Truth.

Speaking critically of his predecessor, former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill once said, “He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but most of the time he picked himself up and hurried off as if nothing had happened.” I don’t fully know the context of this statement but I can make some inferences. One possible inference is that Churchill may have believed his predecessor was ignorant to truth. Meaning that he believed that Stanley Baldwin didn’t know truth unless he stumbled upon it by accident and then preceded to act as if nothing happened. Another possibility was the Churchill believed his predecessor was not ignorant of truth but rather mismanaged it and then acted as if that was not the case. Whatever the reason was for Churchill to make such a statement concerning truth and his predecessor, it does not look like Churchill look favorably on Baldwin’s relationship with truth.

As I consider Churchill’s statement I can’t help but to think of when I have physically tripped over something. Sometimes I fall, but other times I don’t and just hurry off like nothing happened at all. Why do we do that? Well, because we don’t want to look like fools. We don’t want anyone to think we are clumsy or unaware of our surroundings. Hopefully we don’t do that with the truth.

When you discover a truth that causes you to stumble with, to question, or even to contradict what you thought you knew, how do you handle that? Do you pick yourself up and act like it never happened? Do you completely abandon what you thought you knew and adhere to a new truth? Or do you do the work required to justify what you knew with what you learned?

The first option is in my opinion the most dangerous. To completely ignore what you have just discovered not only hurts you but also others who trust or depend on you. It makes you look like a fool and hurts your accountability.

The second option is better than the first, but it can make you feel like you are walking on shacky ground. I believe that sometimes we need to abandon our former way of thinking especially if the former way causes harm to ourselves or others. For example, when people first discovered the material asbestos it was thought to be a miracle substance with many uses, but when we subsequently discovered it was dangerous to human health we immediately abandoned its use in most places. Discoveries like this seem to make us more weary on trusting almost anything. If what we thought is good one day is bad the next, how do we trust anything? Well that is why I like the third option.

The third option is to justify what we already knew with what we have more recently learned. To justify means to show or to prove that something still has truth or value to it. Asbestos is still used today and it remains an important component of many products. The reason for its continued uses is that it still has unique physical properties such as its resistance to heat, fire, chemical, and biological break-down. Its use however has been limited to products and places where it will not cause harm to human health.

I believe the third option is why we have Christian Apologetics. Christian apologetics is a branch of Christian theology that defends Christianity against objections. Christian apologetics first appears in the New Testament in Acts 17:22-31 when Paul preaches about unknown gods on Mars Hill. Paul relates personal discoveries to ancient truths and reveals how knowledge about God is not something that was settled in the past but something we discover more and more about everyday. Paul demonstrates how personal truths can still reveal universal truth if we are willing to acknowledge that everything we know about the universe is not settled.

Join us this Sunday as we continue this conversation on truth and ask ourselves, “Who Has Got it Right?”

In God’s grip,

Pastor Chuck Church