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Truth is hard to come by these days. If things don’t change, it will be even harder for our grandchildren. Even now, many people don’t know where to find truth, and, increasingly, they don’t even know how to search for it, believing that it can be found in the tweets of their favorite celebrities, at the top of a Google search, or on a Wikipedia page. However, the real problem for this and future generations is not fundamentally where and how they find the truth but their failure to recognize the truth. For this reason, we must train the next generation to discern truth not only from error but from half-truth, from distorted truth, and from partially-erased truth.
Throughout history, certain men have tried to deny the truth by attempting to discredit the truth of Scripture. Some have been more subtle and thus more successful in leading people away from the Word of God, using scholarly-sounding terminology to impress people with fresh new ways of interpreting the supposedly unenlightened ideas of biblical Christianity. Many have done this as part of an effort to “save” Christianity by harmonizing it with the secular culture’s mind-set and morals.
Sadly, what was once the work mainly of those outside the faith is now quickly becoming the norm in many churches. Like the enemies of the faith from of old, those who engage in such efforts from within the church try to reinterpret biblical truth to make their version of Christianity more palatable to the culture. They are seldom so foolish as to delete certain culturally unwanted theological realities from Christianity. Instead, they avoid mentioning such things in order not to offend the culture, hoping to win a hearing. This is a fool’s errand. Any attempt to synchronize Christianity with culture will produce an emasculated Christianity with no countercultural voice to proclaim the truth.
The true church must not give an inch. We must refuse to allow the lords of our culture to cancel the truth of God, as if they ever could, and we must not allow some in the church to attempt to erase the truth, even partially. Only those who despise the truth seek to avoid the truth, reinterpret the truth, or fail to speak the truth in order to accommodate to culture. What’s more, to borrow a theme from George Orwell, when we erase the truth, future generations not only forget the truth but they also forget the erasure of the truth, and the lies become the apparent truth. It is only when we know the truth that we are set free—free to love the truth and the One who is Truth, and free to speak the truth in love.