Christians, Please Don’t Live Your Own Truth

…the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” (1 Tim 3:15)

I listened to an interview with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens recently. It was fascinating. Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer and this appears to be one of the last times he was interviewed. Both of these men are/were famous atheists, and Hitchens seems to have hated religion to the very end. Their argument was that religious people and groups, in various forms, have been behind some of history’s greatest evils. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Kim Jung Un: all men using some form of religion to commit great crimes.

It occurred to me that these men were really exposing something that I had thought for a while: When Christians allow the world to declare what is true, and God’s own word is rejected, then all manner of evil follows. The world says, “Live your own truth,” as if the truth is some malleable substance to be directed and dictated by each individual. When the church takes the bait of worldly wisdom, terrible things happen. It is to be expected that the world will believe lies and be confused about the truth, but the church cannot give in to the temptation to look and believe like the world. If the church refuses to be “the pillar and ground of the truth,” then lies will most certainly be exalted.

Isn’t it amazing to consider how the devil works? The ideas that are being propagated about sexuality, individuality, and “truth” are anti-Christian teachings. They are directly opposed to the word of God. And yet, because Christians have had a weak ecclesiology, a weak view of sin, and have become biblically illiterate, these ideas that are so obviously untrue are beginning to take hold, even in the Church. The Church begins to look like the world, and what passes as Christianity is really just a new religion, ready to wreak havoc in the name of Christ. Christians must hold the line.

Someone once challenged Martyn Lloyd-Jones about his “exclusive and dogmatic” view of the Christian faith. He answered, “You know this isn’t the first time minorities have been right. And anyways, we don’t decide these kinds of questions by counting heads. I know nothing about these things, primarily, apart from what I find in the Bible.” He goes on to say, “When you are given truth, which you claim is truth from God, then you have no right to be anything other than intolerant.” Christians don’t play games with the truth, nor do we take suggestions about what is true. We submit to an ultimate authority, the God of Truth. Our Lord is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Dawkins and Hitchens saw the danger of religious people who lived their own truth. Lloyd-Jones gave the remedy. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. I beg those who claim Christ, please don’t live your truth. Submit to THE truth of God’s word. Submit to God who speaks the Truth. Don’t be wise in your own eyes, rather fear the Lord and turn away from evil.