Truth By Whatever Name

    I've been looking at the news lately, mostly political news, and I've noticed something going on in the campaigns. Now, if I sound favorable towards one or the other, I don't mean to. But I've noticed that it's funny when some issues come up that seem unpleasant, unfavorable, disagreeable, make you feel bad, look bad, wrench at your heart, your stomach, your ego; that instead of going at it and dealing with it, you decide to call it something else and push it aside. This isn't just for politics, but that's what I've seen it applied to at late.

    For example, the McCain/Palin side has levied the charge that Barak Obama has associated with terrorists. Of course, it's not just the McCain/Palin side, but also some media outlets. How does the Obama side respond to this? Does he come out and deny the charges and even levy his own charge that their side and the media outlets are liars and should be looked at for immoral accusations? No. Instead, he cries out that they are using smear tactics, muckraking (although I have started to hear that the Obama campaign has started to call them liars now). But for the most part, all we hear are allegations of the other side running a smear campaign. In fact, I don't even think I've heard the Obama campaign give a reason why it might even appear that he associated with terrorists. After all, if you were going to build a lie, you would start it with a bit of truth in it. They didn't state that Obama was a drug dealing congressman. Why? Because there is no basis whatsoever to make the lie out of (that we know of).     

    They say that you can't kill a dog with poison alone. You have to mix it with some steak or something else. That's the case with lies. There's a bit of truth in all of them, if nothing else than the smallest bit of fact (like Obama was in the same city as the person he's accused of associating with).

    Now I've confined this to politics because that's what I've seen it in as of late. But this issue of denial of truth goes far beyond politics, enter the entire world. Truth by any other name is still truth.

    In today's culture, it's popular for relativist to tell Christians, "That's all good and fine for you, but not for me. I can be true for you, but it's not for me." Today, truth is pushed away be one excuse or another. The popular on for those who have grown up in the morally relative culture is that truth is relative and it is not absolute. The only problem is that truth is always absolute. It doesn't matter if you say that "it may true for you but not for me" or if you say "I don't believe that" or if you say you can't believe that, whatever excuse it is, it's just that—an excuse.

    Of course it is one thing if you honestly don't believe in God or Jesus because of 'lack of evidence' and then go and research it, but it's another (and the most common) if you push it off to the side due to some sort of bias. After I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior I decided that I was going to research the whole issue of Jesus' divinity and Christianity's credibility. After much research, I came to the same conclusion mentally that I came to 2 ½ years earlier spiritually.

    Aldous Huxley once said, "I wanted to believe the Darwinian idea. I chose to believe it not because I think that there was enormous evidence for it, nor because I believed it had the full authority to give interpretation to my origins. I chose to believe it because it delivered me from trying to find meaning and freed me to my own erotic passions." Like Huxley, many of us choose to believe or disbelieve in something not because of evidence, facts, or convictions, but because it gives us a reason to do what we really want to do or because it makes us feel bad about what we are doing.

    Truth is not dependent on our likes and dislikes. Truth is truth. It comes from a higher source that neither your likes nor dislikes depend on. And rather you want to accept it, truth is truth and you can't change it by not wanting to believe.