Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
How to Find Truth In An Age of Noise #ScriptureUnfiltered
63 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to another episode of Scripture Unfiltered, where Pastor Ridley Barron and co-host Dan Sanchez unpack last week's sermon series on absolute truth, exploring the challenges of navigating faith amidst a cacophony of messages and the importance of anchoring in the foundational truths of the scripture. As they sift through cultural influences and contemporary church movements, they invite listeners to engage in a journey of humility, critical thinking, and scriptural wisdom to unite the church and powerfully advance the gospel beyond all borders.
Timestamps:
00:00 Increasing blending of faith backgrounds requires caution.
04:54 Childhood admiration turns to skepticism in adulthood.
07:57 Postmodernism questioned existence of absolute truth.
11:18 Understanding the basis for our beliefs.
14:45 Struggling to find truth, importance of foundational pillars.
17:06 Respecting ancient traditions while balancing necessary change.
21:24 Honest seeker finds truth in reading God's word.
25:42 Struggling with skipping passages, turned back to Bible.
27:06 Christianity centered on core values, not externals.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Renaming
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Grove Hill podcast where we break down the sermon series from the previous week. We are retitling this. We had been calling it a sermon slice, but recently we kind of pivoted to a different name that we think holds, I don't know, it's just a name that sits better with Grove Hill and how we name things called scripture unfiltered.
Discussion with Ridley Barron on Absolute Truth
00:00:21
Speaker
So I'm joined here with Ridley Barron to talk about the last sermon that we just preached on Sunday about absolute truth. So I'm excited for this because I think this is,
00:00:30
Speaker
This whole series is one of those topics where it came up and I'm like, yes, like we need to be diving into this. And I think a lot of people were, as I talked to others, like the feedback on the series and this opening sermon was so good around absolute truth and for, for a good reason. But I have my own opinions on why it's timely, but Ridley, why don't you tell the audience like why, why now for this?
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, you know, in our culture today, one of the things we have seen is this increasing blending of faith backgrounds. We're moving more and more towards this ecumenical thinking.
00:01:08
Speaker
in our churches. And in one element, that's good to see the body of Christ really trying to come together in some things. But we all know, if you know the end of the story, that the Bible tells us it all ends up as one world religion where we kind of blended a little too far and we started bringing anything in, anything goes kind of mentality. So one of the things that we have to do is we have to constantly preach the foundational truths of the scripture to remind ourselves and to make sure that the generations following are
00:01:35
Speaker
We can't assume that everybody knows what they need to know, in other words. And so the second side of that with all of this blending of different faith backgrounds is that got to make sure that the family is on the same page. You know, it's kind of like having a family meeting to sit down and talk about, OK, here's where we're going for vacation and here's what we're going to do. Let's make sure we all understand what this is about.
00:01:56
Speaker
any given Sunday in our church here in small town, middle Tennessee, we have probably more than a dozen different faith backgrounds worshiping with us on a Sunday morning. So it's a challenge, you know, making sure that everybody has the right understanding of communion and absolute truth and the word and all the different things we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks.
00:02:16
Speaker
I've heard it said about organizational leadership that you can only go as fast as kind of like your slowest person on your team sometimes, right? Or especially if they're running in a different direction or even you're going right and they're going up, you know? The team as a whole is not gonna be able to make progress down the field as fast.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yes. I think Elon Musk has this great phrase where it's like your organization can only go as fast as the sum of all vectors and your people are the vectors, which is kind of a geeky way of saying like, if all your people are heading out in different directions, you're not going to go very far. Even if a bunch of people are kind of heading in one direction, you can only go so fast if three people are running and most people are walking. You can only go as fast as a group is walking. So what I hear you saying is that by realigning everybody on like some of the core
00:03:05
Speaker
foundations of truth and what is absolute truth and how to find the truth. Yeah. We could all run farther, faster together and grow. Exactly. Which ultimately puts us closer to our goal of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, right? I mean, if the pastor and the staff are on the same page, that's really good and that's really important, obviously. But if the whole church is on the same page and we're headed in the same direction, that gives us infinite more power in what we're doing, taking this to the streets. Absolutely.
