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An old German proverb states, “The grave of one who dies for the truth is holy ground.” Holiness, then, adores truth.
It is the first duty of a Christian to love truth. They say cleanliness is next to godliness. Truthfulness, I would add, is its full embrace! King David understood God’s desire for truth. He prayed, “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.” (Psalm 51:6).
By contrast, God’s Word calls Satan “the father of lies” and says that lying is the devil’s “native language.” (John 8:44). Indeed, our lies only make us putty in Satan’s claws. Oliver Wendell Holmes nailed it when he said, “Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.”
God’s native language, however, is truth.
In other words, truth timely told is like a visitation of God Himself. The apostle John wrote, “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light…” (John 3:21). And we know that “God is light.” (1 John 1:5).
Jesus personally claimed to be truth: “I am the way the truth and the life” (John 14:6). And he taught that to know him is to know the Father.
We can even look to Plato for insight on this line of thought. He wrote, “God is truth and light his shadow.” I like that.
Truth is more powerful than health, money, armies, politics, the media, human language and time. It is more important than welfare reform, health care, education, tax reduction, abortion restrictions and even family values rhetoric (which I love and use). The fastest way to have a godless country is to have a truthless country. If we forget that our little lies are the soil from which the big ones grow, godlessness will reign.
Sigmund Freud taught that lying is as vital to psychic equilibrium as sleep. If we deprive a man of his lies, Freud says, we will reap the same dark consequences as denying him his dreams. Would you be shocked to know that Freud was a virulent atheist?
Alexander Lowen observed that the most damaging expectation a parent can put on a child is that he must never lie. Not surprisingly, Lowen is a renowned humanist psychologist. By contrast, John Ruskin, in 1867, said, “To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.”
To die for truth is to fall into the loving arms of God. God is Truth like water is wet. Get rid of God and Truth will no longer exist, not even as a museum piece.
Joel Mark Solliday, B.A., M.Div., is the editor of Campus CrossWalk and the pulpit minister of the Northern Light Church of Christ in Minnesota. He earned his M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary and has worked at Pepperdine and ACU. His lovely wife Katie is a junior high school teacher.
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