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Podcast 32 - It's True
40 Plays10 days ago
Join us as we discuss a crucial component of what we believe.
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Transcript
Introduction to Civil Conversations
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Podcast. We're excited to have you joining us today as we venture into the world with thoughts, opinions, ideas, things we make up in our head. That's right.
00:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, all those good things. Three guys getting together talking
Challenges of Opposing Opinions
00:00:24
Speaker
about life. Today we want to talk about a question that probably ah real prominent in our culture today because of the... the the environment that we live in, the political environment especially.
00:00:37
Speaker
ah We don't talk very much anymore. We prefer to fight. We prefer to erase those having opposing opinions. We don't carry on dialogues very often if it's not something that somebody's just affirming everything we say.
Standing Firm on Biblical Truth
00:00:50
Speaker
So what we're talking about today is speaking directly to the everyday conversations that many of us have with co-workers, friends, even family members.
00:00:58
Speaker
And the question is this, how do we stand firmly on what we believe to truth, specifically here, obviously, biblical truth, how do we stand firmly on those things without coming across to people as angry, defensive, harsh, or unkind?
00:01:15
Speaker
So it's an important question because yeah we've all watched it on social media how it unfolds that we get into these debates and before it's all over with, we wind up getting angry and saying things we don't really intend to say. i would...
00:01:28
Speaker
first and foremost, push this thought that that's not the place for those kinds of conversations, conversations because you can't really hear someone's emotion, hear someone's in sentiment.
Social Media vs Face-to-Face Dialogue
00:01:37
Speaker
But it's it's about everyday conversations. Just coming in before coming downstairs, I was watching a news feed where, again, protesters from both sides slamming each other to the pavement, all this kind of stuff. And I'm thinking, you know what? Truth is, if y'all sat down talked over a cup of coffee, you probably wouldn't be as far apart as you really think you are. Right.
00:01:55
Speaker
So um but let's talk about this a little bit. We live in an opinion-saturated culture. um It's kind of funny. You kind of go, well, I don't have an opinion on the subject. Well, give me 30 seconds. I'll give you one to think. you know we We kind of have that mentality. Everybody has a platform for things they believe, agendas they think are important.
Absolute Truth in Modern Culture
00:02:14
Speaker
um Truth, and this is probably a place we could kind of sit for a second and have some conversation, truth has become ambiguous. It's no longer accepted there is such a thing as truth or right and wrong. We live in a world today that says your truth is not necessarily my truth and it's not necessarily his truth.
00:02:33
Speaker
So, thoughts? um The word opinions. When I was a kid, someone told me, everybody has an opinion, like everybody has an armpit. They all stink, right? And it's like, there's my opinion of a situation, your opinion of a situation, and then there's truth. And so I think when we're having these conversations, it's not a well, I think, or where this is, it's more so, what does Scripture say about these things? um And then gets to the topic of what you're saying, how do we relay that in a way that's kind and respectful? um Just because we have the truth doesn't mean we need to get to go hit people over the head with it it. doesn't mean that we get to and do it an obnoxious way. and We have to navigate the words appropriate for the situation to relay that truth to someone while they're stuck in their head with an opinion.
Emotions and Truth
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a good starting point for us to talk about what is truth because ah if you can erode truth and you can erode it down to, well, let my emotions reign as the the primary factor of my drive, then you know whether it's my drive for being right or my drive for this agenda that I want to push, then yeah, you can twist a whole lot of things. You can drive it towards insanity, towards madness. Whenever you get people this you know side of, oh well if you're gonna do this and i'll do that it it doesn't make any sense nowadays but that's what they do they let the emotions drive this you know next motion of harshness and it's not the absolute truth of scripture or even you know even outside of scripture the absolute truth of just create creation they want to say that certain things are certain things when it no the sky is not you know purple the sky is blue and it's simple things like that that if you can erode away that then you can start to erode away the things that god has designed even in his word so let's let's talk about the difference of truth i'm i'm not gonna let you guys off easy today i'm gonna push y'all go ahead make you think uh does truth change
00:04:38
Speaker
Well, yes. Okay. Why? It's true that it's warm today, and tomorrow's not guaranteed to be warm, so it might be cold. So the truth would be it's cold tomorrow. Okay. Yeah.
00:04:50
Speaker
Is there a truth that doesn't change? Yes. Yes. And what is that called?
00:04:57
Speaker
Those are called, um i would say, the doctrines that we establish in Scripture. There are certain things that they don't fluctuate, that they're absolute, like God's covenant with us.