Societal Shifts and Truth Challenges
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:35
Speaker
One of the reasons why I'm excited about this podcast is because of just a shift of truth. Truth has gotten really crazy over the last four years and 2020s. And we all know 2020 was kind of like the, the breakdown of all that we had COVID and then we had, you know, the.
00:03:53
Speaker
Derek Chauvin trials and all that kind of stuff going on where I feel like the church started splintering from there, right? I mean, Vodie Buckham wrote his book. I'm trying to remember what it's called. It's a
00:04:07
Speaker
Fault lines talking about how different people how different even within the church people that were pretty much agreed on On what it meant to be a christian found themselves on different sides And I know a lot of christians have been searching for truth digging into why did they end up on the side? They did because we all have some brothers and sisters that ended up in a different place than maybe where we've ended up
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I've used this phrase a lot. It seems like over the last four or five weeks, even people keep changing the price tags. And so there's not this dependability that what used to be labeled as this is going to still be that anymore. Because as you said, many of the standard organizations you used to trust have been splintered by division. They've been rocked by scandal.
00:04:53
Speaker
Uh, even, even things that you, as a kid, at least for me growing up that I used to look up to and admire. Now I look at with skepticism because it's been revealed. Oh, they've been lying to you. You know, this, this isn't the truth anymore. I'm probably one of the biggest Patriots there is in the world for my country. I love the United States of America. I recognize the blessing of living in this country. Uh, and I never thought there would be the day where I'd go. I'm not sure I even trust my country for what it's telling me.
00:05:19
Speaker
So when you're looking around, Jenny, and you're looking for something to hold on to in this culture, this day and age, it's hard to find those steadfast rock solid things that you can count on anymore.
00:05:30
Speaker
And I find it's like, if you ever sat and gone into a lazy river and then decided to go in the opposite direction, sometimes finding truth is kind of like that. If you've ever fought the current on a lazy river or any river with good flow, it's hard. It's pushing you. It's so easy just to stop and let it drift kind of with the flow because messages and truth claims are coming at us all the time, everywhere. And we think we're discerning, but when we're sitting back and just kind of like,
00:05:59
Speaker
doom scrolling through Facebook, are we thinking about things critically? And I think sometimes even in marketing, I know if I can get the right message in front of the right person, seven, eight, nine, 10 times, oftentimes I can plant my message in their head.
00:06:16
Speaker
Without them critically thinking about it, it just becomes association. And now that message is associated with that particular brand, and you'd be surprised how many people will believe it, even without actually thinking about it. It just happens. Scared to think about, but you bring up a great point because one thing that's different in this generation from previous generations is that we are almost 24 hours a day bombarded with messages. Messages of all kinds.
00:06:45
Speaker
It boggles your mind to think about it. The estimates are, I think somewhere around 30,000 different messages a day, you see advertisements, um, songs, all those different things are being thrown at you. And most of them you're not even aware of. And, uh, I like, what's the term you just use? Doomscrolling? I've never heard that one, but that's a good one. Yeah. You sit there and spend through that social media feed and you're fed all kinds of stuff.
00:07:11
Speaker
Whereas in generations previously, you could go sit down and read a book and not worry about what you're going to hear or turn off the TV and not worry about messages making it through. But somehow they seem to get through more these days.
00:07:24
Speaker
So on the topic on Sunday, you talked about absolute truth, finding absolute truth, mainly because the culture is splintering truth. Moral relativism is kind of the flavor of this, I don't know, this decade for sure, but maybe even this century, and it's been building for a long time. But in a moral relativist culture,
00:07:46
Speaker
Anything can be truth. Shoot, I hear a lot of gurus saying, speak your truth. Speak your truth. What's true to you? Yes. As if truth is totally dependent on what you feel it is. Exactly. And that's exactly what post-modernism did for us because over the centuries throughout history, it was normal for men to debate things, even going all the way back to the New Testament. Paul went into some of the cities he went into and had these healthy debates with different religions to talk about the goods and the bads and the
00:08:15
Speaker
ends and outs of what those religions look like. But then we got into postmodernism when that time arrived, and I don't know exactly where historians will say it actually began, but postmodernism really said, it's not a matter of if it's truth, it's the matter of is there any such thing as truth. So now truth is relative to what you feel in the moment, what your heart tells you. And again, if you go all the way back to Jeremiah 17.9, the Bible says, be very careful about listening to your heart because it's evil above everything else.
