A few months ago a boy examining the stones in an abandoned mine found a ruby worth about $7,000. This gem had been overlooked by thousands who had searched there for something of value.
Man, engaged in his unending “search for truth,” continually passes by truth and picks up baubles instead.
Truth has to do with ultimate questions and answers, rather than merely with knowledge and information. Advances in knowledge stagger the imagination. It is estimated that man is prepared to make use of only 10 per cent of the information available to him. Truth has to do with the nature of man—who he is, why he exists, what his destiny is. Truth has to do with God, with good and evil, with sin and redemption, with time and eternity.
And all the while, as men blindly search, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, stands ready to reveal himself as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” only to be rejected in favor of substitutes that at best leave emptiness in the soul.
Perhaps some of us have been fighting the battle for truth on the wrong front. We are concerned because of the world’s confusion, reflected in every area of life and highlighted by the revolt of young people. Because of our assurance that Christ is the answer for all these problems, we are inclined to wage the battle at the level of doctrines that have to do with his person and work, and with the record of these truths in the inspired and authoritative Scriptures.
But while our own faith and hope rest squarely on Christ, as revealed in the Scriptures, we find that the questions many are asking today delve behind the revelation of God in Jesus Christ to the very existence of God himself.
We are confronted with a generation characterized by ignorance of the Scriptures and the Christ they reveal. It is a generation largely devoid of Bible-based moral and spiritual values, one that has been brought up on a syncretistic philosophical conglomeration where “religion” is, at best, a questionable option.
This spiritually starved generation is to be pitied, because we, of a former generation, have so poorly taught and lived the faith we have professed. In a sense they are like children who are being taught calculus and trigonometry without knowing the multiplication table.
How can Christians help others to find truth? Pious phrases, platitudes, and clichés are meaningless. In these times of spiritual ignorance it is the Spirit who teaches through the Word of God, which is still the Sword of the Spirit, and through lives filled with his presence.
Deep down in the human heart—yes, even in the hearts of a cynical and disillusioned generation—there is a longing for God that can never be satisfied until he is found in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Although men do not “reason” themselves to God and at some time must take the unreasonable step of faith, still we know that God has not left himself without a witness in this world.
As I write I can look out and see all around evidences of his hand in creation. I see the sky with clouds scudding across the blue of infinite space; I see trees and flowers and grass; and I, as one who is aware of and believes in the divine revelation, remember that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” I sense the wonder in the words: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.” And I go further, for I know that it was through Jesus Christ that all this was brought into existence: “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”
For anyone to think that things just “happen,” or that natural objects have within themselves the forces that explain the marvelously intricate operations of the universe, he must exercise a credulity far more difficult than faith.
A scientist searches for facts wherever they may be. He projects hypotheses into the unknown, experiments, gains evidence from multiplied sources or even by accident. But along the way are the evidences of God’s handiwork, whether he recognizes them or not. There can be no real and lasting conflict between the facts of science and those of revealed Christianity.
The philosopher, too, if objective in his search, will find in the books of Job and Romans (to mention but two places in the Bible) a depth of philosophical truth that, when illuminated by the Holy Spirit, will transcend anything to be found in the writings of the greatest secular thinkers.
No matter how earnestly a man may search, he is rewarded only when he is willing to accept truth as truth. Honest search will find honest answers, and honesty demands humility, a humility that discards presuppositions in favor of facts.
The greatest single deterrent to man’s discovery of truth is the tendency to give precedence to presuppositions that rule out the supernatural and the miraculous. Many “thinkers” today have stumbled over their own doubts to the place where they are blind to God’s truth.
Looking for truth, one can look at the universe and be convinced that some rational, powerful, wise, and good Being must have brought it into existence. Logic demands that we reject the idea that it is “self-contained,” “self-con-trolled,” or “self-developing.” The order and wisdom to be found in the universe demands that we accept the fact of a Creator-God.
Let the honest searcher for truth continue his search and he comes face to face with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Apostle Paul urges: “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:8,9).
Searching for truth is not enough. One must recognize it when it is found.
And there is a tragic alternative. One may reject the truth in favor of a lie. Satan is the master counterfeiter, and nowhere is he more active than in the minds of men.
The Apostle Paul describes the evidences God has given of himself in his creation (Rom. 1:19, 20) and then goes on to describe the folly of those who willfully reject this evidence: “Claiming to be wise, they become fools” (v. 22).
And what of the final state of those who reject God’s truth? “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” (vv. 24, 25).
In man’s search for truth, his greatest folly is to reject or discard Jesus Christ, the Creator and Redeemer, the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith, the One who is Truth itself.
