Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Therefore say to them, ‘This is the nation that has not obeyed the Lord its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips.

• Jeremiah 7:28

Send one of your number to get your brother; the rest of you will be kept in prison, so that your words may be tested to see if you are telling the truth. If you are not, then as surely as Pharaoh lives, you are spies!”

• Genesis 42:16

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

• Genesis 1:26

They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.

• Romans 2:15

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

• Romans 1:20

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!

• John 8:42-45

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

• John 14:5-7

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

• John 8:32

Boilerplate

I’m Harold Dykstra.  I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story.  My time is well spent.  A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel.  I did not know she was an angel at the time.  The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone.  And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy.  She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others.  She changed my life.  Since she was a doll that had come to life, we came up with the term ‘other living.’  She was not a human, an animal, or even a plant, but she was definitely living, and very vibrant.  Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs.  After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.

This Week’s Question

In the last episode, Babs sought hope, especially hope for the needy.  But then she heard a strange conversation in the breakfast area that had her agitated when I got back from my sales call.

Again, she already had put on her T-shirt and boxers, her usual bedtime attire.  I questioned her about it, and she said she would get dressed to go out for dinner, but only after we had a Bible study.  That was unusual.  Our Bible studies were usually an after-dinner relaxation time.

I asked, “Babs, why this change of plans?”

Babs went to the easy chair, looked at the ceiling, and throwing her hands in the air, she said, “I overheard a conversation this morning that got me terribly confused.  Then, I came back here and read Jeremiah 7.   Why? I do not know…”

I smiled, “Babs, let’s start with what the people said in the conversation.”

Babs nodded, “I started overhearing the conversation in the middle.  One woman said, ‘But that is your truth.  My truth is different.  I totally disagree.’  Then the second woman said, ‘That’s silly.  There is no such thing as objective truth.  Everything is relative.’  Then they were arguing over how to express what is truth and what is not truth instead of arguing over what started the conversation.  Their argument got so heated that I left the breakfast area and came up here.  I have expressed my views on what home is.  Our home is with Jesus in Heaven, but you call that house in Tracy your home.  In Heaven, the home is much nicer, and the neighbors are a lot friendlier.”

I held up a hand to signify a timeout.  I suggested, “Okay, it is our earthly home, yours and mine, until we get to Heaven.  Is that okay?”

The Babs bubbly smile was back.  “Yes!  I like that, but I mentioned our earthly home because I loaded up my small suitcase with all the Bibles I could put in it, and a couple of commentaries.  Thank you so much for putting my clothing in your suitcase.  It gave me more room in mine.  I have no idea what drew me to Jeremiah 7:28, but I got there, and I have been thinking that the end of the world is right now.  What if I have not completed what I came here to do?”

I asked, “And I have been wondering ever since you became animated and a very living part of my life.  Why are you here?”

Babs giggled, “1. 2. 3.” And then we both sang, “I don’t know.”

Babs said, “I like your tenor and baritone better than your bass.  You sounded like a frog.”

I rolled my eyes, “Excuse me!  I was trying to test my range.  But if you have no idea why you are here, how will you ever know when you get there?”

Babs scrunched her nose, “Do we have to do our little song again?”

I shook my head.  “Where do you want to start?”

Babs giggled, “Why not with the first time the Bible mentions ‘truth?’”

I giggled, “You would have to start there.  The first use of the word “truth” in the NIV is when the person talking about other people telling the truth is not telling those other people the truth.”

Babs scrunched her nose again, “What?”

I smiled, “When the sons of Israel, that is Jacob, went to Egypt to buy food.  The governor that they met was really their brother Joseph.  In the Egyptian garb and much older and answering to the name that Pharoah had given him, they did not recognize Joseph, and Joseph was saying that they were spies, knowing exactly who they were.  He demanded that they send one brother to return to get Benjamin, and the rest would be held in prison.  That way he could guarantee they were being truthful.  After their pleas of innocence, Joseph had Simeon put in prison and ordered that if they returned, Benjamin had to be with them.  So, there you have the first use of ‘truth’ in the Bible, being told by someone who was not being truthful.  But I have another idea.  We can look at three concepts of how we know what truth is and why those two women were having a heated argument over nothing.  Okay?”

Babs sat up and smiled, “Yes, teach me, Harold!”