00:08:44
Speaker
And so we're being told by the culture, listen to the thing that God has warned us not to listen to. Yep.
00:08:51
Speaker
And it's so deceptive. It's very intriguing to be like, Hey, you do you, I do me, we live in harmony. But as we're coming to find out, it's not working out that way, right? There's, they're, they're coming for your, if your truth is a Christian one or you're claiming absolute truth, they're, they're kind of making it harder and harder to take that stance now. Right. And it's even in the church to your point. I mean, uh, the church,
00:09:19
Speaker
Man, gosh, has been splintered so poorly in the last, I'd say in the last 100 years specifically, as we've argued over things like the infallibility of the Bible, the acceptance of different cultures that are coming into the church. Even if, I don't know if you watched it Sunday night, but there's been a lot of rancor around the
00:09:41
Speaker
Jesus gets us, he gets us that ad campaign around the two commercials that were run about whether or not they were appropriate, whether or not they went far enough, whether or not they were gospel, if they went too far. I mean, it's been all over the internet and I'm like, can we just back off of it for a second and just be thankful Jesus' name was spoken for a second? So it's been hard over the last 100 years for the church because the church really hasn't had the solid foundation that it was meant to have.
Exploration of Christian Beliefs and Scripture
00:10:11
Speaker
We've gotten away from it. Remember reading this book. In fact, I'm going to grab it real quick so I can get it on video.
00:10:19
Speaker
This was an early book for me called How Now Shall We Live by Charles Colson. Kind of a big book, but this was the first book I read and it was mandatory reading for the program that I was in to introduce us to worldview. Is this series kind of a worldview series and are you mainly just teaching on truth or are you going to cover other worldviews as well to compare and contrast? Now we're going to talk about
00:10:45
Speaker
some other conversation centered around the foundational cores of the Christian faith. We're going to be talking about who God is as He's revealed Himself to us and why that matters. We're going to be talking about the reliability of Scripture, of course, which is the source of truth for most of us. We're going to talk about who Jesus is. Ultimately, we're going to wind our way towards Easter, and we're going to be finishing up with questions like, how can I know for sure I'm saved?
00:11:13
Speaker
How do we know the resurrection is a real thing? So, man, we'll become important questions. Yeah. We got to know, we have to know, not just know and believe and have faith in it, but understand the reason behind it. I think is the more important thing because we're getting asked more. Yeah. The one thing I've struggled with. And this came out of the 2020s that I've been wrestling with more and more. And I think it's forcing a lot of people to think about this is why do I believe what I believe? How do I know I believe in the.
00:11:41
Speaker
The most correct version of christianity because now there's just so many splintered versions of it even down to the Individualistic like I have my own again. I have my truth of the bible, you know, it's moral relativism and christianity mixed together How do you find truth in that situation where even if you lean on god's word as the authority on truth? It can be interpreted many different ways
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, it really can. And, you know, you and I were talking about this briefly as we came online here just a minute ago before we came online about the importance of finding truth and consistently being able to go back to that same source of truth. I was sharing with you that one of my professors in college gave us the four C's of truth.
00:12:28
Speaker
Number one, the creation, God's creation, it tells a story of who God is. In Romans chapter one, God says that every man on the planet is without excuse as far as knowing whether or not there's God because it has been revealed to them to his creation. And then we talk about the canon, not the kind that goes boom, but the canon we recognize as the scriptures that were
00:12:49
Speaker
pulled together by early saints of the church, early leaders of the church who pulled them together because of their reliability. I know the church has debated the reliability of that canon for
00:13:01
Speaker
centuries, but most Christians come down to these 66 books. I think nowadays, I think some people argue it just to be so they can get podcast time. But obviously for 20 centuries now, it's been those 66 books. The third C is of course, Christ.