00:05:09
Speaker
There are certain factors in those covenants, just like in a marriage covenant. If there are those things that are established, they're true. They should stay that way. If they're upheld, like God's saying, He's upheld those from the beginning of, you know, since God was...
Cultural vs Biblical Truths
00:05:26
Speaker
at all times, God is establishing that and we see that as absolute. That doesn't fluctuate. So to to your point, yes, things in creation, they can be true in in different functions, yeah yesterday, present, and then tomorrow. But I think it depends on the situation. It's a case-by-case basis. Is it possible for two things to be true at the same time about something?
00:05:49
Speaker
Hmm.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah. there's muscles He says convincingly. There's there's multiple factors. I can say that that's a curious...
00:06:04
Speaker
Kind of draws me to a curious place because there's multiple factors in the truth. Yeah. So there can be multiple things. Okay. So we have the statement that truth changes, that truth two things can be true of the same thing, but be different.
00:06:19
Speaker
um So where does the story, the conversation about absolute truth fit into all of this?
00:06:28
Speaker
Absolute truth. We were talking about it last night with the group that I was in. um Psalm 139 talks about God's omniscience, his omnipresence. Those things are never changing. They have a burden of proof that came with it.
00:06:46
Speaker
The other ones where there is question, where's the burden of proof?
00:06:53
Speaker
So I think maybe look let's break it down into this because we can be really confused about this topic as people as we talk about truth because there are different kinds of truth.
00:07:05
Speaker
And I can see where people would say there's a truth that's true for you but not for me. For instance, if there were French fries on this table, which would are fantastic right now because I'm still hungry. Mm-hmm. You might bite a french fry and say, that's too salty for me. And that's true. But he might say, where's the salt shaker? I need more salt. And that's true for him. So it's true that we have that. And there are some truths that I think are open for conversation, open for interpretation.
00:07:32
Speaker
ah open for inspection based on our previous biases, those kinds of things. But then there's also absolute truth. There is only one God. Yeah.
00:07:43
Speaker
Or those are French fries. Or those are French fries. Yes, absolutely. um So I think there's a place where we can kind of go, you know, there is a it's understandable there's a little bit of debate and confusion about this subject. But I do think that probably most of it is is around this idea that somehow culture changes, truth changes. Mm-hmm.
00:08:01
Speaker
Culture changes, truth changes. And again, in some instances, that's true. I'm
00:08:12
Speaker
i'm sitting here trying to think of something that's changed with culture. Well... Clothing
Understanding and Communicating Truth
00:08:16
Speaker
styles. how you know um There are certain things that change with clothing styles. That statement of that kind of style, true back then, but it's not true anymore today. But there also is an overriding, overarching, biblical might be another word for it, and maybe even a better word, but biblical and um absolute truths that do not change with culture and they don't drift with the opinions of people. right So um how do we how do we address people who don't understand the differences?
00:08:49
Speaker
How do we help people to understand that when we're talking about changeless, timeless truths, we're not talking about whether or not the French fries are too salty? Right. So i I would look at it as the the track record of proof. um Historically, the Bible is laid out, and people can't really contradict it with history. It's accurate in that way. um Messianic prophecy things that were said hundreds and thousands of years, not hundreds of thousands, but hundreds or thousands of years before Christ walked the earth, and then it it came to be.
00:09:20
Speaker
um And then the fact that when someone comes to Christ, there's life life change, legitimate life change. And so we can look at those things, and we can come to the conclusion, and looking at Scripture, man, the proof is that, man, God claimed this We saw it come to be.
00:09:37
Speaker
And then there's life change because of this. And so you can have your opinion of that all you want. If you want, you could say there is no God. You can say that you're not going to follow him. And that's fine and dandy. You can say that. But the truth is...
00:09:50
Speaker
The truth is that there is a creator. um He proved himself through scripture and continues to prove himself. And so an opinion doesn't necessarily change what the truth is. yeah I think it goes back, you kind of touched on it, the burden of proof. Sometimes it's the ignorance, and some people will say, oh, well, this is the truth.
00:10:10
Speaker
Maybe you're just ignorant of what is actually there. It hasn't been revealed to you, or maybe it hasn't been revealed yet. ah So a lot of times I feel like it may be the ignorance. Sometimes it may also just be the outright denial. Like again, emotions driving.
00:10:26
Speaker
Is your emotion driving it or is the tangible or even spiritual evidence of what has been revealed in your life or in creation in the world that you just don't want to come to grips with?
