D James Kennedy put it this way: “I’d rather know the saddest fact than be deluded by the sweetest lie.” A whole and healed life can only be built on the foundation of truth. Like medicine there can only be hope if the diagnosis is true. But I go for sweetness too often!!!
Truth sometimes appears to be the enemy, because there are some very sad things to see, things mostly about myself. And if I see sad things, won’t that make me sad? Who wants to be sad? So I avoid and live with unexamined drives and agendas.
I wonder – what’s the most dangerous lie I am believing right now? I think that to some degree we all are believing something that is simply untrue and basing a good deal of our future on it. Sometimes the things we believe aren’t outright dark lies. They can be overemphases or slight twists of good things that when extrapolated out into the future can cause us to end up pretty far away from where we hoped we would land.
I think the biggest lie I believe is that I am basically okay and no radical interventions are necessary. I am reminded of the Apostle Paul who began his ministry by saying he was the least of the Apostles but ended his ministry by saying he was the chief of sinners. From one perspective that doesn’t sound like much progress, do you think? In fact, I can’t recall any major evangelical leader giving me such an impression of their spiritual journey, with perhaps the exception of Gordon MacDonald.
A part of the spiritual life is discovering the lies we have been believing and having V8 moments when we clunk ourselves on the head, as if to say, “who woulda thunk?” I think I will be having V8 moments for the rest of my life.
A prayer: God, please give me strength when I find out how wrong I have been. I don’t want to give up, give out, or give over to despair. I really just want to thank you for keeping the repair job going in my life. And one more thing, Lord. When I find out how wrong I have been from a stinging critic rather than from my own keen insight, keep me soft. Keep me from attacking the source and resisting the truth just because someone wants to hurt me with it. All truth is from You. Amen
