Discerning Truth

I Corinthians 13 is a very familiar passage from the Bible…often known as the Love Chapter.  Recently a phrase from that section of scripture hit me in a new way as I read it from the Phillips translation.

…if there is knowledge, it will be swallowed up in truth.

This can’t happen soon enough to suit me.  There is so much supposed knowledge floating around these days, and I am certain that some of it is not “truth.”  It can’t possibly all be truth, because some of what is purported to be knowledge is in direction contradiction to other pieces of knowledge.  Truth could be staring someone in the face and not be at all obvious.

This problem is largely due to the prevalence of social media which has given absolutely everyone a platform for their ideas…a way to disseminate them unchallenged.  Any contradictions can be dismissed as coming from someone less knowledgeable or with a significant bias, and who’s to judge that?  The purveyors of the “knowledge” are not personally known to the consumers of it.

In simpler times, there were, of course, crackpots on both sides of issues, but these individuals did not have a very large sphere of influence.  Most were spreading their opinions among family and friends or in a local enough way that everyone knew someone who knew them.  The fact that they were unstable or given to really crazy ideas could easily be determined.  Those close to them knew their level of expertise.  They could not claim to have a body of knowledge on a subject when their level of education and experience were well known or easily verified.

Not so today!  Any nut case can get on the internet and spew their message.  He/she can claim to be educated or to have had firsthand experience, and we have no idea whether this is totally false or a smidge exaggerated.

This is dangerous!  Not everyone is discerning.  Many perfectly intelligent people are being taken in because they think they are listening to experts who “know” the facts.  Some of these facts influence life and death decisions.

Our world is so broken.  Only the one who defines truth can straighten out this mess and swallow up our pitiful knowledge with absolute TRUTH.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.