Postings on Proverbs...13:5

"The righteous hates falsehood, but the wicked brings shame and disgrace" (ESV)

Can we say we hate falsehood? How much do we shave off the hard edges of truth to make ourselves look good? We hate it when people lie to us (duh!), but do we hate it enough to tell the truth when it hurts us, embarrasses us, or makes us look incompetent or unkind?

Do we call ourselves "blunt," meaning we mask being a jerk behind "I'm just telling the truth," or "wounds from a friend can be trusted," forgetting that kindness is a fruit of the Spirit.

Do we regularly sacrifice the truth on the altar of "kindness," which is in quotes because it's really not kindness at all, but rather a deceptive form of pride that would so hate for you to see me in a bad light that I will lie to you to save my reputation.?

One of the most common ways I've seen this not hating falsehood among Christians in brown-nosing, kissing-up, flattering leaders to get ahead in organizations, and sadly, leaders eat it up and promote those who lie to them because it typically strokes their egos.

The righteous hate all of that falsehood and then some. Why? Ultimately, because God does:

"There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue..." (Prov 6:16-17; see 12:22)

So, the righteous hate what God hates. Loving truth is actually evidence of salvation:

"...those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved" (2 Thess 2:10)

This doesn't just mean listening to a lot of preaching, taking good notes on sermons or reading your Bible daily. It means not having a double life. It means telling the truth even when it will cause you problems. It means confessing lies to those you've lied to.

The couplet suggests that the shame and disgrace come because of the wicked were caught in their lies. Notice too, "hates" is parallel to "brings," which is not what I'd expect. I'd expect it to say "loves shame and disgrace," a sarcastic way of saying they're shamed and disgraced so much for their lives that they must "love" it. However, this "imprecise antithesis implies that a righteous person does not come to social and personal shame and that a wicked person does not hate what distorts reality" (Waltke I:555).

In the end, though it could have cost them their lives, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were right to "rather suffer by the truth than sin by lying" (Bridges 153), but are we?

Don't answer that question by looking at your intentions in this moment. Answer that questions by looking at your words this past week, to your friends, your spouse, your co-workers, your boss and your kids. Which group does the past week put you in, the righteous wise men who hate falsehood or the wicked fools who don't?

If that quote at the bottom is true, what do your lies say matters most to you? The opinions of others? Your job? Your self-image? Your grades? Your freedom? Lies tell us when something other than that one true God is a functional god in our lives.

No one should see themselves as free from the sting of this proverb, so just remember, "truth is in Jesus" (Eph 4:21). His perfect record of truth telling is now yours if you are a Christian. Let His grace motivate you to say No to all forms of ungodliness (Titus 2:11), including the sin of lying, and you'll be on the path to becoming wise.

Thoughts from The Valley

I read this in a collection of Puritan prayers calledThe Valley of Vision today and had to share it here:

"Give me intenser faith in the eternal verities, burning into me by experience the things I know ... Grant me to know that I truly live only when I live to thee, that all else is trifling" (235)

I need these reminders constantly, daily. That is why I thank God for this book, and the riches compiled therein.

Are You Being Squeezed???

Have you ever noticed that invisible forces, influences we swim in constantly but rarely ever notice, are constantly shaping how we understand life, God, others, ourselves, what's important, what's not, etc.?

And, have you ever noticed how what we think about the world, what we think it's all about, impacts how we experience that world. Don't know what I mean? Let this illustration from David Wells' Above All Earthly Pow'rs help:

"...a materialistic scientist and an animist who believes that trees have souls comparable to hos own will look at the same trees rather differently. The difference lies not in the trees, but in the interpretive framework in which they are understood" (20).

In the margin of my book I wrote that the difference also lies in who has the correct understanding of the tree, the understanding of the tree that matches what the tree actually is.

Why does all this matter? When a belief matches reality, we use a specific word to describe that particular kind of relationship between belief and reality. That word is "truth."

When we are "conformed to this world" (Rom 12:2), when we let the world system squeeze us into it's mold so that we think and feel and desire and live like that world, we are living in direct opposition to the truth.

