The Truth Hurts? Really?

The Truth Hurts? Really?

I'm sure many of us have felt a sting at one time or another when confronted with truth. But is it really the truth that brings us pain? Or is it really the sudden sharp acknowledgment that we're faced with? I tend to believe that it's the recognition that we're in error or that we've been deceived that causes us pain and that it's the acknowledgment of, and compliance with the truth that brings us healing and life.

For example, the need to express individuality and intellect in radical ways seems to be a wide and common goal in the world among people today. But I harbor a fear of the extremes of independence I see many striving to achieve. Because the truth is that the spirit of independence can be a spirit of deception. The quest for independence has the ability to separate us from truth and life. The truth is evident whether we choose to acknowledge it or not and that is that we're totally dependent on the same God that created us. If our perspective has changed, it doesn't change the truth that has existed before us.

What are we saying to God by our efforts to stand apart and be individual? I can do it on my own? I can do what I want? It's true that we can, but He knows that because He's the one that gave us those choices. So what we're really saying is nothing more than insult to another truth. But He's also forewarned us. Good parents can bear witness to the fact that children are most at peace when the boundaries of acceptable behavior are clear. It gives them a sense of security to know where those boundaries are and that they're enforced. Occasionally they'll test those boundaries just to make sure that they still exist because it gives them a certain peace and security by reaffirming that things are still as they understood them to be. To God, we are those children.

As adults in the world we may no longer see ourselves as children, but in God's unchanging and much higher perspective, we're nothing more. We're no more independent of Him than a newborn baby at it's mother's breast. We can think and do anything we want, we have that choice. But without Him, in the end we continue to live or die by our own choice when this "life" is over. He's given us minds and the freedom to use them. But with our great human intellect we can easily deceive ourselves by reasoning away the truth. We're merely given more freedom to test the boundaries if we choose to and at the same time are required to suffer the greater consequences. "To whom much is given, much is required", so as we gain more "freedom and independence" we become more accountable for our use of it. But in the reality of God, nothing that He's spoken ever changes, so regardless of how we choose to express ourselves or exhalt our freedom and our intellect, the consequences stay the same. If we think any differently, then we're the only ones deluded and we have only ourselves to blame because the truth was clear before us. We choose to be damned or not. That choice was given to us by God - in the end, we will be damned or not by our own choices. If you have trouble believing this, just remember my words on the day of judgment.

The world might call me a fool. But if fools are the only ones to accept the truth and live, where does that leave all of the "smart" people who live for this moment gorged on their own intellect? I'd rather choose to be a fool for Christ and live beyond this moment than die bloated full of myself only to lie rotting in the stench of my feigned intellect and independence. We've been told by God that we were created to live beyond this momentary "life". Which means that this "life" isn't THE LIFE. To understand that and live according to it indicates that we have an eternal perspective rather than a short sighted terminal one. I understand that with all of the influence and "thoughtful intelligence" of the world, that the truth can become obscured if we let it. But the consequences can be eternally deadly. The seeming growing obscurity is satan's design and it's indeed intentional.

I can't help but feel in my own spirit that our God's sick of man's growing philosophical stupidity as evidenced by mans' sinful expressionism and independence in the way that he lives in the face of the unmovable truth that's existed clearly before him. Our greatest and yet simplest choice in this mere moment in the true expanse of our existence as declared by our God is this: Will we choose to accept the reality of what God has told us and live according to the raw unwhitewashed truth of it even though that means humbly admitting our frailty and deep dependence on Him? Or will we choose instead to hide in the obscurity - believing the lie of our independence and the reasoning of our own intellect in the face of the truth that God has declared will be reconned with on the inescapable day when it all comes down ...