Comments on: Truth . . . Love

By: Randy May

Randy May — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:08:06 +0000

So TRUTH came as a result of LOVE…

By: Randy May

Randy May — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 06:46:38 +0000

Also as I read Bobbie’s note from 12.17 I am reminded of my Grandfather who now resides in heaven and how he spent some of the last hours of his life I was ever to spend with him when he was well into his 80’s, making sure I knew the TRUTH of God’s LOVE and how un-surpassable it is. At his funeral his pastor spoke of the hours per week they spent taking one fruit of the spirit at a time and growing in them. I read through them tonight I see love listed often. I think God gave us the plan in 1John 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us. Scripturally, it appears that Truth comes in the person of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ came because; John 3:16 For God so LOVED the world.. Who knows one day I may remember this post and consider it a “perspective or opinion” Jesus Loves You

By: Randy May

Randy May — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 06:14:36 +0000

As I read through I wonder what our definition of TRUTH is. I often think when people talk of “speaking truth” that their “truth” is often their perspective or opinion. Since the definition of truth is Jesus, then only Jesus is “TRUTH” as I see it. Truth is unchanging or it is not truth. What is non-changing except for God. It is not science or culture or any aspect of life that I can see except for immutable laws of God and his person. I sometimes find myself using this scripture to try to find a “loving way” to state my opinion and am convicted as I read this blog. I believe this to only be about telling the “TRUTH” of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and doing it with love. As someone already pointed out, it by our love that the world will know us. In that Love is the door God uses to get the truth into other lives. This leaves the result up to God. The other process where I try to open the door with truth as I understand it, is me trying to get a result. I think I want God’s result. May the Lord richly bless all.

By: Joe Baggett

Joe Baggett — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 19:36:41 +0000

You know the fact that we are having this conversation shows how poorly we have interpreted the Bible. The idea that there is a balance between truth and love suggest that the two are in conflict with each other that the more you have of one then some how the less you have of the other has always seemed absurd to me. If the hermeneutic that we use to interpret the Bible, understand God and do church leads us to the thinking that there is a middle road position and that you can’t have more of one without less of the other; then in a sense are we not saying the Bible contradicts itself? For some many of us who grew up in the cofC truth some how ethnocentrically defaults to “the work worship and organization of the church”. What can and can not be done, who can and can’t do it, how it must or must not be done during a 1-2 hour assembly a week is most of what we understood to be truth. I the idea of love being the most important thing in the church as Jesus, Paul, Peter and John all give love the superlative in the their NT writing was not the bulk of what we spent our time focusing on and preaching. Some how the idea of chaos in the church and everybody just living and doing whatever they wanted with no moral foundation came to be understood as love. Neither of the ideas of love or truth which became prevalent in the normal cofC circles is biblical! Yet these poor understandings are the reason that we are having this conversation in this blog, and it is also why the idea of the two being polar to one another and some kind of balance or middle road idea is pure myth and pie in the sky. Here are two quotes from the scripture showing that truth and love are not polar to one another but rather synthesized into one divine being “Jesus is truth” and “God is love”! Any questions?

By: Ray B.

Ray B. — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:21:50 +0000

Leland, Anyone who looks to the holy scriptures can understand the love of God . We will always grow in that understanding. It is illustated in the life and death of Jesus for when you see the Son then you will see the Father.

By: Leland

Leland — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:48:47 +0000

Ray B,

You can only define love in human terms; this is the limits of your human vocabulary. Therefore the human definition is all you can practice.

By: Ray B.

Ray B. — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:02:13 +0000

To love in the way God defines in His word. Not the way men define it.

By: Joe Baggett

Joe Baggett — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:44:21 +0000

You know this is a topic of great frustration for many us raised in the cofC. Because our poor hermeneutic and fundamentalist application of wooden literalism in biblical text it appears too many that we can only have one or the other. If we have this idea that we can only have one or the other truth or love then we have serious problems with our hermeneutic, and in a sense are saying that one part of the Bible is more important than the other.
At the root of this dilemma is CENI with an emphasis of restoring the work worship and organization of the early church. So “truth” was filtered and understood through the lens of ecclesiology driven by CENI trying to replicate any forms of doing church found in the NT. By default the nature of God was understood through what he authorized for the work worship and organization of the church. Very little effort was given to understanding truth through the nature of God by his Spirit. Jesus said that he was “the way the truth and the life.” A much better way to understand truth is not trying to determine how, what, and who can or cannot do something during a 1-2 hour assembly based on and inconsistent hermeneutic but rather understanding the nature of God of how he reveals himself through consistent contextual study of the whole Bible. Any time we use the Bible to hurt, neglect, publicly castigate or put others down we are wrong. The more we understand the nature of God in context the more we will see that truth is much more about the Spirit of God and not replicating the forms of the early church.

By: Leland

Leland — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:35:24 +0000

Ray B,

“How do we know anything about real love without first having it revealed to us in the word of God.”

Ask Ghandi (know he’s dead) or a whole host of others who love but do not consider themselves people of the book.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:12:46 +0000

edwardslv,

I don’t necessarily disagree with you but Paul does use the terms truth and weapon in the same context in 2 Cor. 6.

“3We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

I also note that love is in that passage. I would say love and truth are both weapons although they are not to be used against humanity but rather against evil on behalf of humanity.

By: Ray B.

Ray B. — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:21:05 +0000

When we speak the truth in love , we have to first know the truth. How do we know anything about real love without first having it revealed to us in the word of God. We hear the truth and then we apply it. We must learn to discern and understand what it means to love.

By: Victor Knowles

Victor Knowles — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:13:28 +0000

The late Reuel Lemmons observed, “Unity at the expense of doctrine is unacceptable, and doctrine at the expense of unity is obnoxious” (One Body, Feb. 1984).

By: eddy

eddy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:06:26 +0000

Truth or love? Do we need brain or heart? We need both completely. Be careful trying for “balance”–one foot in ice and one foot in boiling water may be “balanced” but not useful.

By: Leland

Leland — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:17:06 +0000

Pure truth and pure love are mutually exclusive. I am talking about scientific truth, not some truth we have deemed truth without evidence. It would be more accurate to say pure faith and pure love are intertwined.

Truth is clouded by respect and also ego. People who have spent their lives on one single project are reluctant not to do some “gymnastics” to make it fit into modern reality, while denying their projects obvious contradictions to the real world.

They cannot see change and out of respect and love they are honored, much as tradition is honored. I have always heard in church we want to take baby steps out love for our brother. If we are taking steps at all it must be toward mutually agreed upon truth. Why not wholesale change to the truth we know; because of love.

By: edwardslv

edwardslv — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:15:09 +0000

Truth and love are not mutually exclusive. Being “true” to someone means loving them. Sadly, we think of truth as being a weapon, and one of the most massive destruction at that.