00:10:39
Speaker
Is it true that circumstances can change your ability to accept truth? Yes. Okay. um So say you grew up with a terrible father. That was just exactly what I had in mind. absolutely terrible father, abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, whatever it may be. um And then scripture references God as our father, right? My experiences for sure go, that's not even a place I want to go. and So that can't be true or not possible God's bad or whatever it may be. And so things that we walk through definitely put a colored lens of
00:11:18
Speaker
glasses on when we look at things. um And it could absolutely skew or even change or make us, like you said, deny it, right? yeah You may know it's true, but you're just saying, I'm not even going there. I think of an atheist often. I always say, I don't believe in atheists because I think atheists absolutely know there's a God, but if they entertain that idea, they have to change the way they're living. And so it's hard to be in this world to look outside and go, there's no creator.
00:11:47
Speaker
it's It's an obvious thing. And I think there's just a denial denial there. And why they don't want to do that, I don't know. It could be some life experience that got them to that point. Yeah. All right, so with the context set here now, that there's different kinds of truth and that we have people who come out of, gosh, a multiplicity of backgrounds that have been tainted towards the truth or against the truth because of circumstances.
00:12:11
Speaker
How do we talk about our differences of viewpoint on the truth without going to either extreme of compromising on everything we believe versus becoming so combative with the person that we turn them off to hearing the message that we're trying to share. yeah how do How do you do that?
00:12:28
Speaker
Because most of us tend to tend to drift to one or the other. That's our fallback. I'm going to get mad or I'm just going to back off. and it's it's all It's all determined by how we communicate. um A student asked me, hey are street preachers bad, right? I said, well, it depends on what we're talking about. right If the guy standing on the street corner just preaching condemnation and screaming at people, I don't think that's a very productive way to bring truth. But if you're standing on the street street corner and you say, hey, you may be feeling lost today. You may be feeling like you have no purpose. Come over here and talk to me. I want to show you a hope that I have, right? Way more way more relatable.
00:13:07
Speaker
Same truth. but it's how it's projected, right? If I'm screaming at you, you're way less likely to listen to me than if I say, hey, John, what are you going through right now? And is there a way I could stand next to you in that? Let me introduce you to Jesus and what he did for me, right? Completely different tone. And so I think how we navigate that, typically it's, like you said, it ends up online, to keyboard warrior, and you're saying things that you'd never say to someone in person. yeah And so if you're sitting at a table, sharing a meal, having a face-to-face with someone, your tone is different.
Jesus as a Model for Truth
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, think I think look at when you can gravitate to the way that Jesus did things, gravitate to it. yeah Because I think if we're looking for processes to replicate, yeah in most of the time, very, very minimal processes does Jesus ever get to a point of just letting his emotions of anger control based on a circumstance? It is the truth of the Father and the truth of the relationship with the Father that drives his response. And most of the time it's driven with...
00:14:07
Speaker
care, compassion, grace, concern for the person that may not know relationship with Christ. Think about the relationship with him and the Pharisees. Although there was heavy disagreement about the way that the scriptures would, you know, portray themselves to be and to be lived out messianic prophecy.
00:14:26
Speaker
he still portrayed himself as, I know the truth, but I'm graceful with the truth. and And I think sometimes probably frustrated too after certain points, but I think he pursued it with grace too. Well, if there's something that Jesus taught us, it's that you can be bold and still be loving. yes um He obviously head-to-head confrontation with the Pharisees almost from day one of his ministry. They didn't like what he stood for. He wasn't going to back down because he knew what truth he is He is truth. So ah one one of the lessons my wife likes to drive home with me in some of our conversations is you can be right in what you're saying, but wrong in the way you say it.
00:15:08
Speaker
And I think the remarkable thing about Jesus is that he kept us cool and he was able to say very hard hitting truths. Right. Even to the point of, ah really, I mean, if you're sitting there, you're going, he's pointing his finger right at you, you know. But yet, people heard it, and they listened to it, and they took it to heart. And I think it had everything to do with the way he presented it. He didn't dig in his heels. He didn't.
00:15:29
Speaker
He didn't scream at people or anything like that. He told stories. He asked questions. And it was done out of love, not arrogance, right? um If I know the Bible well and I'm having a debate with, ah let's just say, the atheist or whatever, um and I'm doing it to win an argument, no one's winning in that situation. um But if I'm relaying my heart to say, hey these are truths that I know and I want you to be a part of that, and you're way more likely to gain a common ground with just humanity, right? Just the ability to communicate in a proper level. Yeah. no And I think the difference in these conversations too is the importance between just wanting to disseminate information and
00:16:14
Speaker
out of pride go, I've made my points versus I want to transform someone. Not in a forceful way, but in a loving way. In other words, I don't have to be harsh.
