Droppin' Truth Bombs, Yo!

Over on the facebook there was an exchange between myself and my brother of another mother Jimbo.  This is that exchange:


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Jimbo Ivy will never cease to be amazed by the anger and fury it is possible to call up when you dare suggest that mankind does not possess all the answers; about their world, about their god(s), or about who deserves what. While I will, forever, openly acknowledge that you do not know the truth, I would never be so bold as claim I do.
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Aaron J. Rushton But what if knowing the Truth and possessing all the answers don't mean the same thing? Is Truth entirely unknowable?

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Jimbo Ivy You know as well as I my stance on that issue, Aaron, and it ain't far removed for your own, thus our brotherly association. I am addressing those that claim man's understanding of God is complete and unerring, and on the same tack those that claim to know the world through reason and science in a complete and unerring way. When people stop listening, stop learning, and consider their spiritual education complete, that is when truth dies, when truth becomes unknowable. But I will venture an answer to that question: Truth is knowable for men only once their gone; once they cross over. Faith and conscience is what we have until then to inform us of what truth can be for us in this questionable, confusin existence. If God has a literal presence on this Earth, it is that; our instinctual knowin of what is real to us, of what we feel through our experience and sense of the universe, divine or otherwise, that informs us as how to live our lives. I'm just positing that there may not be a lone answer to the question of how to live, how to believe, how to draw breath, just as there is no one way to splice a line, sow a field, or give joy to a heart. I do not know the answers, the whole of truth; but I do not believe these people that live with their eyes and hearts closed to principles of God (which they forget too often are love, forgiveness, and acceptance) know better than me. In fact, I believe my questions are far more faithful than their unflinching assertions. And I believe, if I may be so bold, that you believe that too.
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And this post is what I've got to say to that.


"When people stop listening, stop learning, and consider their spiritual education complete, that is when truth dies, when truth becomes unknowable."


Man, I am so entirely with you on what I think you think you're saying, but I can't actually agree with it the way you're saying it here, and it all hinges on one understanding: what is Truth?


If Truth is ever knowable, then it cannot become unknowable.  If Truth ever lived, then it can never die. Truth shines out forever in all directions, and cannot be extinguished, silenced or altered.  Truth frees us all, and Truth certainly frees itself.


Truth is eternal.


Truth and facts are not the same thing.  It is a stone cold fact that I am not eating Oreos at the moment, but the Truth of Aaron J. Rushton is not "dude who does not eat Oreos."  Facts change.  Truth is eternal.


Eternity is a pretty crazy thing.  Imagine a number line stretching from the infinite negative to the infinite positive, like this:


-∞                                                                 0                                                              ∞
<-------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------->


Now also imagine that we take a small piece of that number line - from 0 to 1 - and look at it more closely, like this:


0                                                                   1
|-------------------------------------------------------|


While this may seem like a finite piece of the number line, since it came from an infinite number line, this piece itself is also infinite, right?  Think about the divisions we can make between 0 and 1 - 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5...  and so on.  Or think about 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001...  No matter how small we choose to go, there is always something smaller.  There is an infinite amount of definition in the finite space between 0 and 1.


So if you are looking at the number line we started with, you can zoom out as wide as you like and you will never see the ends of it, or you can move in as close as you like and never run out of room.


I believe Truth to function that way.  I believe that if you only know one small kernel of Truth, it is still Truth, and it will lead you to a better understanding of all Truth, if you will let it.  But I also believe that you can never know it all, even in its simplicity.


I definitely believe the Truth to be knowable, and I believe the Truth to be this: that we are all created by God to be equal, and that the fullness of His plan for His Creation (that would be us) is to experience the whole of existence in Love, and in the fullness of Love that only God can make known to us.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

- Matthew 22:34-40

The central point, the focus, the origin, the underlying foundation, the absolute cornerstone to everything in the Gospel I preach is Love, and I believe that the Truth of Love may be known.

But I also believe that the Truth of Love is that it never stops.  The Truth is that Love is eternal, and if Love and Truth are both eternal, how can anyone ever know the final answer?

But if the Truth is Love, how can there ever be anything else to know?  Love is the answer.  Love is the final answer in all things.  Love solves all problems.  Love is the Truth, and the Truth is Love.

So do I know the Truth?  I believe I do.  Do I know it all?  Heavens, no.  That, as you say, will only come after concluding the finite portion of an infinite experience.  We are temporal creatures housing eternal souls.  Truth - Love - is eternal.  It's the only thing that matters, and it's the thing that everything else has to be built on for anything to make sense.

I'll be writing more about this later, but I've wanted to say that for a while now...

Never Underestimate the Value of a Bad Example

Over the years, I've had more than a few discussions with people about the things that are in the Bible that they find to be morally objectionable.  I've discussed one of those things here on the blog before - Jephthah - and what I hope I have made clear in that blog post as well as in the conversations I've had with people throughout the years is that Jephthah's story isn't meant to be seen as a story of what it means to be an incredible follower of God.  Jephthah's story is an example of getting it wrong.  Jephthah's story is a bad example that should really be paid attention to with the understanding that his example is bad.

I used to get in trouble for watching Beavis & Butt-head on Mtv.  (Really, I got in trouble just about any time my parents found out I was watching Mtv.)  I remember being a kid and hearing all the stories on the news about other kids my age winding up in the hospital or the morgue for trying to repeat stunts that Beavis & Butt-head had done on their show...  even though they were cartoons...

