Does Absolute Truth Really Exist... or Not?

I’ll let you decide after reading this...

A change… beginning today, you will now be receiving our posts on Fridays!

“Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right." ~ Charles Spurgeon 1834-1892

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t have a lot of discernment back in the 1970s. I was an ex-Catholic who had walked away years at the age of sixteen. At the time, I was too busy chasing the world and my career to pay attention to things like Jonestown...

The term “Kool-Aid Drinkers” originated as a result of the infamous 1978 Jonestown, Guyana Massacre. The event represented one of the single most horrifying cases of lack of discernment ever recorded. On November 18th of that year, the charismatic and delusional cult leader Jim Jones ordered nearly 1,000 men, women, and children to drink poisoned Kool-Aid. Many of Jones’ followers willingly ingested the valium and cyanide spiked drink, while others were forced to do so at gunpoint. The final death toll at Jonestown that day was approximately 909, with a third of those who perished being children. A few residents managed to escape into the jungle as the suicides took place.

The victims were members of the People’s Temple, a so-called Christian organization that incorporated everything from Marxism to faith healing. Jones touted the group as a “rainbow family” made up of Americans of all races, ages, and creeds, who wished to create a socialist-style utopian society. The congregation moved from California to the South American nation of Guyana after being accused of financial fraud, physical abuse of members, and mistreatment of children.

Jones’ socialist farming paradise never materialized. The members worked long unpaid hours in the hot sun without proper hydration or nutrition. Some were forced to perform sex acts in front of large audiences. Their passports were confiscated to keep control of the members. Their letters were censored, and they were encouraged to report on each other. Jones required temple members to participate in mock suicide drills in the middle of the night.

As it turned out, on that one November evening, the last drill was for real…

One must ask the question… how can anyone so lack discernment as to fall prey to something so obviously wrong? The danger signs were everywhere, yet the congregation steadfastly clung to Jones and his brand of abusive leadership. Today the term “Kool-Aid Drinker” has come to mean someone who lacks even basic discernment skills and blindly accepts a way of thinking, theory, or narrative without question.

The word discernment, as used in Psalm 119:66, refers to knowledge and good judgment. It is the ability to recognize the implications of different situations or courses of action. Discernment is black-and-white thinking that rejects things that don’t make sense.

As TV’s no-nonsense Judge Judy Sheindlin once famously said, “If it doesn't make sense, it's not true.”

A discerning person has developed the ability to decide between truth and error. The operative word here is developed. Few, if any, of us are born with the ability to tell the truth from lies. Like bank tellers, we must know what the real thing looks like to identify counterfeit money.

The Bereans were masters of this. The Bereans were residents of the city of Berea in Macedonia. They did not immediately accept what they were told but first examined what they heard by comparing it to the truth of the Old Testament scriptures.

The Bereans were not biblical scholars but everyday folks who realized that God’s word was the only reliable source to check out teachers. They exercised discernment rather than thoughtlessly accepting Paul and Silas’ teaching without question. Only then did they believe. They are a model for us today for how we must approach ways of thinking, theories, or narratives that we encounter every day. They made careful distinctions in their thinking about the truth. In other words, the ability to think with discernment is similar to the ability to think biblically.

People who lack discernment are often easily misled because they do not think biblically. Lies are usually wrapped in just enough truth to make them believable. The mainstream media, schools, Hollywood celebrities, and even some so-called churches use fear, anger, and outright deception to promote false narratives. Without some sort of hard and fast standard, it can be extremely difficult to separate the truth from the lies.

While Jonestown represents an extreme case, false teachers are leading millions astray every Sunday morning by teaching a counterfeit Gospel. These church-goers are being deceived by promises of health and wealth (the prosperity gospel) without ever hearing one word about the need for repentance and making Jesus Christ the Lord of one’s life.

True and sound wisdom are rare commodities in today’s world. This means that everything we hear and see must be viewed through the lens of truth. Like the Bereans, if we know the truth of God’s word, we can defend ourselves against the onslaught of lies and deceptions that come at us every day.

There is a profound difference between the worldly wisdom of men and the wisdom of God. Worldly wisdom is almost always contrary to the word of God. Biblical wisdom is God-centered. The Bible is the inerrant word of God, the creator of the heavens and earth. A good place to start is the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. Read it, study it, commit some key passages to memory and then begin to act on its truths. The time you spend doing this will benefit you greatly. One needs to read only seven verses into Proverbs to learn the key to wisdom...

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7 NASB).

Let me know what you think in the comment section below…