00:13:21
Speaker
If you really look at the life of Christ and learn the life of Christ and draw near to the life of Christ, you are drawing near to the truth. That's what Jesus described himself as. He said, I am the truth. And you get to know me, you know freedom. So that third one is a huge one. It's very reliable. The more you know about who Jesus is and what he stood for and what his values were, the more you understand what God is all about.
00:13:45
Speaker
And then the last one is the importance of community. Having other believers around you who keep you from straying off. One of the most dangerous statements that can be made in a group of believers is for somebody to look at the Bible and say, well, this is what I think it says. The Bible doesn't give us permission to do that. What the Bible tells us to do is to trust the Holy Spirit to help us by interpreting us for us, the scriptures.
00:14:12
Speaker
The only interpretation that is reliable and true, and we can count on it, is the one that the Holy Spirit gives us. Not the one that our heart tells us, not the one that we get goose pimply feelings about, just the one that the scripture itself tells us. And scripture has always got to be interpreted within the context of itself. So you can't just go in there and pick out these random verses that feel good. You're going to get things way out of whack.
00:14:39
Speaker
You got to let scripture interpret scripture and the Holy Spirit guide you in that interpretation. So me, as I've been wrestling with this and trying to find it myself, it's funny when you brought up the four C's. That's the first time I'd actually heard of the four C's and it made sense because two of the C's were on my list of like things that I've used to try to navigate what's true and what's not specifically the canon scripture that has to be the foundation. Otherwise, if you get away from that, it becomes a real slippery slope, no matter which side you get on, right? That becomes the pillar.
00:15:08
Speaker
And you have community i have church as in local church only just out of experience i've seen that christians who. End up home church is okay but like if you're just kinda practicing by yourself i've just seen so many christians get off and weird weird ads really strange things and i'm like that would happen if you were in a normal church.
00:15:30
Speaker
your pastor, your elder, shoot your friends would like, Hey, that's a little bit too far. That's not what that Bible verse means. No, no. Still, I have one in the middle that's not in the four C's that's become important to me around orthodoxy. What have Christians believed for a very long time and I've become skeptical of anything that's new. Yeah.
00:15:55
Speaker
Which there's many beliefs especially in the charismatic circles that are like, you know They've only been around a hundred hundred twenty years that I've become very skeptical of just because it's not it's not Orthodox some of my peers Millennials specifically this has created there's been a bit quite a migration from Protestantism back to Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism for this very reason. I think people are grasping for truth and looking for what were we doing before and
00:16:20
Speaker
and they end up theologically working themselves back. I came back from Nondinam, which is where I'd spent the last 10 years of my life, or it's my whole married life, back to like Baptists, because I've gained a respect for denominationalism and some, I wouldn't call it protection, but like some authority and some structure around what my church does and what my church believes. Yes.
00:16:48
Speaker
I mean, it's almost a half step back because like you said at church, like Southern Baptist churches can range pretty dramatically. It's almost non-denom, but not quite. It's still got some structure around it that I find is important. What do you think about orthodoxy in general?
Orthodox Traditions vs. Contemporary Practices
00:17:06
Speaker
I agree with you. Again, going back, I think it's the book of Jeremiah where the prophet says to look for the ancient past. He speaks to the idea that some traditions are important because they were established for a reason, right? There's a reason why we believe that way. There's a reason why we believe certain things that were taught in the New Testament out of the mouth of Jesus, out of the mouth of Paul, and we haven't changed those things. Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
Actually today in our staff meeting, as part of our leadership training, we were talking about the necessity for change to come so that you can stay relevant to the place you are, but that that change also has limits and that the message that we teach is one that's off limits. You don't get to adapt that message to the 21st century because it doesn't have to be. It's relevant for where it is. It's timeless. No, that's the power of God to speak something that's been true for 2,000 years.
00:17:59
Speaker
So yeah, I think Orthodoxy, some of the icons of the Orthodox practices, some of the rituals of the Orthodox practice, I think we get scared of rituals sometimes because they turn into ritualism. But any ism is typically bad, but the rituals themselves aren't.
