ARE WE TRULY TRUTH-SEEKERS?

Are we seekers of the truth? The men of Jerusalem thought that they were. After the destruction of Jerusalem and three successive exiles to Babylon, those who remained in Judah came to the Prophet Jeremiah and asked him to seek the counsel of the Lord. They were afraid that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would return to destroy this small remnant for killing his governor, Gedaliah. Should they remain in Judah or flee to their ally, Egypt?

Ten days later, Jeremiah returned with the Lord’s verdict. He would protect them only if they remained in Judah:

·       “hear the word of the LORD, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: If you set your faces to enter Egypt and go to live there, then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine of which you are afraid shall follow close after you to Egypt, and there you shall die. All the men who set their faces to go to Egypt to live there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. They shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I will bring upon them. (Jeremiah 42:15-17)

Sadly, even though they sought the Lord’s counsel, they refused to obey it and fled to Egypt. To justify their disobedience, they accused Jeremiah of lying. Any leader justifies his sin by clothing himself with the appearance of righteousness. This had also characterized the history of Israel – ostensibly seeking the truth only to reject it.

Is it bad enough to reject the Word of God. However, to seek it and then to reject it is even worse, as Jeremiah explained:

·       “For you sent me to the LORD your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the LORD our God, and whatever the LORD our God says declare to us and we will do it.’ And I have this day declared it to you, but you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD your God in anything that he sent me to tell you. Now therefore know for a certainty that you shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go to live.” (Jeremiah 42:20-22)

The world is no different. We claim that we are “truth-seekers,” but when we are confronted with a truth that doesn’t affirm our interests and beliefs, we reject it. We deny that we have freewill because it doesn’t conform to our materialistic paradigm. We try to explain the wonder of consciousness as a material phenomenon because we have rejected anything beyond the material. We try to squirm around the incredible fine-tuning of the universe by proposing the existence of a multiverse, without the slightest shred of evidence. We try to explain the wonder of life by the naturalistic tale of self-organization, again without any evidence and in the face of counter-evidence.

Are we any less guilty than the Israelites who rejected the Word of God? Is rejecting the evidence of God a matter of moral culpability? I don’t see why this shouldn’t be! Nor does God (Romans 1:18-32).