As followers of Jesus, we know the importance of TRUTH. We know that Jesus is truth, that everything God has ever said is true, that the Holy Spirit leads us in truth, and that relationship with Jesus Christ is the only way to walk in the truth. We also know that the world hates the truth, and that Satan is the father of lies. Perhaps one of the hardest challenges for the Christian is the task of going about sharing this truth with the unbelieving world without being smug about it. There’s nothing quite so off-putting as someone who knows something and puts you down for not knowing it.

This morning I came across a verse in John 18 that caught me off guard and led me down a rabbit hole of thought. Jesus has been brought before Pilate, not long before he is beaten and crucified, and he questions him. “Are you the king of the Jews?” he asks. In verse 37, Jesus responds “I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” And then comes the three-word question that surprised me so much. Pilate responds to Jesus by saying “What is truth?” 

And then he walked away.

This is one of the saddest moments I think I’ve found in the whole Bible. Historically, I’ve always felt bad for Pilate as being sympathetic to Jesus and trying to convince the Jews he wasn’t all that bad, but this verse puts him in a new light for me. How can you stand in front of the King of Truth, ask the question “what is truth?”, and then walk away?

I was looking at some commentaries on this verse online and I found this comment that struck me.

“This might be the most important question a human being can ask, and Pilate is standing in front of the ultimate answer, yet he walks away without really considering his own words.” (BibleRef article linked here: https://www.bibleref.com/John/18/John-18-38.html)

Jesus is the ultimate answer, the ultimate truth. If Pilate were really seeking an answer, he would look no further. Clearly, Pilate was not genuinely seeking. I think the same can be said for most of the world. 

Matthew 7:7 says “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

1 Timothy 2:3-4 says “This is good, and pleases God our savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

While God is mysterious and confusing and nobody fully understands His ways, He does not make the truth hard to find. He upset history by sending Jesus to Earth, He put his Spirit inside His believers, and He commissioned us to spread the truth. There is great power in truth and one must choose to accept it or to reject it. Pilate rejected it. What will you do?

I’ll never understand the magic of story, the power of words woven together to make something that didn’t exist before. It truly is one of the most miraculous things, and I think it’s a gift. The way you feel when you read something that moves you, the empathy you feel for the characters you know only by name on the page, the deep sorrow and awe you feel when you finish a book… it’s all so mysterious. 

I just read the last chapter of C.S. Lewis’s book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It’s one of my favorites. I am amazed not only by the words Lewis uses and the picture he paints, but by the feel of the chapter. When I read that chapter, I can’t help but feel sad and happy, dread and hope. It’s a chapter that tears you apart and puts you back together in seven short pages. I read it slow and fast at the same time, hoping it will never end yet wishing to read the final sentence. This chapter makes me worship. No joke, I am holding back tears as I write this, thinking about the glory of God, who created story and language and art and beauty and asks us not to hold these things back, but to express them and to help others express them. And isn’t that the job of the storyteller, to usher God’s children into His presence and show them how to bow before His throne?

This is a noble and sacred thing, to create, and I hope I never waste this gift.

Lately I have been doubting God’s goodness. I read the book of Nahum, which is all about how God is going to bring judgment on the people of Ninevah, who were a corrupt and evil people. To give you a picture of what Nahum sounds like, here is how the book ends:

“O king of Assyria, your shepherds slumber; your nobles lie down to rest. Your people are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them. Nothing can heal your wound; your injury is fatal. Everyone who hears the news about you claps his hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?”

Dang! That’s harsh! Did the God that I serve seriously inspire these words??

These are the questions that have been going through my mind lately. I believe that God is merciful and kind and loving. I also believe that he is just and fair, but Nahum just seems to take it a little too far.

So I’ve been talking to a few people about these ponderings and I’ve gotten a few different answers and opinions, but nothing seemed to satisfy me. All that changed this morning though.

This morning I read the book of Habakkuk, which comes right after Nahum. Habakkuk was a prophet but his book does not show him preaching at Israel to repent, it’s more of him complaining at God.

Here are the words of Habakkuk in chapter one:

“Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.”

Sounds like pretty serious problems happening in that time, huh? And what’s crazy is I’ve wondered the same things about the time period I live in:

God, why do bad things happen to good people?

God, why does evil get its way?

God, why is corruption in politics tolerated?

God, why don’t you do something about terrorism?

God, what about human trafficking?

God, do you even care?

Fortunately for Habakkuk (and all of us) God answered and His words in this book have changed my perspective. What I’ve learned can be summarized into these bullet points:

• God sees the corruption of the world
• God uses good and evil people alike to fulfill his plan
• Just because God uses evil does not mean he condones it
• All actions have their consequences, whether good or bad
• One day, all evil will be overthrown and justice will prevail and that day will be glorious
• Because of the previous bullet points, I will wait patiently for the Lord

This is how the book of Habakkuk ends, and this is what gives me the most hope:

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

Lastly I want to confirm that doubts are okay: it is natural to doubt the supernatural. But when you doubt, will you choose to bring those doubts to God or will you choose to turn away from God and abandon faith?