00:18:21
Speaker
As long as they're kept in the proper perspective, we don't worship the acts. We don't worship the practices. What we worship is the focus of those practices.
00:18:30
Speaker
I've certainly had, when I make these claims around the importance of Orthodoxy, I've had my Catholic friends come back and challenge me and be like, so why don't you come all the way back? Go original Orthodoxy. Oh, gee, back to Catholicism. And I'm like, because there's so much of what's in there, I don't see aligned with my first pillar. You could call it my foundation called the canon.
00:18:52
Speaker
Right. Right. Exactly. I don't see praying to the saints in here. I don't see paido baptism or infant baptism. There's a lot or praying for the dead. It's a very orthodox thing that Christians have done for a long time. Problem is I don't see it in scripture, so I don't pray for the dead.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, so to me like scripture is the foundation but orthodoxy brings some structure being a part of a vibrant local church creates the other safeguard that i've tried to find or hold the truth with still i'm sure there's more i like your focus on creation and and of course christ i'm like yes and we do have to remember what you've just said is true of both extremes i think the catholics have held on to a lot of things like you that
00:19:37
Speaker
aren't in Scripture, and they've reinforced those messages for centuries now. Even to the point, let's put responsibility where there was an entire part of the history where the Catholic Church was putting people to death for not believing the things that they do. And nowadays, you have the other extreme, which is the contemporary movement that's found in the Pentecostalism, the non-denom churches, some of them, where they're doing some practices. I'm going, that's nowhere in Scripture. I mean, things like holy laughter and
00:20:07
Speaker
You know, signs of the spirit of God moving, that kind of stuff. I'm like, why are we adding to the scripture? This book has been perfect for thousands of years. Why do we have to do anything outside the realm of this?
00:20:20
Speaker
I've been in some of those super charismatic prayer meetings and wondered what the heck is going on. I have stories, I won't share them here, but like some of the crazy, charismatic stuff I've watched and experienced that now I'm like, yeah, probably wasn't the best thing. But when you're young, you're trying to, I don't know, you're in a process of finding truth. And I find if you're always searching for truth and able to realign your truth, sometimes when you find out that some of the maybe foundational things you believed
00:20:49
Speaker
We're different than you thought. I'm always trying to read the scripture and find what are new things. Even Amy and I have been wrestling with some foundational truths that we've been working through even now because we're just reading the Bible and we're like, I don't know if this belief is true.
00:21:07
Speaker
And you know, I feel like I've kind of hung up in the book of Jeremiah today, get quoting it. But you know, Jeremiah said, you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. And I think that's something we need to hold out in front of our listeners today. God's not trying to keep these truths from you. He's doing everything he can to give them to you. So for the honest seeker, the one who really wants to know truth, it's a matter of saying, okay, God, lead me into your truth and then picking up his word and reading it. I believe that God will honor that prayer.
00:21:34
Speaker
A lot of well-intentioned, very well-meaning Christians today get sidetracked because they say, I need truth. And so they go pick up the latest best-selling Christian book, best-selling Christian author. And listen, you and I both, we read a lot of books and that's good and that's helpful, but you can't replace the word. The word is where the source of the truth is. And what you read in a book is, unfortunately, is just the interpretation of a man who's read it.
00:22:00
Speaker
I know most of the conversations I have are based on hearsay research that they found online, the Bible and Christian literature. It's kind of an interesting mix as they defend what that is. And it's hard not to because you read some good books on psychology and it's hard not to throw it in. Yeah. And I've been in the middle of the book right now. It's been a really good book. I've been, you know, I do that bad thing where I sit on the, in the couch and I'll read and I'll quote parts of it, at least while she's trying to read her book or whatever.
00:22:29
Speaker
It's been a really good book. It's been very eye-owning, but I've gotten to the last third of it and I'm going, I don't know that I agree with what he's talking about here. So you have to read all that stuff with, again, with your filter up, your worldview in place, but you don't have to do that with the word. Just open up and just let the word come in.
