Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: truth

Psalm 119:160 – Truth

The source of your word is truth,
and every one of your righteous judgments is eternal.

It is said that we live in an age where truth is becoming less and less important.

Personally, I disagree. I think truth has rarely been all that important in human society. From village gossip to the propaganda inscriptions of ancient rulers, words were made to serve the goals of those speaking them, with truth either secondary, or of no concern at all.

What has happened in our modern society is that technology has made it much easier to spread lies. It is much easier to provide good evidence for falsehood as well.

I am not an artists, but I wanted a picture of a tiger cat like my Mo (the Energion Spokescat!) taking off on a quadcopter to fly around the house. I fed a couple of sentences to Adobe Firefly and you can see what I got below.

Cat on a Quadcopter!

Now I see a number of things about this that indicate it’s not real, but I’m wonder what would happen if I posted this on social media and said that Mo had learned to ride on a quadcopter I’d bought him, and was now carrying out his mission of flinging all objects possible to the ground.

There might even be people who would repost the picture and claim that they now knew cats could do this, and who wouldn’t care if the picture was generated by AI. This is why I always try to indicate when something I post was generated by AI.

No, Mo does not ride any kind of flying device. That picture is absolutely artificial. But I have seen less plausible pictures immediately accepted as truth simply because they tended to back someone’s political or social views. When someone points out the problems with a picture or a post, I frequently see people respond what was posted was plausible and fit with the character of the person(s) described.

No matter how many fact checkers we may line up, people will believe what they want to believe. But that isn’t the main problem. The main problem is that people become indifferent to the truth of any statement or the genuineness of any picture. They decide that doesn’t matter.

I think it would be better if we had opinions on many less topics, and only took a position on something we had been able to study thoroughly enough to give a good foundation to our opinion on it.

The Psalmist is here thankful that God’s Word, the foundation of all God’s creation, is founded in genuine reality, really real reality. When God judges it’s right.

So we get the idea that when we get something from God’s word, it must be true. This is in turn morphed into the idea that if you found it in the Bible, it must be true. That’s obviously why we have hundreds of denominations with a variety of opinions on just what the Bible teaches.

It’s not that we all have to be right. We’re human. We’re going to make mistakes. Lots of them. The point is that we need to be very careful what we claim is true and what we accept as true. That includes studying your Bible. Are you sure you’ve gotten precisely what that verse said? Perhaps you need to study some more.

Or perhaps we should simply admit that we are expressing our opinion of what is true.

Now don’t get the idea that opinions are unimportant. An opinion should be backed by the best evidence you can find. You should try to have accurate, true opinions. Just don’t be arrogant enough to believe you always do.

A commitment to God’s Word means both a commitment to serious study, and also a realization-an accurate realization!-that we are not perfect.

Seek truth. Admit fallibility.

(The featured image, also a cat on a quadcopter, was generated by Jetpack AI. Different take!)

May 2, 2025
Psalm 119:104 – Truth Matters
From your precepts I improve my understanding.
Therefore I hate every false path.

It’s time to underline the difference between these meditations and exegesis. I study the verse first, looking at precisely what it says, and then I meditate on where that can lead me through the day. Sometimes that meditation leads me to other scripture, but often it leads me to other sources of knowledge and current events..

In this case, the verse is really making a simple, straightforward contrast. There is a way defined by God’s precepts, and then there are alternatives. The psalmist accepts the wisdom that comes from God through those precepts. He rejects what does not. It is important to remember the breadth of what he sees in God’s law.

But the direction my thinking took was this: How important is a firm commitment to truth? Now you can see how the verse suggests the topic for my meditation, but it doesn’t examine the details. It just lays out a contrast.

In our postmodern world we have a tendency to say “in our postmodern world” a lot. Not necessarily in those words. We say it in a variety of words. “These young people are not like we were when we were young.” “In the good old days….” “It’s just getting so you can’t trust anyone any more.”

One of these claims is that media, such as the internet and social media especially, have somehow made us less concerned with truth. The variety and volume of assorted voices makes it impossible to determine what is true and what is not. Falsehood and disinformation are entirely recent phenomena.

