Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my seventy sixth episode. Tonight I want to talk to you about truth, what it means to be set free, and living life to its fullest. One of the church fathers, Irenaeus of Lyons, said: man fully alive is the glory of God. I’ve spent a fair amount of time studying Isaiah lately. As you’re working through the judgment chapters, it can feel a bit crushing to see the consequences of degeneration in societies one after another. You can begin to fear God in the wrong way. Did you know that there are two ways to fear God? One way is wrong and the other is required to avoid needless misery. Proverbs 9 says that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. 1 John 4 says there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. So which is it? Do we fear God or do we not fear God?
A good analogy here is fire. If you respect fire, fire will heat your home; cook your food; power your engine; and build your cities. When treated properly, there is no reason to fear fire and every reason to embrace it. But if you play with fire carelessly, it will burn down your entire life and consume you with it. It is only when you fear what fire could do to you that you become in right relationship with fire – and that is a relationship that you actually love and cannot survive without. So it is with God. In Matthew 28 Jesus says: do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Like fire, if you are not in right relationship with God, you have every reason to be terrified of him. But when you are in right relationship with God, you discover that you actually love him and cannot survive without him.
So what do I mean by being in right relationship with God? This does not mean never missing a Sunday in church. This does not mean donating to ministry. This does not mean being religious. Being in right relationship with God means living each day of your life in truth and in love. John Wesley thought that Christian perfection was to make every motive of every action become love. Love for God and love for your neighbor. Does that sound too easy? That’s because it is easy. Jesus paid the price we could not pay so that we might be given salvation as a free gift of God’s grace out of his love for us. But as easy as it sounds, you actually cannot act in love and walk in truth without faith. Faith is the engine that drives love and truth.
Think about this with me. Why would you tell the truth instead of lying – especially if you thought lying could get you what you want? The answer is your faith that truth is always the best option even when lying is more tempting. Why do you risk falling in love with another person knowing that they might betray you? The answer is because you have faith in them that they won’t betray you. If you don’t trust your spouse, it is impossible for you to love your spouse. That’s because love is inseparable from faith. If you don’t believe in truth, then everything you say or hear becomes a lie. That’s because you lose the very thing that allows you to tell the difference.
But how can you be expected to love God when you don’t see God? In the gospel of John, the resurrected Christ appeared to the disciples and showed Thomas his wounds from the cross to prove that it was really him. Then he said to Thomas: Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Is this an unrealistic demand for God to make of us? Not really. This is actually how love works in almost every situation where you go from not knowing to knowing. Think of your first date with your spouse. Did you love them that night the way the way you do now? No, you didn’t. That’s because that night you did not see your spouse. You saw a person who you were on a first date with. Only once you began to invest your trust in them did you begin to fall in love with them and they became your spouse. In the same way, you must trust God first before you can begin to love God.
So how do we know whether we are trusting the living God or trusting some feeling we have inside of us? The only way is to accept revelation. Science can’t get you there. This is because scientific truth is nested inside of religious truth. The only reason anyone can even do science is because of an a priori belief that one theory can be tested as true while all other competing theories are not true. But even taking the initial steps to go about testing these things carries the assumption that there is such a truth to be discovered.
This might sound painfully obvious, but if it’s really that straightforward then why are people in the most advanced society on earth turning to postmodernism in droves? The cornerstone of the postmodern worldview is that there is no such thing as truth. That every aspect of reality is reducible to each person’s perspective and each individual’s opinion. It’s true for you, but it’s not true for me, etc. This is why gender expression has been separated from biological sex. Biological sex can be objectively verified – which makes it an objective truth – and objective truth cannot exist in the postmodern landscape.
This is also why postmodern activists want to shut down conversations. They don’t believe that people can have good faith conversations in an effort to get closer to the truth. If there is no truth, then the only reason for you to speak is to further your gains on power and self-interest. Even the scientific disciplines themselves are under assault by the postmodernists. They believe the disciplines are nothing but machinations designed to advance the power of the establishment. What else could they be if there’s no such thing as truth for the disciplines to pursue?
All of that is why you cannot get to the gospel through scientific discovery or scientific evidence. You have to accept the reality of truth on faith before the disciplines even get off the ground and before evidence makes any sense. God has revealed his character to us in Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ. Trusting Christ means accepting that he is the perfect representation of God himself. If you accept that truth as the cornerstone upon which to build your worldview – then the pathway to understanding is laid open to you.
You don’t need a genius level IQ to walk that path either. You don’t need a rare skill set or any kind of special connection with God. All you need is humility and faith. You can never come to understanding without humility and faith. Proverbs 11 says: when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul says: Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. What does all this mean? Well, let’s imagine I open a Bible and read a few passages. I interpret what I read in a certain way. Humility is to accept that my interpretation is not perfect and that there are many things I still need to know. Faith is to believe that Scripture is trustworthy and if I continue studying I can in fact get closer to the truth.
So let’s say I continue studying and I begin to feel pretty good about my understanding. Now it’s time to start the conversation. I sit down with several other believers and put my ideas on the floor for them to examine. You might ask me how I know whether these other believers are credible? That’s the wrong question. I already know that myself and the other believers are vastly ignorant and loaded with bias – we are definitely not credible. But Jesus said, where two or three are gathered in my name there am I among them. So, if my brothers and sisters are having a good faith conversation with me in an effort to get closer to the truth – I have faith that the Spirit of Truth is among us and we will learn something new. But If my brothers and sisters are deceiving each other for self-interest – well – Jesus also said: do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
How do we know whether the brothers and sisters are gathered in good faith or not? We try to find out whether they are telling the truth. Telling the truth is something you cannot do from the postmodern viewpoint because from their viewpoint there is no truth. So they believe it’s impossible to have conversation in good faith. To the postmodernist, every single interaction all the way down to making love to your spouse is simply a movement to establish power.