00:22:48
Speaker
And it should be a prayer before every time you read the word, let God realign me to what truth is. Help me to find your truth in this. Help me to unlearn the things that I've learned. And you know what? It's okay in the beginning. I find all new believers, especially the fiery ones that want to talk about what they're learning about God because they're so passionate about God because they recently converted maybe, or have found a new passion for Him.
00:23:13
Speaker
You're going to have heresy in there. You're going to say things that just aren't true. It's okay because you're, you've committed to a process of continual sanctification that you're getting better. You're sinning. You're trying to overcome sin. You're repenting. You're trying to understand truth. You're reading it. You're reflecting, you're meditating. You come under some good leadership authority. You learn from them, you refine, and it's a constant process of refinement.
00:23:39
Speaker
Be bold, but can just be I think the key part is you just have to be humble while you're continually learning and growing Yes, humility is huge because I i'll confess i'll be the first one to confess in my years There have been seasons where I felt like I was a little more intelligent than I was Maybe well informed than I was and I would read the bible and read the bible and say, okay Yeah, I got that I got that and then I would go through something that would challenge me and humble me and i'd come back to some of those Same stories and go. Oh, I never saw that before
00:24:10
Speaker
And it was because there was a difference in the first case. I felt like I was the one leading the word. Whereas the next time it was me being led by the word. And it's a huge difference when you're trying to seek out the truth. So it reminds me of a great quote that's actually given me a lot to ponder on. This is not scripture, but it brings me back to scripture. It's a quote from TS Eliot and it says, we shall not cease from exploration. And at the end of our exploring, we will,
00:24:41
Speaker
for the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
00:24:48
Speaker
saying you you you leave your hometown and you go and explore the world to come back to your hometown and all of a sudden you have fresh eyes to see your hometown for a whole new life because you have a different perspective you have a different experience and all of a sudden that place that was so familiar is now different and that's what it reminds me of when you come to scripture a lot like you continue you continually study scripture my my kids have now gotten to the point where they've read some passages multiple times we're in home school and we're reading the same stuff again
00:25:13
Speaker
They're like, we've already read this multiple times. I've even memorized this passage. I'm like, and we will read it again and again, because you know what? We will have gone about life and gone on this adventure. We have explored new topics in new ways with new people and new places. And our perspectives will have changed. And we might look at that scripture differently as if for the first time. That's really good. And it's one of the refining things that I find I always have to stick to and reminds me to come back to the scripture because a lot's changed since I've last read it.
Engagement with Scripture
00:25:43
Speaker
I really like that. I'm really very thankful that you're encouraging your kids that way because I'm guilty. I'm one of those that has been guilty in the past when I've been reading a good book. I mean, a really good commentary on something or, you know, Christian literature of some kind. And I'll get to a passage and I'll read the first four words and go, I've read that before and skip down to the part where he starts writing again. It's like, Oh, I've heard that. And I got convicted about it years ago.
00:26:07
Speaker
Actually, when I told Lisa one time, my wife, I said, you know what, I feel like I've been reading too much about the Bible and have gotten away from reading the Bible. And I had just for a year, just put down every other book and just went back to the Bible. It was refreshing and it reminded me of how much I had forgotten.
00:26:23
Speaker
So seek the truth, seek it, look for it, you can find it. Absolute truth is knowable. You probably won't be perfect until the day you die, but I find that over time it consists of effort, humility. Like you can...
00:26:41
Speaker
Get closer and closer to it. Yeah, what CS Lewis I think calls mere Christianity. They're like the true essence of the thing which even across denominations when I have sincere conversation conversations with people that I know are my brothers and sisters I'm like we can all agree on some essential things like that mere Christianity. I'm like we're in this together. This is the truth I can all stand on this together, right? I
00:27:06
Speaker
And then the end of the day, that's what Christianity is going to be centered around. It's not going to be centered around the style of music you listen to or whether or not you wore certain clothes or what day of the week you worshiped even. It's going to come down to those core values that make us who we are as followers of Christ. So thanks for listening to the Grove Hill podcast, where we try to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible. And that includes this podcast. Share it with somebody who needs to grapple a little bit more with absolute truth or could just use this episode.