We need to learn to hate every false way. Here are some examples.
- I just don’t know what to believe. There have always been those who just don’t know what to believe. There have also been those who tended to believe convenient lies just because they were too lazy to seek out the truth, or they were afraid they wouldn’t like the truth. In the “good old days” you’d have to go to the library and consult an encyclopedia. Now, despite the multitude of voices, it’s quite possible to find information quickly. You have to want to find that information. You have to care. You have to be ready to spend the necessary time. If you don’t know, don’t blame others. Failing to take responsibility for your own beliefs is an excuse, and it’s one you can’t afford.
- There are so many voices. Yes, there are many voices and many sources of misinformation. There are also, however, many sources of truth. Face it, most people who don’t bother to check on the truth of material on the internet wouldn’t have checked the gossip about their next door neighbor before believing it and passing it on. The problem isn’t the number of voices. It’s a refusal to be responsible and to take responsibility for what goes into your mind and what comes out of your mouth.
- All of my friends believe it. This has been the tribal thing for years. We don’t want to differ from the people around us. When we do differ, we want to do it with a group behind us who will shout the other side down. It doesn’t matter what your friends believe. What matters is what they can support. If they can’t deal with disagreement, find better friends.
- There are so many important issues! I have to take a stand! Yes, take a stand, but take a stand on what you’re going to regard as important, specifically important enough for you to express an opinion. There is a false standard that suggests you have to have and express an opinion on every topic. You don’t. You can choose your battles. As a publisher, I have a great option here. I can point people to an author I publish who provides a better discussion of a topic than I believe I could. Choose your ground and stand on that. Don’t allow anyone to force you to stand on theirs.
- It’s not important what I believe, so why bother! You might think from the previous point that I think this. I do not. It is very important what you believe. That’s why you should choose carefully what you choose to debate. You should be sure you’re expressing something you can support as truth. I don’t mean you always need to be right. We will all make mistakes. But care in what we express and how we express it is important. Blathering on every topic even when we don’t have the needed knowledge is a very dangerous false way.
- Confusing our opinion with the truth. This is a very common false way in Bible study. People present their view of the Bible or of a theological issue as though their interpretation is the very word of God and any who disagree are disagreeing with God. You and I are not the writers of scripture. We are not God’s special messengers blessed with infallibility. It is not humility to say, “This is just what the Bible teaches.” It’s dangerous arrogance. Let each person be taught by God. Show your work and speak in such a way that others can follow the steps and decide for themselves.
- Fear of sources of knowledge. There are those who are afraid to look outside the Bible for their information. That is fear. It may sound godly, but it is not. There are those who find a human source of knowledge and then stick with it no matter what, because they are afraid of being confused. That is letting fear guide you. Hearing more than one viewpoint is part of checking the view you already have or building a new one.
God speaks in many ways. Humans learn in many ways. Take control of what you take in. Take control of what you let out of your mouth or send through your keyboard.

In loving truth and hating falsehood what will you speak today? On what will you keep silent?
March 7, 2025
Psalm 119:86 – Valid

All your commands are valid,
Yet they persecute me with falsehood.
Help me!

In most translations you will find a word like “truth” describing the commands. I think that “truth” with reference to a command can understood as validity. The commands are fitting, appropriate, and right. I could also change the term in the second line from “falsehood” to “invalidity.”

How does one persecute with falsehood?

Yesterday, discussing verse 85, I discussed made up or misapplied rules. Those ideas could apply here. I suspect the psalmist is talking about the use of rumors, careless and inaccurate reports, and vague accusations. I think people have used these things as long as there have been people. Currently we use the term “disinformation” to talk about stories that are intentionally false in order to pursue some goal of the writer.

But a more common form of falsehood that harms is careless inaccuracy. I see this regularly on social media. People post or repost rumors and those rumors grow and morph as time goes on. It is nearly impossible to root them out, because they fit with someone’s view of the universe. They are used to run down other people or groups.

There are various excuses for the use of falsehood, such as not having time to check, or just posting/repeating to see what people think. But the bottom line is that people’s reputations are harmed and it becomes harder and harder to communicate. We wind up living in fantasy worlds made up of the falsehoods we have absorbed.

