Truth and Trust

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. - John 18:37-38

Pontius Pilate’s question to Jesus was the starting point for a month that will be spent focused on truth and trust at Faith Baptist Church. June 2023 will be all about truth and trust, which are badly needed in order to have a society that functions and to live lives that have meaning and hope. But truth and trust seem like they are becoming more scarce with each passing year.

You can check out this week’s message for a little more detail, but numerous major polls and surveys of Canadians over the past few years appear to be showing that the pandemic accelerated shifts that were already underway. We’re down to a third of Canadians who believe that competent and effective people are in charge in our society, fewer than half of Canadians trust their government to do the right thing, and Canadians are pretty evenly split as to whether or not most of the information we receive from news organizations and from our government officials can be trusted. When asked if most people can be trusted overall, only about a third of Canadians answered in the affirmative.

Some of this skepticism is well deserved – institutions and leaders make mistakes, let us down, or turn out to be genuinely corrupt or incompetent. But I also think that some of this pessimism is exaggerated and dangerous. Every organization and person you come across has not recently become terrible – the world continues to be full of a mixture of good and evil, truth and falsehood, and some things are getting better while other things are getting worse. This is not a time to abandon hope, it’s a time to practice greater discernment and grow our own commitment to truth.

Three ways to be people who help return truth and trust to our world that I see in the Bible are these:

1) Practice radical honesty.

No bearing false witness! Christians should be people who go above and beyond when it comes to speaking the truth and being careful not to mislead anyone. This certainly means no overt lying or deception. But it also means being careful when it comes to things we just don’t know much about. Christians are tricked into repeating lies and falsehoods they hear online or from other people all the time. If you haven’t verified it, don’t spread it around.

2) Seek knowledge.

Many Christians do not read or study the Bible on a regular basis. They claim to strongly believe what the Bible says, but they don’t know very much about what it says. That’s a strange and embarrassing contradiction.

I would think that people who value truth would be humble, curious, and eager to learn about all kinds of things, but especially about the writings we believe God has given us to help us know Him. There are nearly endless ways and so many tools today to help with this. I know people are time-starved, but we make time for what is important. Seeking knowledge should be seen as important.

3) Listen for God’s Voice.

Jesus said “everybody on the side of truth listens to me.” It’s not enough to be knowledgeable. Truth is meant to be lived, and lived with God’s guidance. People need more than facts and information – we need connection to God and to live accordingly. Jesus showed us what that looked like – he was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. He lived truth. And what did that do for Him? It made Jesus as joyful and alive as any person has ever been. It gave Him the courage to stand up to anyone who tried to harm others or misled them about God’s love for them. It gave Him passion and purpose.

These are the things we should seek, and that we should expect to see more and more when we live the truth. So we must listen for God’s voice. In quiet moments where we pause. In quiet prayer for a few minutes here or a half hour there. In small groups with people we try to walk with in life and faith. In the advice of mature people we trust. Listen for God’s voice.

Also, Maybe Don’t Believe Liars?

Since this is the Overflow where I can add in some things that I didn’t have time or space for anywhere else, I want to include one other important thing that Christians could start doing to vastly improve the state of truth in our society: stop listening to people who aren’t trying to tell you the truth.

That may sound obvious, but it seems like it isn’t. Millions upon millions of people are tuning in to TV shows, radio programs, or internet sources every day to hear from people whose goal is not to tell the truth about what is going on, but to tell a story about what is going on that drives either outrage or a false sense of superiority.

Take the recent lawsuit against Fox News in the United States. Dominion Voting Systems (among others) sued Fox for various statements made on their programs that claimed that the most recent American presidential election was “stolen” through a conspiracy that included Dominions voting machines. At the end of April 2023 Fox agreed to pay Dominion 787 million dollars to settle the lawsuit.

Through the court case various depositions, emails, and text messages were brought to light that clearly showed that the executives and hosts of the major Fox programs knew that the election was legitimate. But they had a huge audience who wanted to be told that Donald Trump had won the election, so that’s the story they told them. And, in their internal communications, they were clear on why. If they told the truth they feared that their viewers would just starting getting their "news" from different sources.

Fox is paying a high price for this at the moment, but this is not something that is exclusive to right-wing media. From national networks to popular podcasts, opinion writers, YouTube channels, radio shows, and beyond many people’s goal is to build the size of their platform and make money. They’ll tell the truth when it serves those purposes, and they’ll lie and mislead when that serves those purposes. But so many readers/listeners/viewers find this to be entertaining and affirming of their beliefs so they go back day after day after day.

I’ve heard the comments of pastors, especially in the United States, who wonder what the point of carefully preparing a weekly sermon is under these conditions. What good is the 15-30 minutes that you are offering your congregation if they are going to spend several hours every day gleefully absorbing lies and folly from their favourite culture war hero?

All of this is a form of intellectual and spiritual cowardice. When you tune in to these sources who are not trying to tell you the truth in order to hear them bash your enemies and tell you why you are better than “those people” you are fueling your ignorance and pride.

When you read the Bible it does the opposite. The Bible will help to reveal the truth about you and how God wants you to make your way through this world. Some of those truths are uncomfortable – the Bible reveals the many ways we fall short. The Bible calls us to growth – to developing the fruit of the Spirit and learning to live according to Jesus’ law of love. The Bible fuels our humility and compassion.

There are many things that you could point to as evidence that people in North America are turning their backs on God. I think that the importance of how many people are wilfully being discipled by sources who are not even trying to tell them the truth is badly underestimated.

Proverbs 18 (selections):

2 Fools find no pleasure in understanding

but delight in airing their own opinions.

6 The lips of fools bring them strife,

and their mouths invite a beating.

7 The mouths of fools are their undoing,

and their lips are a snare to their very lives.

8 The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;

they go down to the inmost parts.

12 Before a downfall the heart is haughty,

but humility comes before honor.

13 To answer before listening—

that is folly and shame.

15 The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge,

for the ears of the wise seek it out.

Watch, listen, or read the rest of the Truth and Trust series this month from Faith Baptist. We'll explore the roll of Satan, the "father lies" and the issues of sin and self-deception. We'll dig into how to live at a time when people don't just have different opinions, but wildly different facts. And we'll mark Father's day with some truth for men and falsehoods that need to be called out.