But I always thought of Beavis & Butt-head as perfectly good examples of what not to do in life - immature, crude, and quite frankly hilarious examples of the exact opposite of goodness.  So long as I live my life looking nothing like Beavis and/or Butt-head, I think I'll be OK.

Is it bad that I feel the same way about a couple of ministers who were in my life at very pivotal times in my journey to God?

I started my time at Harding University as a Bible major with absolutely zero intention of ever participating in any sort of ministry.  My youth minister in high school made sure of that.  If you're in the very small bracket of people who both (1) read my blog and (2) know who my youth minister was in high school, you're probably not surprised by this.  By the time I graduated high school, I was so repulsed, so turned off, so vehemently against the idea of doing anything that even came close to resembling what he did in the name of Christ that I just swore that I'd never even be involved.  My goal - and I told people this - was to be the old man who sat at the back of the church and just knew a lot of stuff.

But at the same time...  My youth minister was a pretty big dude, easy for (most) people to get along with, always quick with a joke, very passionate about the things he cared about...

And then there was the blatant favoritism, the wildly inappropriate conversations around members of the youth group, the encouragement of all sorts of idiocy and illegalities so long as they were funny, the way-creepy and pretty dang near illegal way he behaved toward attractive 17 year old girls...

It's like looking in a fun-house mirror.  I know that what I'm looking at isn't really me, but dang it all if there aren't so many similarities that it's kinda unsettling to think that I might actually look like that, after all...

What do I do with that?

What would I say to that guy if I saw him on the street tomorrow?

Would I tell him just how awful he was at his job?  Would I call down the righteous thunder and shame him publicly for his gross negligence in caring for the souls that were placed in his charge?  Would I just start reading scripture at him?  It's not like there's a shortage of options.

Or would I thank him for being so amazingly crappy at his job that it (eventually) led me to realize that God was calling me to go into the same field, just to try to do it better?

In every step I made during the summer of my youth ministry internship, the one question I asked myself over and over and over was, "What would my youth minister have done?"

And then I just did the opposite of that.  I think it turned out OK for the most part.

But that brings up another bad example I've been blessed with.  The pulpit minister I worked with for that summer...  oh, goodness.  Go read Matthew 23.  The whole chapter would be good, but make sure you hit the first 8 verses.  That's a pretty good picture of this guy.

Again...  If you're in that select group of folks who (1) read my stuff and (2) know who I had to deal with during the summer of that internship, you probably already know at least part of how bad it was.

I have never met a minister who better embodied every complaint I've ever heard about Christians.  It's...  it's impressive, to say the least.

During my summer there, I was tasked with the job of getting the guys of the youth group more experienced in leading the church services.  The Wednesday night class meetings were JUST class meetings - there was nothing for the whole church to get together.  The Sunday PM services were at 1:30, and I never saw a one of them with more than 25 people (a whopping 10% of the AM service numbers).  So that leaves Sunday morning as the only viable time to get the boys involved in the worship service in front of the congregation to actually gain any confidence in their abilities to lead God's flock.  But preacher-man wasn't OK with that idea - one of the boys might make a mistake and scare off visitors (who, of course, all expect 16 year olds to be perfect for their first time behind a microphone).

In preparing for that Youth Sunday, preacher-man found out I would not be wearing a suit in the pulpit.  I think he might have had a slight coronary at that point.  How could I possibly preach without wearing a suit?  What would the rich old lady think?

Look...  I've had people call me out on a lot of things for being a fat guy that make a lot of sense.  I will readily concede that I would not make a very good sprinter.  I am fully aware that I would probably be very bad at ballet.  But I find it pretty hard to believe that my weight (impressive though it may be) has any impact on my ability to effectively spread the Gospel.  (This was brought into question, more than once, and in person, by a man who has been a preacher for more than twice my lifespan.  WOW.)

Again...  I don't think that there's any bigger reason that people don't go to church than people who already do go to church.

I don't want to spread gossip, and I hope I haven't been.  I just know that these two guys have made inestimably valuable impacts on my ministry - or my mission work or my preaching or whatever it is you want to call whatever I'm doing in Arlington - and for that, I cannot thank them enough.

But I really don't know what it's like to thank someone for being so disgustingly terrible at their job that it inspired me to do it better.

ME!

I haven't actually done the math or anything, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that at least a full third of all of the money that I've ever had in my life has gone towards comics, and that at least 75% of that third came from gambling.

I have got a straight up hate for Contemporary Christian Music.  I know all of the lyrics to all of the songs on the first five Black Sabbath albums.  I know more personal details about the four members of Led Zeppelin than I do about most of the girls I've dated.

I can vividly remember smoking an entire pack of cigarettes in the space of an hour.  On the other hand, there is a night in my past that I have almost no memory of whatsoever, except for the part where I threw up on the rug of the (complete strangers') house I was partying in, and then woke up - naked - on a different couch than the one I remembered being on when I threw up.

I have cheated, lied, manipulated, stolen, and done all manner of other horrible, wicked, indulgent things, destructive to myself as well as those around me, all in the name of having a good time...

...and yet I still look at those two guys...

...and all I can think is, "God...  please...  just don't let me be like that!"