It’s easy to deceive ourselves that this is a strictly modern phenomenon, brought about by the presence of the internet. But these sorts of things have been passed on for millennia. The internet and social media have just made them more convenient. Their nature hasn’t changed.

Any time we repeat or post things that are false, we bear false witness against our neighbors. You may be thinking I’m primarily talking about the political landscape, and I am concerned. Fact-oriented exchanges of ideas are of great value. But I’m also greatly concerned with what we do to one another in our churches and in our local communities.

Paul was concerned enough about this to list “gossips” and/or “scandalmongers” in his various famous sin lists. I’m looking at Romans 1;29-30 right now.

But there are verses about this closer to home, i..e. in Psalms and Proverbs. For example:

“Gossip is sharp as a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” (Proverbs 12:18)

“A scoundrel takes up evil gossip; it is like a scorching fire on his lips.” (Proverbs 16:27)

Or the complaint in Psams; “Those who sit by the town gate gossip about me; I am the theme of drunken songs.” (Psalms 69:12)

A good strategy would be to fight falsehood with truth, fight the invalid with valid. Don’t believe and don’t repeat anything you can’t be certain is true and useful.

What can you not repeat today to help make the world a more “valid” place?

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

February 17, 2025
Psalm 119:72 – Value

I value instruction from you
more than thousands of gold or silver coins.

If I were to write a list of things Christians say, but don’t really mean, this would be near the top. We like to say that we’re interested in what God has to say, but in practice, it’s not that high on our priority list.

Psalm 19 says that God’s laws (after using a number of the same terms found in Psalm 119) are more to be desired than gold. I once suggested to a class that a good experiment would be to put a Bible and a gold bar on a pew and see which disappeared first.

But that was not one of my smartest suggestions. The point is not having the book, but consuming God’s word in various forms.

I was once invited to speak to a group of visiting youth who were accompanied by their youth pastor. At the end I invited questions, and once we’d discussed such deep theological issues as where Cain got his wife, things wound down. The youth pastor asked if he could put in a question. His question: “I’ve been studying the New Testament for around five years now and I think I’ve pretty much got it. What do I do next?”

That one pretty much stunned me. I’ve been studying the New Testament, and the whole Bible, pretty much my whole life, and there’s no end in sight. There’s always something new. I’ve heard people who have been in the church for years say they don’t need to study or attend Sunday School class, because they’ve really got it all covered.

So let’s change the question. Can you give up the money you’d earn in an hour of work in favor of learning from God? In this I include more than reading scripture. I include time spent meditating, listening to God. I include time spent in nature or studying science. Anything that is dedicated first and foremost to learning the truth.

Is that truth more important than your bottom line? Will you give up money in order to know that truth? Will you practice truth, that is integrity by practicing what you know, even at a financial cost?

This could be a serious question for someone who does not believe in God. Do you believe in learning truth and having ethics over your own living?

We talked about hardship in yesterday’s post. The fact is that while hardship drives learning in many ways, most times we’ll skip the learning if we can cheat reality and dodge the hardship. Often this is accomplished my making others take our hardship for us.

What will you prioritize today? Will it be absolutely genuine?

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

Some Books on Bible Study

February 3, 2025
Psalm 119:66 – Teach Me
Beauty, order, and knowledge teach me,
for I have put my trust in your commands.

I went straight off on a rabbit trail thinking about this verse, because those first three words cover a very large area. They have overlapping semantic ranges, and a variety of possible glosses. I tried to choose three words to would combine the senses. As I read the three words they convey a combined sense of learning to see knowledge for multiple angles, looking for beauty, order, and data with understanding.

We often see religious instruction as a matter for the church and for Bible study, while everything else is a secular activity. This is not the view that would have been held generally by those in Bible times. With God as the creator, everything is seen as part of God’s creation. So when you study the things in nature, you are studying divine beauty, order, and information.

There is a danger in this sort of thinking, but let me say that we are always in danger when we study. Danger that we will quick seeking these three and start trying to force the information to take shapes of our own desires. Thus religion has often tried to control scientific research by reference to their interpretations of scripture.

Thinking that scripture and also all of reality come from God, doesn’t mean that scripture teaches us about everything. Scripture should teach us to be truthful, to seek accurate knowledge, and then also to deal with that knowledge responsibly. It does not claim to be a text on any field of science. Rather, it points to a creator who created things and established an order for them such that objective study is possible.

