by

Pastor B.J. Knefley

What is truth? How do you define truth? According to Webster, truth is simply an agreement with facts or reality. But what does that mean? Facts or reality, according to whom?

I’ve been around for a while. The first presidential election I remember was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s. Watching the evening news with my parents, I believed that everything I heard was the truth. If I wanted to know what was going on, I just had to listen to the news. Sadly, that wasn’t true then, and it’s not true now. Truth is subjective. Each person interprets it based on what they’ve been taught. We’re biased, and as much as I wish that weren’t so, it is.

What I believe to be true shapes my reality. If I believe that someone doesn’t like me and is out to harm me, it becomes my reality even if it isn’t true. But it feels true to me. Our world is filled with misinformation, half-truths, and outright lies. For some reason, we buy into these supposed truths and share them with friends and on social media. 

While I don’t want to throw out the good with the bad, I also don’t want to be deceived by false information or things meant to sway my opinion. So, what’s the answer? For me, it’s both simple and personal.

Several years ago, there was a pastor named Lester Roloff who was arrested and jailed for what he believed was his duty before God in the education of children in his care. The authorities disagreed and subsequently arrested and imprisoned him. He made a statement about the Bible that I have never forgotten. Referring to the Bible, he said that it contained all the news you’ll ever need. In other words, if you wanted to learn about life, politics, foreign policy, marriage, and every other subject imaginable, studying the Scripture would be enough. If we all lived by these two guiding principles—love God and love our neighbor—we would have all the truth we needed. Think about it.