00:16:25
Speaker
I don't have to be mean spirited. But what I want to do is I want to draw people in. I want to give them a truth that tastes good. That that doesn't feel like it's being rammed down their throats. And again, i think that's something that Jesus did very, very well. um Our knowledge, our arsenal of information our apologetics they all matter but so does love yeah and so um i think there's a lot of people who build up their their um i'll go back to that word arsenal their arsenal of information just for the purpose of i'll show that next person who dares to cross me you know i've seen apologetics go to die in a lot of places because they think oh man i've got the solution
00:17:08
Speaker
Jesus never let the apologetics or or the defense of his father and the the triune nature of who he was a part of be without love. It was always accompanied with love because obviously that's who Christ is. But um one of the things that I was looking up was Jesus in the garden as he was um betrayed by Judas.
00:17:31
Speaker
When he had every right to be harsh and to say, he could have said, you know, what do you mean? What did I do? yeah But Judas betrayed him. And then Peter over here, you know, pulling out swords and he said, Hey, no, no, let me, let me respond with compassion and also with, let me get the job done. But yeah, that, I think that was a beautiful instance of where Jesus responded in a very graceful way, even whenever it didn't seem like it. I think at the end of the day, it's important to, to know that, um,
00:18:06
Speaker
being more harsh or hateful in the way we address people with truth does not make that truth stronger. No. It doesn't make the point more black and white for them. In fact, if anything, it turns them off. And so um it makes it harder for them to hear truth in many places accept truth. i I think all of us probably have stories, but conversations that I've had with people where The bridge for them getting to truth was not burned by me, but was burned by many Christians before them. Sure, absolutely. They treated them that there's no way. Yeah. You know, and um truthfully, I may have done that myself along the way.
00:18:43
Speaker
um i don't relish the idea that someday I'll have to stand before God and go, he didn't make it to finding truth because of the way I handled him. So think it's a a cautionary thing for all of us. um We're called to stand on truth.
00:19:00
Speaker
There is an absolute truth. There's also a truth that changes but still remains true.
Choosing and Sharing Truth Wisely
00:19:06
Speaker
um But and when we're having conversations with people, we have to be very, very careful in differentiating the hills to die on.
00:19:12
Speaker
and whether or not it's worth dying on that hill or just sitting and listening and and lovingly having a conversation listening to the heart of the person any final thoughts before check away for the day um i would just say in the lens of how you live tomorrow and how you live you know the days going forward as your faith is growing look at it through the lens of how Christ exemplified it was both. And it was, it was grace and truth. And you had those things at at both elements. So as you go in and you're being an ambassador of Christ, take both. don't Don't think that you ever have it all figured out because last time I checked, I still don't understand the full complexion of who Christ is. So grace and truth, for somebody who may not know as much as you, but you don't have it all together either. Right, right.
00:20:04
Speaker
That's good. I would encourage you to practice speaking truth and in how you relay that. Your kids, um you could speak truth to your kids in a very poor fashion um that affects them for the rest of their life, um or you could speak truth to your kids that builds them up and creates them into the the follower of Christ that you want. Same thing with your wife, the way you speak to her. And then find someone of a different opinion than you and have a conversation with them face-to-face and practice relaying that truth in a way that is um most likely to be accepted by them.
00:20:41
Speaker
ah We're glad you joined us today, and that's the truth. yeah good I think so. Yeah, that's good. All right. ah We would love for you to come back and join us next week. We love hearing from you. Love hearing what you're hearing out of these podcasts and maybe even the things you're not hearing that you'd love for us to be talking about. um Like us, share, connect with us, follow us. And if you're looking for a place to come hear truth, timeless, changeless truth that can change your life.
00:21:06
Speaker
Come join us at Grove Hill Church. 8, 9, 30, and 11. We'd love to have you be there.
Conclusion and Invitation
00:21:11
Speaker
Shall we pray to close this out? Absolutely. That's that's really good ah John Ballard, would you like to pray? Let's do it. do it God, you are wonderful and gracious, far beyond our deserving.
00:21:23
Speaker
But God, you invite us into this relationship where we walk out truth in a loving manner as you did 2,000 years ago as you gave that, as you revealed who you were, and as you're still revealing who you are through your spirit. God, help us to walk that out tomorrow and the day after.
00:21:44
Speaker
Lord, we love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. um Yeah, come back and join us next week. It's going to be fun and it's 20 minutes that will help change your life. i