We miss that order when we try to force these elements to fit into a pre-conceived scheme and refuse to acknowledge what’s there.

Recently there has been increasing skepticism of traditional sources of news and other data. This skepticism, in itself, is good. We should be skeptical of popular and official story lines. The problem is that we have all too frequently gone from a source that has failed in some ways to sources that don’t even attempt to be accurate. We judge the accuracy of the information by how pleasing it is to us.

You may think I’m talking about current American politics. And I am, but not only that. I’m talking about the way we have handled scripture for a very long time. We step away from traditional institutions of the faith because they have failed us in some way. Martin Luther was driven to his break with church authority by very real problems. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before he and other reformers were ready to deny the journey to others. Having found a better place, they found it more comfortable and they felt the need to defend it

But when we find our new comfort zone theologically and we fail to be constantly corrected by God’s Word and God’s Spirit. It’s a truthful Spirit, and doesn’t like us to lie, even, or especially, to ourselves.

Whether you’re studying cutting edge scientific theories, reading the newspaper, or studying scripture, always beware of the comfortable rut and the safe, unchallenging mental vacation spot.

Take the time to study, to meditate, and yes, to pray. Take time to listen. Be challenged. Be correctable, but only by solid material.

There’s a beauty awaiting the determined traveler along paths of knowledge. Determine to take that journey!

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

Some Related Books I Publish
January 28, 2025
Psalm 119:13 – Speaking It

With my lips I have recounted
All the judgments from your mouth.

We tend to talk, and also write a great deal about speaking. On social media, people take note of the things you don’t speak out about, and consider you apathetic for your apparent silence. On the other hand, there are those who are just waiting for one wrong word so that they can condemn you.

I has been said that when all is said and done, a great deal more is said than done. This often comes from the one sanctimoniously declaring superiority and completely ignoring the fact that he (or she) is speaking and not doing.

My first thought about this passage was to emphasize the importance of saying well-selected things, of being willing to be known for what you believe. That would have turned into a tangled post as I would also want to discuss all the good reasons for choosing what you would spend time talking about.

But for me the more important lesson of this passage was simply how do I source the things I say. Where do these come from? How careful am I in hearing, studying, and applying the things I believe God said?

This could come down to deciding when to speak and when not to, considering “a time for silence and a time for speech” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). The psalmist intends to declare the judgments that God has spoken. God’s judgments are spoken not only with accuracy but with perfect timing.

When do you and I speak? Do we consider the “truth” of the time, the timeliness, as well as the factual truth of what we say?

Let’s conclude with the words of another writer of Hebrew scripture:

The Lord YHWH has given me the tongue of the learned,
To speak timely encouragement to one who is weary.
Isaiah 50:4 (REB)

Are our words both timely and truthful?

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

December 6, 2024
Why I Believe in Courtesy

Louder Is Not Truer

(Image Credit: OpenClipart, qubodup)

It seems that many people believe that in order to be firm in one’s convictions, one must be arrogant, loud, and generally rude. Rude and angry speech is praised as telling it like it is. Courtesy is often ridiculed with the incredibly overused term “political correctness.”

I object to political correctness when it is politically enforced, when the law mandates the use of one term over another. Let’s see, perhaps like Florida state employees being ordered not to use the term “climate change.” Not what you were thinking of? I believe it’s the same principle.

I believe in referring to people as courteously as possible, not because I am unsure of my beliefs, though I think uncertainty is certainly appropriate in many cases, but because I believe that is the best way to communicate what I believe. Shouting loudly may impress people who already agree with me, but it turns off those who are in opposition.

If you truly care about communicating your ideas and about persuading others, you need to learn to practice a firm sort of courtesy. This may involve using labels for others that they can accept. It may require you to drop cute one-liners that impress you.

One of my objections to speech codes is that by forcing people to be courteous (sort of) when they would not do so on their own initiative, it’s harder to identify those who can safely be ignored, i.e., all those folks who think their point is to be made by loud, obnoxious presentation.

Courtesy, friendship, and openness to dialogue are not enemies of the truth. Rather, they are essential to communicating it.

February 27, 2016