  Jesus had a rational claim, a claim that fulfilled scripture and prophecy, a claim steeped in truth and love.

Imagine yourself in that room of angry men.  Would you tell them the unvarnished truth?  Peter did not hesitate to remind these guys that “THEY” killed Jesus.  Peter does not blame the Romans.  Peter blames them personally.  As they all had personal accountability, and frankly so do we.  Each sin we embrace requires that blood fresh upon the cross of calvary once more, the nails driven into His hands and feet, by us.  And we know what we are doing.  That kind of truth demolishes the idea of “my” truth.  What Peter spoke was not just his own words, but because he was filled with the Holy Ghost.  And despite the criticism of them, or me, here was again another opportunity to repent and be saved.  Another chance to let go of my errors, and embrace His Truth.  To see that Jesus alone is Truth.  For those leaders to change, they would have had to admit they were wrong in the first place.  Not many of us are willing to do that.

But it was not certainty that fueled the obstinance of the Pharisees, or of us.  It is pride.  It is pride that refuses to admit the possibility of being wrong, of having someone else know something that we did not know first.  We sometimes harden into the core beliefs of our spiritual ancestors instead of building upon the foundation of faith they left us.  Our church forefathers in their day, were the champions of change, they endured more of it than we will ever allow ourselves to know.  But instead of treating the Word of God as a living breathing document, a wellspring of relevance that never runs dry – we treat it more the like the rocks upon which the Law was written, fixed, immovable, when in truth it is we who have become fixed and immovable.  Take the Sabbath being kept Holy for example, in the time of Christ, the church leadership had made the Sabbath so burdensome, that the miracle of healing someone on Sabbath was not celebrated, it was ruled as a means to kill the healer.  Jesus sought to change that.  Not just in what we do, but in how we think about loving others and how that does not take a holiday on Sabbath, instead it is supposed to be amplified on Sabbath.  Jesus was a radical change agent to the common thinking about the Law in His own day.  Why do try to put cement sandals on the Lord in our own day?

Let us not become so fixed in our positions, that we cannot accommodate the Truth when it knocks on the doors of our hearts.  Let us instead see ourselves as clay, ready to be molded into an image of the Truth who fashions us daily upon the craftsman’s wheel.  What He intends us to be is yet to be known to us.  But if we are to hold on to certainty, let it be certainty in the love of the Craftsman who remakes us into His own image, at our request.

 

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