The quest for Truth

Poatina Morning Tea devotion given yesterday

I started a series of devotions last time; parables about the Kingdom. Today it’s a parable about truth and it comes between parable of the sower and parables specifically about the Kingdom.

I have been watching from a distance news about the large Hedron collider: they’ve built an enormous circle that speeds particles which collide so they can see what happens.

They are on a quest for truth, to work out what’s real and what’s not and it’s the cutting edge of physics at the moment. The Higgs Bosun is what they’re looking for – a particle that’s invisible but is believed to be the reason why matter has mass. They have all these theories built around it, but if they can’t find it, they’re in trouble.

They know everything about it, except whether it exists!

Q&A: a couple of weeks ago, an impressive professor from Oxford University and a leading Christian thinker, John Lennox. There is often presumed to be a division separating Science and God. Lennox was saying, this division is false; that Science came out of the Christian faith because it assumed there were laws in the world and therefore that it was possible to make sense of it.

I love that we don’t have to be scared of science. If it’s true that God exists, the more people quest, the more they will discover the truth of God…

In what situations are you scared of truth – or don’t you want to engage with truth? Wouldn’t it be a shame if we avoid science because we fear we’re wrong. Wouldn’t it be a shame for science to avoid God. I love that our little school won 3 awards for science! It’s good to see that alongside all the other schools across the state, Trinity College won the most awards – certainly per capita!

After Jesus talks about parable of the sower, he goes on to talk about a lamp – do you bring out a lamp to put it under a bowl or hide it? A lamp doesn’t create the things in the room: it gives you the chance to see what is there, for whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed. We can get a bit messed up with Christianity and think it’s about learning stuff and regurgitating it. Jesus said, “the truth will set you free”. If this is true –it’s about seeing what is there.

Field Marshall Montgomery hero of WWII said,

“And let us remember when all these things are said and done, that one great fact, the greatest fact, remains supreme and unassailable. It is this. There are in this world things that are true and things that are false; there are ways that are right and ways that are wrong; there are men good and men bad. And on one side or the other we must take our stand, one or the other we must serve.”

Heb 11 talks about faith, being sure of what you see – not an intellectual thing but being a firm place to stand. With all that is coming at you, you’ve got your bearings.

The Kingdom is about truth…Bono said,

It’s not good enough to rail against the lies. You have to replace them with truth.

I know there’s a part of me doesn’t really want truth. There’s messy stuff in me and if I look too closely at the world, it’s sad, too. I had a beautiful discussion with my son on the way home from watching “Transformers”. He asked me “Why does God leave the world in our hands?” He really gets affected by stuff – he really cares. We’d seen on TV what is happening in the horn of Africa. The worst famine since the 80s. There is corruption, but part of it is that you and I live in a fair bit of comfort and we don’t want to sacrifice our lifestyle. If all the world was to live in the same comfort as we do in the USA and Australia we’d need 7 worlds!

That for me is an uncomfortable truth. It cost us about $100 to go and see “Transformers” and have a bit to eat. It’s safer not to let your head go places. It’s safer to be self centred. Not to face truth.

In talking about what stops the Kingdom happening, Jesus talks about truth. In Ephesians it talks about being mature – “speaking the truth in love”. There’s a tie up between truth and growing up as a human being. I wonder if there are truths that you are avoiding; if there are things it’s best not to let your head and heart go to?

But when this community is at its best it’s a place it helps me confront stuff in me and when it’s at its best, it’s the same for you.

However, the truth is, whenever you get a bunch of people together it doesn’t take long before we make ‘treaties’ with one another – we know what not to talk about! We don’t discuss this, but we do it. I wonder if that’s the kind of stuff Jesus talks about. Whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed. I wonder if there is stuff for us as families, as neighbours, that is hidden. Of course there is. This is what life is, we’re all messy. But I love that Trinity won awards for Science because science, at its best, is a quest for truth. Yet it’s possible for it to become an ideology and support for the ego.

Wouldn’t it be nice if whoever comes to engage with Fusion goes away knowing more of the truth about God; knowing more of the truth about themselves and about how people work.

We have to face the discomfort of turning the lamp on. Part of us may feel there are places where we haven’t turned the lamp on for a while. It’s the cards we don’t want to put on the table we’ve got to worry about.