What are we talking about when we talk about “truth”?
Thankfully, we’ve got Patheos to answer this question.
…there is something called truth, but what we talk about truth is actually the same thing we talk about when we talk about God.
Ok. I can agree with that because Je…
…we do not live in a fixed universe. Reality is not set in stone. It’s not static. It’s always expanding, always changing, always growing.
Uh…hang on a second…what do you mean by…
It can also be suggested that perhaps God itself is expanding along with the Universe that God created.
Wait…
At the core of the Christian conception of the Divine has always been an understanding that the very light and life that creates the universe is God, and that God in incarnated in all of reality.
No! God was incarnated in Je…
God gives humans freedom to learn, to explore, and to examine the garden. But, in almost a kind of cruel fashion, God creates a prohibition. “You can examine and eat from every tree…except this one in the middle. It’s a special tree of knowledge. Don’t eat of that tree or you will surely die.”
Did you just say God is cruel?
But here, we have God actually kind of lying- if not, at least not being clear with God’s words. Because the truth is that Adam and Eve don’t die immediately.
…and now God is a liar??!!
The word that is most often translated “repent” in the Bible is the Greek word “metanoia”, which literally means meta “expand” noia “the mind”.
So, when Jesus says, “Repent and believe the Gospel”, he’s not saying anything about saying sorry for our sins.
No, he’s actually telling us to expand our minds so that we’re able to begin to grasp more of the reality of the Kingdom of God.
That’s enough.
In Genesis, God desires for humans to stay finite in our capacity to understand the truth. God doesn’t want us to eat from the tree, because if we do, then our capacity to grasp truth will be expanded and we will become “like God.”
STOP!!
…please…just stop…
You can read the whole article in case you think context is going to make a difference.
The article never gets around to mentioning that Jesus is “the Truth”.
Instead, we’re offered a cruel, lying, ever-changing “truth/god”…
…that we’re not capable of understanding anyway.
In a word, this is nonsense.
Flip through the New Testament and you’ll discover that you CAN know the truth…
…and the truth will set you free.
Whoops…wait a second…
There is mention of Jesus being the truth.
And as truth became flesh in Jesus, we also learn that truth is not static. It is dynamic. It is relational. It grows and progresses and evolves and is different based on context.
Which is incredibly different than the common understanding of truth that most churches teach today, isn’t it?
Incredibly different is one way of saying it.
Flat-out false teaching says it better.
Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons. These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead.
– 1 Timonty 4:1
9 Responses
“It seems that in the early stage of how humans understood God, when we wrote the Creation Myth of Genesis, we believed that God desired us to remain completely subjective, never seeking to lean into or embrace the imago dei that we were created in.” What is cruel is I went and read the whole article and those are several minutes I won’t get back. I wondered if you are calling Genesis creation story a myth then what part of Genesis is true and why are you using stories from it as evidence to back up your idea.
“And as truth became flesh in Jesus, we also learn that truth is not static. It is dynamic. It is relational. It grows and progresses and evolves and is different based on context.” The Bible says God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow so then truth is also unchanging if we say God is truth.
“It can be argued that some of the ideas of Jesus sparked and inspired the folks who launched our modern era of technological and scientific innovation- called the enlightenment. I would guess most of the heathens would disagree this is true.
” I may look at your jacket and say, “That’s green”, but someone who is color blind may experience that same jacket as grey. Now, it may be objectively truth that the jacket is green according to most of our perspectives, but for the color-blind person, the jacket is grey, and that is true and real in their world.” That is until you get them those glasses that allow them to see colors and they see it was green the whole time.
“If there’s any core message that Christianity uniquely offers the world, it is this. That truth is relational, dynamic, and incarnated. Life is truth. Living is truth.” No I believe that the core message is Jesus says I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through me. That is a truth that will never change or “expand”.
The meta in metanoia actually means to change, a radical transformation, a total eclipse of the heart. In it’s literal form it means “after.” So no expanding going on. Kind of funny, but one of the precious things my dad taught me was don’t expand your mind,shrink it. Shrink your world down to size, make it smaller and more manageable. The popular acronym is Kiss, keep it simple stupid.
Thinking about God diminishes Him immediately. I get the point the author was making that we are finite and God is infinite. I disagree that reality is constantly changing. God is reality. It is logically impossible for God to change, grow or ‘expand’.
The Patheos article is what happens when you turn God into a progressive.
What’s really odd is that the writer thinks (s)he is being logical. Reading the specious conclusions from Patheos makes me want to throw-up.
That poor person is really stumbling in the dark… I feel very sad for Patheos (Pathos?) and incredibly grateful to have been rescued [by The Eternal and Same yesterday, today and tomorrow God (Hebrews 13:8)] out of such darkness.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet…” Psalm 119
I don’t see something like gravity ever growing or “expanding”. It seems pretty static to me.
I’ve heard many times that “repent” meant “to turn away.”
I like the idea that it also leads to a more “expanded” view of God… But… Just because I like something doesn’t mean it’s TRUE.
Right. Any guesses about what conclusion will be drawn when I start “expanding my mind” about sin?
Because as we all know an infinite God is expanding….into….a larger…..infinity
Also I’ve always been curious bout the argument of the tree of knowledge. Usually they leave out the full title of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They already knew Good. It wasn’t like they had no knowledge at all. What the tree opened their eyes to was Evil (or the absence of Good) and maybe we can all agree that we’d rather not know that, knowing it now.
God was “cruel” when he instilled us with free will. It’s an interesting perspective that just happens to conflict with everything we’re told about the nature of God.
There were A LOT of words in the article and I pretty well captured the flow of thought in my summary statements. All the stuff in-between is apparently unnecessary. (Certainly, the article didn’t need to quote scripture.) Which makes me wonder if it wasn’t written that way on purpose.