I’ve learned a lot of lessons in my life, some of them important, some of them not so important. I’ve learned how to do laundry and how to make my bed. I’ve learned how to talk to people and how to make friends. I’ve learned how to keep a job and how to talk to co-workers. I could go on like this for hours and the truth is, so could you. We’re always learning things, that’s our nature. But when it comes to God…

It’s not so easy to identify the lessons he’s teaching us, is it? If you’re like me, you fear going to church and having to talk to those older fellas that always want to talk to you in the lobby after the service. They always ask hard questions like “what has God been teaching you lately?”

That always gets me. I always want to have an answer to that question, because if you’re walking with the Lord, you should be learning, right? But that’s not always the case for me. Sometimes I just don’t know. I usually BS some answer to get them to leave me alone. Hah! it sounds strange to admit here and now, but I guess that’s the truth. Sorry older fellas!

The point of this entry, though, is to share with anyone who will read, what God is teaching me. Every day. 

All those life-lessons as we call them are important. Pay bills, take care of your car, work out, eat healthy, go to class… They’re all great, see? But one lesson trumps them all, and spoiler alert: it’s the title of this post. Here it is.

You can trust God.

That’s it. It’s a simple sentence, but not a simple concept. In order to believe that sentence is true, you first have to 1) believe in God, 2) believe that you can have a relationship with God, and 3) trust that God has your back.

I don’t know about you, but all three of those statements are very difficult for me. They all require faith, something that seems counterintuitive. Why should I believe in something I can’t see? How can I be sure it exists? What if I’m wrong?

These are questions that I don’t really want to dive into right now, but they are VERY important questions that everyone should wrestle with. 

What I’ve learned though, is that all three parts to that one simple sentence are true. God is real, I can have a relationship with God, and God does have my back. Therefore, I can trust God. And I’m choosing to.

Now, there’s one more thing. Although I can trust God, that doesn’t mean I always do. In fact, I’d say most days I trust myself more than I trust God. That’s what makes this lesson so important to learn… because I’m always learning it. Over and over, again and again. You see, unlike all those other life-lessons such as how to mow the lawn or how to write an essay, this lesson is always being learned. I never look back and say to myself: “oh yeah, I remember when I learned to trust God. Good times…”

NAH! Instead, it’s an every day ordeal. I wake up and force myself to say, “I trust you today, God. I trust you with my problems, I trust you with my relationships, and I trust you with my future.”

That’s not easy for me, but I’m learning more and more the importance of learning that lesson. The cool thing is, the more I choose to trust God, the more He proves himself trustworthy, and the more evidence I have that he is trustworthy. So then, based on past experiences, I choose to trust him more. 

Who do you trust more: the homeless guy that lives under the bridge by your house, or your best friend? Answer: your best friend. Why? Because you’ve built that trust over years of quality time and honesty. That’s what makes trust such a special thing: time.

Some people live inside their head.

I cannot. 

I can’t because there’s anger and doubt and insecurity too. 

Maybe I’m scared of the person I’d find if I spent some time with him. Or maybe I already know who he is and want nothing to do with him. 

Maybe when it comes down to it, I despise the person that lives inside my head. 

He’s vile and slanderous; he’s an unfair judge; he’s hateful and wicked; he’s arrogant and deceitful; he’s consumed with lust; he’s a liar, a true scoundrel; there is nothing good about the man inside my head. 

And so maybe that’s why I live for experiences, to forget for a time the one above my brows. I don’t want to reason with my own inner self, so I hide in extraversion and friendly banter. I live for the distraction of human interaction. Others help me play off my own sin nature. “See, they’re no better than I.” 

Ah, there’s the heart of it! I hide behind my “personality” like a politician behind his smile. 

There. I admit it. This is who I am. 

This is the human condition, the cards we’ve all been dealt. We do what we can to mask the truth, but the truth remains. 

But this narrative would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the life of Jesus Christ because he was fully human and yet he lived a perfect life void of sin. He took the wrongdoing of everybody else and was murdered in our place. 

This is Dictionary.com’s definition of mercy: “compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one’s power.”

So here is the truth of the matter: I have offended God by my sin; I deserve death. But instead of striking me down where I stand, he had mercy on me. He sent Jesus his son to live a perfect life as a human and to be murdered in my place, taking my past, present, and future sin, and removing it as far as the east is from the west.

He did it because he loves me and wants to have an intimate relationship with me.

This is the ultimate picture of mercy and I would be a fool to reject it. But that is what so many do. It deeply saddens me when I think of all those who never experience the joy of falling into the arms of the one who created them in the first place.