This is why it is so important for Christians to attend churches that don't just make them feel good. Feelings don't sanctify. Feeling are a thermometer for our sanctification. Truth sanctifies (John 17:17), and we need churches that take us deeply into God's truth.

I had lunch with a friend of mine this week and we were talking about preaching. I remember reading an article by John MacArthur, I think it's the first article in the first TMS Journal, about the relationship between inerrancy and preaching.

The gist of his argument was that you see what people really believe about the Bible in their preaching. If you believe the inspiration of the Bible is verbal, reaching down to the very words on the page, than you will preach every word on the page. You'll feel like you're sinning if you don't explain every nook and cranny because you're skipping something God wanted said. You don't do that, you must revisit what you think about the Bible because your actions contradict your doctrinal statement.

We need pastors and churches that preach and live according to what their doctrinal statements say about the Bible. We have that, and Christians will have a much harder time "fitting in" with and feeling comfortable around and being energized by the things of this world. Instead, they'll feel at home in the truth because they're being "transformed by the renewing of their minds" (Ron 12:2).

Illustrating Truth

As seen in the sidebar, I am currently reading Reclaiming the Center to "bone-up" on my philosophical training.

In his chapter entitled "Truth Defined and Defended," Doug Groothuis offered this helpful illustration of the correspondence view/theory of truth:

"Noted epistemologist Alvin Goldman likens the relationship of beliefs to truth to betting on a horse race. Whether we bet, or on what horse we bet, is up to us. Who wins the race is not up to us. 'Once you form a belief...its 'success' or 'failure' is not up to you; that is up to the world, which in general is independent of you' [Alvin Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, 20]. In other words, 'only the world confers truth and falsity' [Goldman 21]. A true statement is a 'descriptive success,' which means that it is faithful to reality" [Goldman 60] (66).

When witnessing it would've been nice to have an illustration like this to help people understand that just because they chose their own religion / spirituality, and happen to really like it or get some good benefits from it, those realities alone do not make it true.

Christianity is true if Jesus rose from the dead (1 Cor 15:12-20), if that event actually happened to an actual person in an actual Judean tomb at an actual point in history. Whether I bet on / choose to believe the resurrection or like it or get something out of it makes no difference as to whether or not the event took place, and therefore, as to whether or not it is true.

Truth is determined by the world outside of us. In this sense, the truth or falsity of Jesus' resurrection has nothing at all to do with us. If our beliefs / statements about what is real do not match what is actually real, our beliefs / statements are false and do nothing to what is actually real, actually true. 2 + 2 = 4 regardless of me.

Sadly, after much imbibing of postmodern epistemology, the correspondence view of truth is under serious attack in Christian circles by postevangelicals / emergent / postfundamentalist / postconservatives / younger evangelicals. Because of that, I'll end with this call to arms from Groothius:

"Whenever postconservative evangelicals depart from the correspondence view of truth--which is both logical and biblical--and thus sink into the postmodern swamps of subjectivism, pragmatism, or constructivism, they should be lovingly but firmly resisted. Nothing less than the integrity of our Christian witness is at stake" (79).

Welcome!!!!!!!

The name of this blog is Latin for "Truth is Immortal."

It comes from the life motto of the 16th century Anabaptist theologian and martyr, Balthasar Hubmaier (1480-1528) whose life and thought I will be mixing into this blog as time goes by. If you don't know who this man is, please take a moment to read short bios here and here, with a longer one here.

When he signed his writings with "Truth is Immortal," he did it in German (which I think looks something like Wahrhaftigkeit ist unsterblich). We have it in Latin because a friend of mine said Latin is cool and gives a blog instant credibility.

Regardless of the possible effects of a blog with a Latin name, my hope and prayer is that my interaction with the immortal, divine Truth will begin to reverse the inconsequentiality of God, His gospel, His Son and His Word in every crevice of my life.

As to the sidebar on the right, the ministries listed are those that have helped me most in my short 11 years as a Christian. The books are some of the best I've read, and the mp3s are free download sites that, also, have helped me in my struggle to erase God's inconsequentiality in me.

Finally, please leave comments because we don't grow in solitary confinement, but from and with each other.

So, Welcome! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you come back soon!