Drowning Without the Truth

A few years ago, comedian/commentator Steven Colbert coined a word to describe how issues of truth and falsehood were being handled in our culture. The word was “truthiness.” It became Harvard Dictionary’s “Word of the Year.”

“Truthiness” is truth without backbone, sentences without meaning, words that mean, as the famous “Cheshire Cat” said, “exactly what I want them to mean.”

How do we move, think, and even communicate in a culture where the foundations have eroded so badly?

As we have lost truth in our culture as a solid reality, everything else around it becomes liquid. Today, young people speak of being “fluid” in their sexuality. The word “sex” or “gender” now mean “exactly what we want them to mean.”

The truth that Jesus spoke about, however, was robust. Unchanging. Life-altering. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” There is a power that comes with truth.

Truth tears down strongholds, and sets captives free. Falsehood erodes our minds, our relationships, and our country. Russia learned this in their failed effort to hide the truth about the Chernobyl disaster from their own countrymen and the world. Boris Gorbachev, in a later memoir, said the Chernobyl disaster and resulting coverup led directly to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

A nation without the truth drowns in the resulting “liquidity.” An individual without truth drowns in their own falsehood and efforts to cover the lie. When we reject the truth, Paul said, “we believe a lie.” And we believe many lies today.

“The truth is out there,” the old X-Files television series would repeat. It is. Not in outer space, but much, much nearer.

It is found in Him Who is “the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.” The truth, not “truthiness,” can be found in a relationship with one person.

His name is Jesus.