I laughed, but she was always eager to learn, even without the change in posture.  “Let’s go back even earlier in the Bible to Genesis 1, the Creation story.  Genesis 1:26 talks about how we were made in God’s image to have dominion over the other creatures.  Many people argue about that meaning, but we, as humans, were given consciousness.  While some animals may have pain and that pain is important to them, humans have a greater level of sentience.  Thus, we are aware of the truth within this world, an awareness of right and wrong.  Of course, the Fall of Man, gave us that ability to have the knowledge of good and evil, but we had the ability to choose, rather than do things by instinct.”

Babs nodded, “I am ‘other living’ and as far as I know, I do not have that.  But I understand how mankind has that freedom to choose and they often choose unwisely.  What else?”

I nodded in return, “Well, let’s look at Romans 2:15.  God’s Law is written on our hearts.  Talk to people who do not believe in God, and they will tell you that murder is wrong, that theft is wrong.  They get upset if you lie to them.  But when you ask them why they feel that way, they cannot tell you.  They don’t believe in God, so how does God’s Law, at least in part, get written on their hearts?”

Babs asked, “What else?”

I smiled, “In Romans 1:20, it says that the Creation of God speaks of God’s divine nature and eternal power.  The evidence is so strong that no one has an excuse.”

Babs said, “But obviously many people are missing the evidence.  They believe in Evolution and Millions of Years.”

I nodded, “And the more we are learning about genomics the more Evolution is seen as either impractical or too fanciful to really believe.  And serious scientific study points more to a younger earth, to a global flood, and to humans being around for about 6000 years.  The thing is, over the past fifty years, the secular evolution view of how we got here has produced no evidence, just more books quoting earlier books which quote earlier books that were all theory and had no proof.  But we are here to talk about truth, whether truth has perished, as it says in Jeremiah 7, and what is ultimate Truth.”

Babs smiled and said, “Yes!”

I nodded, “The Bible, which is God’s inspired Word, says that Jesus was there as the Creation unfolded.  The Holy Spirit hovered over the waters.  And God spoke everything into existence.  So, if everything in the universe is temporary and God has always been, and God created everything, then what is the only thing we can hang our hat on as being eternally ‘true’?”

Babs was into scrunching her nose today, “God?”

“You got it!”  I replied.  “God is Truth, in that He predates all else and caused all else to be.  Jesus said that He came from the Father.  And those that oppose Him are from their father, the devil, the master of lies.  It would not be a popular argument to tell people that they were listening to the devil, but then again, from those types of claims came the anger against Jesus to wish to have Him crucified.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but those that oppose Him did not see the truth, and they were comfortable with the lies.  But when we know the Truth, the Truth will set us free and we will be free, indeed.”

Babs asked, “But what about those two ladies?  One was even wearing a cross around her neck.”

I took her hand and began to rub it.  “Wearing a cross does not mean that Jesus is in your heart.  And being confused about how the secular world keeps pounding this concept of everything being relative and nothing being absolute, even some Christians that have not grown much in the faith could believe that the world might have some of this stuff right.  Remember the argument.  They were arguing, but they both had the idea that truth was something that either resided in the individual or it did not exist at all.  Both are rejecting Jesus as the Truth, but maybe the one with the cross had never thought that part through.  And the devil, that master of lies, creating a world that questions if anything is really true would be his best move.  Yet, thinking, deeply thinking, can break through that concept, but we have to want to think.  Truth is found in nature (Romans 1:20).  Truth is found in reason (Genesis 1:26).  And truth is found in conscience (Romans 2:15).  And those things are in every human, if we can break away from the world’s rhetoric long enough to think upon those things.”

Babs jumped up and went to the armoire to get her clothes.  As she dashed for the bathroom to change, she giggled and said, “And you, Harold Dykstra, are truly a good teacher.  Let’s go out to eat.”

Credits

All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife.  We would talk about anything and everything.  And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.

I was praying about what would be bothering Babs next, and nothing seemed to come to mind.  My Friday afternoon Bible study posts are on the Chuck Colson book, The Faith.  In the Appendix of the book, he discusses a summary of the book, providing some bullet points that I have been going through, the fundamentals of the faith, if you will.  But he skipped the chapter on “Truth.”  The book came out in 2008, and Mr. Colson might have not thought the lies about truth being relative might not take hold as it has.  Maybe if he were alive to modify that list, he might add that Jesus is Truth as being one of those fundamental things.  The idea of truth in nature, truth in reason, and truth in conscience came from the first page of that chapter.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.