(by Lorie Codispoti)
"Life is a pilgrimage of learning, a voyage of discovery in which our mistaken views are corrected, our distorted notions adjusted, our shallow opinions deepened, and some of our vast ignorances diminished." (John Stott)
I can still remember the traumatic moment I was told that if I kept eating peanut butter I’d turn into a peanut. It sounds silly, but I promise you my very young self was positively horrified. And because I believed the statement to be absolutely true it weighed on me, heavily. I wondered if I could reverse my fate by ceasing to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But, was I too late? Had I now unintentionally joined the ranks of every other innocent child who had morphed into Dumbo treats?
All of us can relate to believing something to be true, only to discover that, for whatever reason, we were wrong. But how many of us are willing to put belief to the test?
To test a belief is to ask questions that have the power to correct our wrong thinking, adjust our distortions, deepen our shallow opinions, and diminish our ignorance. If truth is the standard by which we measure our beliefs then we must be willing to lay our misguided ideas of what truth is aside if they prove to be incorrect.
Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines truth as “conformity to fact or reality.” I don’t get to have “my truth” and you yours. Truth is transcendent. It exists outside of my opinion, experience, and preference. If my belief lines up with what is objectively real then I can trust that it is true because truth corresponds, agrees with, and conforms to reality. It’s universal and consistent.
People can believe whatever they want. And they do. But simply believing something does not make it true. Humans don’t turn into peanuts because belief does not create reality, it reflects it.
When talking about what it looks like to image God, Anglican bishop, N.T. Wright notes that, "Humans are made to reflect the wise, loving Creator into His world... We are angled mirrors, designed to reflect creation’s praises to the Creator and the Creator’s wisdom into his creation.”
What reality are you reflecting?
Let us pilgrims position our mirrors correctly as we continue our voyage of discovery. We may find that we need to periodically reposition our reflection, as the storms of culture try to throw us off course, but that's a good thing. In fact, it’s the only way to reject the lie that we will be transformed into anything but the image of Christ, who is the very essence of Truth itself.
Peanuts, anyone?
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