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 Triune God and the truths of His 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 the truth of God. Here are a few such beliefs that discourage any quest for objective 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, making truth statements is unavoidable, Consequently, postmoderns confidently declare, “No one can know with any degree of certainty about spiritual truth.” But this too is a dogmatic truth statement, demonstrating postmodernism’s incoherence. Trying to defend postmodernism requires statements of universal and objective truth, even as they say, “There is no meaning or truth.” Besides, if we believe that we cannot find the truth, we certainly will not seek it. Consequently, we will be ruled, not be reason, by our dictatorial feelings.

Closely associated with postmodernism is the belief that we must find our own “spiritual truths” within, and these might pertain only to ourselves. If this is true, then there is little we can learn from others or from the collected wisdom of human history. Truth then becomes a measure of “what feels good to me.”

Materialism is the belief that there is no spiritual dimension or even freewill. It 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 satisfying our biochemical 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 do not exist in any real way. “Virtue” and “honor” are merely useful but hollow concepts we have invented to give us some semblance of order and purpose. Instead, these “isms” all reduce life to the pursuit of pleasure, comfort, safety, and immediate fulfillment, which become increasingly elusive as we try to grasp hold of them.

Many ancient philosophies have returned to fill this nihilistic (valueless, truth-less) 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” apart from its resulting benefits.

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 nature, as water is in accordance with fish, 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 self-enhancement, even if it requires us to make-believe that virtue exists apart from our mental constructs.

In light of this, the mind remains in captivity to the heart and our demanding psychological needs.

********

The mind is dying along with any concern about absolute moral and spiritual truths. 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 imprisoned.

From where then does wisdom arise and how can we be set free to pursue it? To answer this question authoritatively, we must turn to our Creator, the only possible Source for meaning and purpose. If this world simply popped into existence without intelligent design, it cannot give us any guidance or basis for ultimate meaning. We are left on our own to create our own meaning based on the unstable and unsatisfying foundation of our evolving feelings and society.

How can does God and His truths set us free? First, we have the forgiveness of sin, the removal of the burden of guilt and shame that had controlled our lives. We are created in the moral likeness of God. Consequently, we are aware that there is something drastically wrong within and spend the rest of our lives obsessively trying to prove otherwise through money, power, sexual attractiveness, popularity, possessions, and various attainments – anything to believe “I am worthy.” But we do not really believe this. Consequently, we are never satisfied with these God-substitutes. Therefore, we always need more of them. drugs of which we always require a greater “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 as we are compelled to run their treadmill.

We have suppressed those thoughts that reveal our unworthiness and culpability. 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 the mirror of our arbitrary and ever-changing social context, upon which we have become dependent at the price of our minds.

Instead, we were created for relationship, but it must start with our ever-loving, forgiving, and accepting God, and His objective standards. He is the ultimate roadmap, an accurate presentation of reality, revealing who we are, where we are, and where we need to go. Only this authoritative and immutable Source can open our eyes to the truth, the truths of His creation.

We all need a roadmap to direct us through the matrix of our lives. If it is not the roadmap given us by our Creator, then it is the roadmap we blindly absorb from our surroundings. It is our shadow. It follows us wherever we go, directing our thoughts, values, and decision. It tells us what we must do to accrue worth and acceptance.

We are made to serve. However, we like to pride ourselves on our independence, but are we? Instead, we might be as dependent upon our barely perceived map or script as we are upon food and drink. When we are deprived of these, we languish.

Upon which roadmap do we depend? On the one which leads to life:

·       So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:7–11; 14:6)

This God maximizes our lives as the watery environment maximizes the freedom of fish. How? 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, as we grow in the assurance of God’s love, we are freed from the dependence upon the approval of others. Rather than needing and resenting them, once we have our needs met by our Savior, we are then freed to love. 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, driven, and 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 invisible 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 to 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? I Think so!

However, with my growing assurance that God truly loves 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 by hardening my mind. Instead, I accept myself – warts and all! I can now even joke with my students about my weaknesses and failures, to their own relief. Because I no longer need to maintain my facade of all-worthiness and all-sufficiency, this enabled them to accept themselves, their freedom in Christ, 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 my 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 bank. When the mind is not free, it is captive to our internal struggles to prove our worthiness and can no longer see clearly. This struggle is like the storm that upsets the tranquility of the lake, preventing us from seeing its precise reflections. This is the mind without peace. Fortunately, our eyesight is not affected by this struggle, and we can still successfully 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.