TRUTH AND THE LIBERATED MIND

Truth is essential. We depend upon it in every way, whether we are trying to find our way home or maintaining our car. God is even called the “God of truth” rather than of experience or emotion:

·       “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.” (Deuteronomy 32:4 NKJV)

Consequently, as Jesus had prayed, we are sanctified by His truth, the Scriptures:

·       “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17)

We are also set free by knowing the truth:

·       Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32)

In short, the truths of the Scriptures are the entire foundation for the Christian life (2 Peter 1:2-3; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Consequently, we are to seek the truth and wisdom of God before all other riches (Proverbs 2:3-6; Jeremiah 9:23-24).

However, many of today’s beliefs have turned us away from seeking God through the truth, the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2). Here are a few such beliefs that discourage any quest for spiritual truth:

Postmodernism is the belief that either there is no truth, or that the truth cannot be discovered with any degree of certainty. However, it is unavoidable to not make truth statements, even when you deny the truth, as the sentence above demonstrates. Yet, it is confidently said, “No one can know with any degree of certainty about spiritual truth.” Therefore, this theory is illogical, since its justification requires a statement of universal truth. Besides, if we believe that we cannot find the truth, we certainly will not seek it.

Closely associated with postmodernism is the belief that we find our own spiritual truths within, and these might pertain only to ourselves. If this is true, then there is little of worth we can learn from others or from the collected wisdom of human history.

Materialism is the belief that there is no spiritual dimension or even freewill, and is closely associated with atheism, modernism, and secular humanism. Instead, our thinking and seeking is just the result of our DNA and our culture. If this is so, then there is nothing spiritual to find. Instead, we should just seek to enjoy our meaningless lives until we return to the soil.

Darwinism is little different. We are just animals, so the most authentic thing we can do is to live like the other animals, seeking to survive and reproduce, while finding a little pleasure wherever we can. For the Darwinist, finding truth is just a matter of our biochemical undersigned wiring. In this way, truth is degraded to nothing more than the physical truths of science.

None of these views encourage us to seek after wisdom, understanding, or the meaning of life, since these don’t exist in any meaningful way. Instead, they all reduce life to the present joys, which become increasingly elusive as we try to grasp ahold of them. The idea of morality is merely something we’ve invented to give some order to our lives.

Many ancient philosophies have returned to fill this nihilistic (valueless) vacuum. They are centered on living a virtuous life. While these offer society a greater hope for survival, they fail to even provide a rationale for the existence of “virtue.” Instead, virtue is merely a matter of what society deems virtuous, as it aimlessly evolves.

Why then live the virtuous life if “virtue” is no more than our mental creation? For the benefits! Since virtue is more in accordance with our human nation, it does yield benefits. However, if we are living virtuously for the benefits we derive, it is no longer virtuous but a more enlightened form of selfishness.

What benefits? There are many. For example, if we hurt others, we also hurt ourselves; when we help others, we feel good about ourselves. However, these simply behaviors might not give us the ego boost we seek. Therefore, the idealist might be attracted to an affirming idealistic group, even if it involves great self-sacrifice and violence. However, idealists have always been able to convince themselves that they are fighting for the greater good. In light of this, the mind remains in captivity to the heart and our demanding psychological needs.

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The mind is dying along with any concern about the truth. For perhaps 15 years, I would set up my easel in Washington Square Park at New York University, a school known for its high academic standards. For the first years, students and others would approach me to discuss questions about meaning of life, objective moral law, and the existence of God. However, after about eight years, few would approach my easel to discuss these foundational issues. The door had closed, and the mind was in shackles.

From where then does wisdom spring forth and how can it be set free? It is only through Jesus that we can have a truth that will transform us and set us free. How does His truth set us free? First of all, we have the forgiveness of sin, a removal of the burden of guilt and shame that had controlled our lives. How? We obsessively try to prove that we have value in a “valueless” world, amidst our feelings that there is something wrong with us. We might differ in the desired commodities we pursue to build our self-esteem – money, power, sexual attractiveness, popularity, possessions, and various attainments. However, each has become our drug-of-choice, and we require a regular fix.

The richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller, had been asked, “How much more money will you need to finally be happy?” His answer was very revealing: “Always a little bit more.” Drugs never ultimately satisfy. Eventually, they force life and freedom out of our minds.

How? Our underlying needs suppress those thoughts that reveal our unworthiness and culpability and highlight our successes. Consequently, we become blinded to ourselves and to others. Therefore, we get into arguments about who did what to whom, and we are convinced that it’s always the fault of the “other guy.” We spend our lives looking into the mirror, studying how to present the optimal façade to the world. We live lives of denial, ever seeking the affirmation of others.

Without even knowing it, we seek to answer the supreme question, “Who am I?” but we seek it from our arbitrary and ever-changing social context, upon which we have become dependent at the price of our minds.

However, we were created for relationship, but it must start with our ever-loving and accepting God. Yes, this too is dependence, but God is the One on whom we must depend for our freedom. However, it is like our dependence upon food and drink, necessary commodities upon which life and freedom of thought depend. When we are deprived of these, we become broken and can be manipulated into believing whatever our tormentors want us to believe.

Let me try to illustrate how our dependence on God is a freeing and life-giving dependency. Without the assurance of His forgiveness, love, and affirmations, we resent those who withhold their affirmations from us and become co-dependent, never free from our needs to be loved and approved by others. However, once we are assured of God’s love, we are freed from the dependence upon the approval of others.

Once we become assured that He loves us with an undying love, we have the confidence and desire to love others. We regard living-to-love as a great privilege rather than a way of proving how good we are. His love frees up our tormented guilt-ridden minds, enabling us use wisdom to help the other person rather than to act out of a psychological need to feel good about ourselves.

Freedom had been out-of-reach, while I lacked the assurance of God’s love. Even my mind was captive to an invisibles forces. During my first several years as a Christian, I had the strangest feeling that my mind was unable to follow certain threads of thought, which I wanted to follow. It was as if my mind was imprisoned and the doorway of discovery had a sign over it, “Do not enter.” Was this because I couldn’t yet face my own painful suppressed thoughts of my inadequacies and unworthiness? Perhaps?

However, with my growing assurance that God truly loved me, the doors began to open enabling me to look inside. I was horrified by what I was beginning to see. “How could God love me,” I thought. “I don’t deserve anything good from Him.” However, I found that He still loved me, even in view of my utter unworthiness.

With this realization, I found a greater measure of freedom. I no longer had to fight against the thoughts that I was unworthy and inadequate. I could now even joke with my students about my weaknesses and failures, to their own relief. If I didn’t need to maintain my facade of all-worthiness and all-sufficiency, they were encouraged to begin to confront themselves and to enjoy our mutual transparency.

So many of the truths of the Bible have set my mind free. For example, the Bible tells me that “there is no condemnation for those in Christ” (Romans 8:1).  Finally, this truth was able to convince me (by His Spirit) that the self-condemnation, which I had been experiencing, was not from God but a fading relic of my past. I then became emboldened to face these horribly destabilizing feelings without trying to suppress them or to convince myself that they just weren’t so.

With our many internal struggles subdued, the mind becomes a tranquil lake, which precisely reflects the trees on the opposite side. When the mind is not free, it is captive to our internal struggle to prove our worthiness and can no longer see reality. This struggle is like the storm that upsets the tranquility of the lake, preventing us from seeing its precise reflections. This is a portrait of the mind, which is not at peace. Fortunately, our vision is not affected by this struggle, as is our mind, and we can still drive our cars. However, this struggle prevents us from wisely navigating our lives.

This peace can only come from Christ who loved us so much that He died for us when we were still His enemies (Romans 5:8-10). If He accepted us the way we are, we can begin to courageously face and accept ourselves and even the failings of others.