SYNOPSIS: Knowing and loving the truth may be the most difficult aspect of agape love to figure out in today’s American culture where the virtue of truth has been replaced with relativism. Propositional truth — something is either a) true or b) false — is rapidly being replaced by a version of an ever-changing truth that is based on an emotion of the moment, a current ideology, or a preferred perspective. From the top to the bottom of our leading institutions — government, media, business, and academia — as James” Russell Lowell presciently warned, “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.” But as God-lovers, we must be truth-finders, truth-speakers, and truth-lovers! If we don’t pursue truth, as difficult, fatiguing, and confusing as that may be these days, we will know neither agape love nor be a conduit of it.
Making Love Work // 1 Corinthians 13:6
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Have you heard someone talk about “their truth” or say, “Well, that’s true for you but not for me”? There is a rare New Testament Greek word to describe that: BALONEY!
God defines truth, and He loves it. So should we. Here’s the Living Bible’s paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13:6, “Love rejoices whenever truth wins out.”
This may be the most difficult aspect of agape love to figure out in today’s American culture where the virtue of truth has been replaced with relativism. Propositional truth — something is either a) true or b) false — is rapidly being replaced by a version of truth that is based on an emotion of the moment, or a current ideology, or a preferred perspective. From the top to the bottom of our leading institutions — government, media, business, and academia — as James” Russell Lowell presciently warned, “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.”
But blurring the lines of truth hasn’t stopped at the doors of our institutions, it’s commonplace in our homes as well. Recent studies estimate that 60% of adults will lie on average three times within a ten-minute conversation. (https://brandongaille.com/24-nose-growing-statistics-on-lying/) Now there’s a great example we’re setting for our kids, wouldn’t you say!
Philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” As believers, for agape love to flourish in and flow from our lives, we must search out the truth in all things, as difficult as it is to find, and rejoice when it triumphs over that which is false.
A God-lover must be a truth-finder, a truth-speaker, and truth-lover! If we don’t pursue truth, as difficult, fatiguing, and confusing as that may be these days, we will not know agape love nor be a conduit of it.
God help us to find, know, speak, and love the truth!
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