Does truth really matter to Christians?

I wasn’t raised in church, and I didn’t wake up one day and say, “I think I’d like to be a Christian.” Nope. That was not on my radar. And I wasn’t the 1950s June Cleaver type female that was often an unstated background idealization in evangelical churches. I was a rough and tumble tomboy who cussed and played sports aggressively like my older brother. I also argued with my dad like a politician. That’s why he said I should have been a lawyer.

None of these childhood traits helped me fit into the southern evangelical church when I became a Christian as a young adult, especially not later on as a pastor’s wife.

Another sore point for my fellow evangelicals was that my father, a chemical engineer, had been a brewmaster. He brought us out to Portland, Oregon in 1976 as the assistant brewmaster for Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve Beer. That’s an important part of my history, because I love my hometown. And my family wouldn’t have been here without Henry’s…Portland is known, in part, for the brewing industry. However, I was once told that this information couldn’t be published because it would offend and alienate my evangelical audience.

I felt that this was an odd response to my story. My audience was comprised of Christian adults and I wasn’t promoting the consumption of alcohol. Rather, alcohol was only mentioned in passing as to why my family moved to Portland. Further, this information wasn’t being delivered to people too young to process a story like mine.

Now that there’s some more context, let’s think about an important part of my story: my audience would find the truth of my background as offensive to them.

“The truth is offensive”

I cannot count how many times I have heard Christians say this very statement: the truth is offensive. But what these Christians tend to mean is that the specific truth of Jesus or of the Gospel is offensive, not the ‘whole of truth’ itself. And while it seems ironic, I’ve noticed that the truth is sometimes offensive to Christians when it disrupts cultural traditions or niche theological projects that have nothing to do with the foundational truth of Jesus nor of the Gospel.

Knowing that examples tend to be flawed in one way or another, let’s still consider the example from the my story. There’s nothing inherently bad about the alcohol in the story. My dad didn’t drink much alcohol, because he lacked a problematic relationship with it. My background in Portland is important, because it explains a different cultural upbringing than in the south. Further, I was considerate of the audience’s age, since my undergraduate degree is in education; having a child psychology element.

Rather, the problem with utilizing this truth in my story was that my audience consisted of adult Christians who had a cultural tradition of viewing alcohol as evil. To them, it was an offensive truth. But, yeah, the “truth is offensive,” you guys!

Is truth what we really want?

In the parable of the rich young man (Mark 10:17-22), Jesus is asked by the young man, “Good Teacher, what must I do to be saved?” Jesus comments here on the man’s use of “good” and tells the man to keep the commandments that he knows. When the man says that he has kept all the commandments, Jesus responds with a deeply cutting truth about him. “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” What does this man do when confronted with an important truth? “Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

He was grieved by the truth.

Being grieved isn’t exactly the same as finding truth offensive, but like those who are offended by being told a truth, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. There’s an important lesson here about the relationship of truth to our own religiosity: we aren’t as concerned with truth as we might think. You see, in this young man’s culture, wealth was typically viewed as a sign of blessing by God. But in this encounter, Jesus overtly states that wealth is a specific problem for this specific man. Don’t get hung up on the wealth aspect, though…look deeper.

Not only was wealth a specific issue for this man, his religious culture and tradition was enabling this problem for him. So, when Jesus revealed this truth, the man was grieved by it, though he considered himself very religious and morally upright.

In my church experience, Christians rarely seemed to explore their individual relationship with ‘the whole of truth,’ nor with specific and difficult truths about their own struggles. Though I can point to a historical Christian metanarrative in which I find such concerns and endeavors, I still find it to be rare in my localized experience. Why? There’s an idiom in our culture that is on the right track…

The truth hurts

The Scripture tells us some interesting things about truth:
1) Truth has stumbled in the public square…and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. (Isaiah 59:14-15)
2) Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)
3) When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’ ... After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:60, 66)
4) If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:31-32)

There is so much commentary work to be done here. However, one thing to note in the these passages is that freedom in the truth is not easy-peasy. It’s not “I’m right and you’re wrong. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.” Rather, the ideas about the truth found in these passages along with Jesus’s own subsequent suffering and death, should give us some serious pause in whether or not we follow the truth.

It’s definitely hard to love what is true and to endure in truth when it’s pointed out in a personally challenging manner or in a “you don’t fit our culture” manner. I have found that when Roger and I buck the nothing-to-do-with-the-truth-of-Jesus-or-the-Gospels church culture in favor of a Christian ethical truth, we were often made a prey. And we have subsequently found that though the truth will set us free, that journey to freedom is also a hard, painful, joy-in-suffering-type reality for us.

So, does the truth really matter to Christians?

Yes and no.

I cannot paint a whole religious belief system and all of its adherents with such a broad brush. That’s obviously incorrect…and Christians are just human beings, with all their human problems. I recognize, as one of them, I struggle with those human problems, as well.

However, I can say that our experiences lean towards the answer of, “I am having difficulty in saying that truth fundamentally matters to many Christians; especially when it costs them dearly in some way, or when they suffer for it.”¹ And, really, a commitment to truth, even if it grieves us, should be a hallmark trait of a Christian. As Jesus said, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)

So, maybe it is time to inventory the truths you find offensive and to make sure that you and Jesus are indeed tracking on these matters. If not, it may be time to see where cultural traditions, creaturely comforts, or personal discomfort have enabled untruths that may be disrupting a powerful relationship with the King of Truth.
²

1. Referent to our background in the American Evangelical tradition, not necessarily to the worldwide church where I do see believers suffer and die for their faith.

2. I cannot seem to figure out the spacing for my headings inside the body of text. My apologies!