THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM I swear by the Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. – Courtroom oath “What is truth?” Court rooms exist to answer that question. Religions thrive on this curiosity. The implication is that lives and jobs have been made and lost based on the answer to this question. So what is truth? Facts they say do not lie. But are all facts truly sacred? Though they are often exchanged one for the other the fact is not always equal to the truth. They are often radically different. FACT: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This question cannot be debated or so you think. Certainly you, like the 7 billion others living on earth, saw it this very morning. Galileo contested this fact that has assumed the proportion of truth centuries ago and was thrown out of the Catholic Church, just like you are being tempted to throw away this write up. The truth is, the sun neither rises nor sets. We are the ones rising and setting as the earth spins on its own axis. Is there a difference between the truth and the fact? You bet. FACT: Stars shine only at night. Really? But whoever saw a star during the day? The truth is stars are actually suns; they are so far away that their rays do not carry as much energy as our “star” – the sun. That also implies that they are always shinning, be it in the night or the day. They are constants it is only our power of observation that changes. FACT: The World is flat – if you go far enough you will fall off the horizon. That sounds ridiculous right now, but it kept our forefathers from venturing to know the world. We know the truth, the world is spherical and almost wrapped with oceans yet not a drop falls off into space. FACT: The opposite of white is black. Now you are dying to see how I will disagree with this. Sorry I won’t because black does not even exist. I can scatter white into its separate components, can I scatter darkness into its component parts? The people who defined the colours said black is the absence of light (or absence of all the colours), while white is the fusion of all the colours. So if all the colours are absent how do you see? You would definitely see nothing. That nothing is what is the opposite of white. It cannot be seen. That is the truth. Fact: The opposite of life is death. Now I am taking my chances and you must call me mad. I can have a good life, a great life, a poor life. Can I have a good death, a great death and a poor death in the terms of death (not how I died?) You can improve my state of life; can you improve my state of death? Death is the absence of life as we know it, not the opposite of life. For all the bible says, death is living in a different way on a different plane! You are asking “How can he be so sure?” I ask, “How can you be so sure that I am wrong?” We both have to experience it before we can prove it. Fact! Herein lies the difference between truth and facts. Facts are measurable and demonstrable. They are the products of our observations. In other words they are as subjective as you and I. So even though numbers don’t lie, when you give two persons the same data, they draw different conclusions from it - each in search of his truth. On the other hand, truth is a constant. It is objective and never changes no matter how or who looks at it. It does not ask you to believe it (I have cited examples that you need not believe) but your acceptance or not cannot add to or subtract from it. The truth is not measured by the number of persons accepting it or denying it. Accept it; certain things cannot just be measured in empirical terms based on our feeble and fallible senses… Our observations may be sincere, but it could be sincerely wrong. Facts are based on accurate observations (which may be wrong) and are interpreted subjectively. On the other hand, truth is hard to measure because it does not readily subject itself to the physical observations of science or the human senses, but it is always consistent. FACT: Heaven and Hell do not exist. We have travelled through space, we have drilled deep down into the earth, if they did exist, certainly somehow, someone would have been able to sight the City of God in the sides of the North. Or the deep Hades or Sheol in the belly of the earth. But all our exploration has not provided any fixed geographical coordinates. So the fact is they do not exist. The truth is the creator of heaven and hell, says they exist – because He created them. We cannot see them or measure them because science has not invented measuring tools for things that are not matter – things that do not have weight and does not occupy physical space. However, if you truly want to get to the exact location of hell, you can find it at the end of a Christless life. Likewise the exact location of heaven, is at the very end of a Christ-filled life. What is truth? Christians know that one man in all of human history had the opportunity to ask this question and get the right answer because as we believe he was asking the maker of the universe. That man was Pontius Pilate, face to face with Jesus, he asked the question that has dogged the path of humanity “What is truth?”, unfortunately he never stayed back to hear the reply and thus deprived mankind of that golden opportunity. But long before that encounter, Jesus had declared, “I am the truth” By that declaration, Jesus ushered in a New Normal, where the truth was no longer an idea or a concept but a person. When you have Jesus, you step into the realm of this New Normal where you are free to live above facts. It must be very heartbreaking to heaven that those of us who have Christ, still live by the dictates of our feeble senses and reasons. We are still bound to the norm. Jesus came to set us free from the norm. The norm of religion, the norm of science, the norm of culture and society, the norm of business and politics. That is why He says to those who believe in him “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:31-32 (KJV) He was not talking to people who are in prison. He was talking to people who are held bound by the ‘normal’. My friend, are you truly free? Do you live in the New Normal? (c) New Normal DeepWords Devotional
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 07:00:44 +0000