Key Life Network

Narrator: Truth and lies have consequences. Let's talk about it on Key Life.

Guest (Male): This is Key Life with our host, author and seminary professor Steve Brown. He's nobody's guru. He's just one beggar telling other beggars where he found bread. If you're hungry for God, the real God behind all the lies, you've come to the right place.

Steve Brown: If you've been listening the last few days, it's been kind of boring, and I know that. But I had to take this much time to kind of introduce what we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks.

Over the next few weeks, and I'm working on a book, and you can feel free to comment what I'm teaching on this broadcast. We're looking at lies that Christians believe sometimes, me too, and those lies cause guilt and shame and fear and regret.

Yesterday, I was talking about some basic assumptions that are part of what I'm going to be saying over the next few weeks. My first basic assumption is that the Bible is true. It's really true. Basic assumptions are a part of every worldview. Atheists have basic assumptions that are unprovable. Agnostics do, Buddhists do, Muslims do, and Christians do.

I'm a Christian, and I believe that the Bible is true, every bit of it. There's an old story of an ugly American visiting an undeveloped country, and he encountered a man sitting under a tree, reading a Bible.

"In my country," the American arrogantly said, "that book is outdated."

"If it were outdated here," the man replied, looking up from his Bible, "you would have been eaten by now."

That brings me to another assumption, expanding on the first assumption. Lies really do have consequences and outcomes, and truth does too. When our religious views create guilt, shame, regret and fear, there should be a presumption that something isn't working right. That's just the way the world works, and the price we pay for being alive.

Just so there are outcomes to truth. When Jesus said, "You will recognize them by their fruits," Matthew 7:16, and Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, Galatians 5:22 through 23, they are both talking about consequences and outcomes.

Consequences can be a strong indication that something isn't right, but also a good indication that something is right. I have a friend who, after many years as an active member of a particular congregation, he left. When I asked him why he left, he said, "I left because of how I felt after every worship service. I always felt condemned, sure that I had violated God's instructions and even wondering if I was a Christian."

It wasn't that what was being taught wasn't true, but the way it was applied, it was applied in a way that made me feel like a wet, shaggy dog shaking himself at the Miss America pageant. Then third, and probably goes without saying, but when we're talking about truth and lies, it needs to be said anyway. There is truth that is really and objectively true.

The truth is objectively true, and even if nobody believes it's true. Our culture has a misconception that you have your truth and I have my truth, but as long as you believe it's true, and if you're sincere about it, it's true to you. No, it's not. That's insane.

With that kind of attitude, we can't normally function in a real world. We wouldn't go to a doctor who believed that kind of thing about medical truth, or fly on a plane with a pilot who believed it about aeronautical truth.

Some people say there is no truth but one's own truth. You can't live that way. To be meaningful, language must reference the reality of objective truth. Life can only be lived with success by recognizing the quality of truth. Neurotic, psychotic behavior is defined by ignoring objective truth.

So a basic assumption of what I'm going to be teaching, and the book I'm working on, and I might say, of the Bible is that some things are objectively true and some things are not. There is a significant difference between truth and lies.

Aristotle, he was a fourth-century Greek philosopher whose influence on Western culture can't be overestimated, taught about first principles. Those principles that are at the heart of all that is. One of his most important principles was called the principle of non-contradiction. He said that without that principle, everything we know cannot be known.

It is how we can tell the difference between, well, a cow and a human being. How we organize and make decisions about reality. How we discern what is true and what isn't. Simply stated, and certainly oversimplified, the principle of non-contradiction is that if something is true, the opposite is not true.

For instance, if 2 + 2 = 4, it can't at the same time be 3 or 5, okay? One of the reasons that communities, nations, and families are divided is because basic truths are no longer shared. It doesn't matter if your truth contradicts my truth, or your views and my views can't both be true. The only thing that matters is what you think, what you feel, what you assume to be true.

As it were, truth becomes a personal choice, and nobody has the right to question that personal choice. Listen to me, that's dangerous. If we can't recognize lies and agree at least somewhat, then the guilt and shame and fear and regret from those lies will become permanent.

There's another assumption, and it's this: mercy and forgiveness are the gasoline that empowers the Christian truth. I got a letter this morning from a lady who asked to be removed from our mailing list. She was nice about it, but she said that she and I were in different places in terms of what we both felt was true.

It turned out that her son had decided to identify as female. From things that I had said and taught, she knew that I disagreed with her affirmation of her son's new identity. Then she referenced some other issues and positions with which we disagreed. There was a time when I would have debated her views, showing her where she was wrong, and she would have tried to do the same things with me, but we didn't do that.

Instead, I quoted Wesley's statement that if someone's heart was as his heart, they should give him their hand. My assumption is, and we've got to operate this way if we're going to operate realistically in a real world, our assumption is that some things are objectively, really true. A cow isn't a dog. An alligator isn't a cat. The sky isn't purple.

It's different than that. Those truths are the truths that normal people accept. That works in the Christian faith too. Truth is true simply because it's true. It's not true because it works. It works because it is true. Hey, you think about that. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Steve Brown. Boy, that felt like a whole meal right there, right? If you're just joining us and you're wondering, "What is Steve talking about?" We have recently wrapped up our study on the basics of the faith and started a new series about how the gospel helps us confront fear, guilt, shame, and regret. So much more to explore tomorrow. Hope you will join us then.

So, of all the things that drag you down, what's at the top of that list? Well, if you're like a lot of folks, it would be guilt. But here's some great news. Jesus' death paid the debt for all our sins. And that means guilt can actually lead us back to Christ to find true and lasting forgiveness. Steve teaches about guilt in a special mini-book called, "Feeling Guilty, Grace for Your Mistakes." If you struggle with guilt, this free mini-book is really going to help. So call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at keylife.org for that mini-book, or go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for the free mini-book called "Feeling Guilty, Grace for Your Mistakes."

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