Unlike the postmodernist, we accepted a truth before we started – and that was that God revealed himself to us in Scripture and in the person of Christ. So, we have something to work with that exists independent of each other and the conversation. If I say something that violates Scripture or if I present myself as an Antichrist – then you know that I’m not telling the truth. I could be lying intentionally out of self-interest or I could just be so ignorant that I’m missing the truth. If I’m deceptive, it’s because I have no faith in the truth. If I’m ignorant, I need to be humble enough to realize it and recover.
Then what happens if my ideas pass Scripture and so do yours, but the ideas disagree with each other? This is what causes denominations to form. It turns out there’s actually a third step to discovering truth that you must do after you learn the Word or the Bible. You must act it out in your life. You must embody the Word. The Word must become flesh in you – just as it did in Christ. Listen to this passage from the gospel of John:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life,[a] and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own,[b] and his own people[c] did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son[d] from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.[e] 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God,[f] who is at the Father’s side,[g] he has made him known.
Jesus Christ is the perfect embodiment of truth itself. So in order for us to test whether something is true, we simply imitate this process of embodying the idea – or acting it out. In order for it to be true it must produce a harmony – it must work for you, your family, your community, your city, and your nation simultaneously. Furthermore, it has to work for all parties involved today, tomorrow, next week, next month, and five years from now. If the idea fails to operate at any level of analysis then it will lead to pathological breakdown and destruction of the entire model.
That’s the cure for the postmodern dilemma. Passing through scripture and passing through the aforementioned parameters of well being turns out to be such a narrow path that few ideas ever make it all the way through. And you actually know that this concept is real. Here’s a thought experiment: try to think of ways in which you could destroy your life and the lives of those around you in the next ten minutes. You can think of many ways and it would be easy – the path to destruction is wide. Now flip that around and try to think of even one way that you could cause the same amount of benefit to your own life and the lives of those around you in the next 10 minutes. That path is narrow and not so obvious. That path is difficult. Since we are not omniscient, the best we can do is hold to the ideas that work most optimally and never stop having conversations that give rise to new ones.
Okay, so that’s how we get to the truth. Jesus tells us that the truth will set us free. What does he mean by that? What does it mean to be set free? When many people think of freedom they imagine a space where there are no rules and there are endless options to choose from. But here’s the snag. You actually cannot even move in this space without surrendering your freedom to something. Let me explain. Imagine you’re downtown and you’re hungry. There are 50 restaurants to choose from. As soon as you commit to one, you give up the other 49 and you lose a little bit of freedom. You make thousands of choices just like that every single day. Every choice you make to decide walking in one direction instead of another is based on a value judgment about the options.
So when you make a big choice like getting married, you’re surrendering your freedom of making the countless choices that fall under the umbrella of being single. But what’s interesting is that getting married opens up countless new choices that were not available to you before. Something similar happens when you invest your trust in Jesus. Becoming a Christian gives you a solid structure of moral absolutes. It doesn’t mean you’ll abide by them all the time, but just having those limitations is like experiencing thousands of little marriages that open thousands of portals into new choices and opportunities that were not available to you before. The classic example is the recovered alcoholic. You come to Christ and you give up alcohol. It’s you submitting to his authority that maybe he knows what’s best more accurately than you do. You’re giving up some freedom. In exchange, maybe he gives you your family back. Maybe you’re able to get a decent job that wouldn’t hire you before. Maybe you can put your life back together. None of those freedoms were available to you until you surrendered your will to God’s will.
You need limitation in order to move anywhere in the world. You are like a train. If you demand to be taken off the tracks so that you can forge your own path then you will only get stuck in the mud. The limitations set forward in God’s will for you are like a cage. Without faith, the cage looks like a prison cell. With faith, your eyes are open and you can see the great white sharks patrolling outside waiting for you to come out and test your freedom. The cage is protecting you from things in this world that are so horrible to witness that a naive person would not be able to glance at them without getting PTSD. The truth is your life raft. If you let go of it you will be awash in nihilistic chaos where everything is nothing and your value system has been so badly eroded that you can’t even bring yourself to get out of bed in the morning. The truth sets you free from the shackles of meaninglessness. Listen to Jesus in John 8:
31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
So the final point for us to talk about is living life to its fullest. Irenaeus said that man fully alive is the glory of God. I believe that conducting yourself the best that you can in life is the highest form of praise and worship for God. Especially in the moments where you’ve been hit by a tragedy and revenge seems much more tempting. So what does it mean to conduct yourself as best you can? This is where sin comes in. I believe all sin is life limiting or life destroying in its fullest form. I can’t think of a single sin that doesn’t fit that description. Sin is what prevents you from being fully alive.
Let’s take lust for example. It might seem like living your best life to be with any partner who sparks your attraction. To keep the encounters casual so that you don’t bear any of the responsibility of a long term monogamous relationship. And many people do attempt living this way. But they are never absolved from the consequences of this lifestyle – both physical and emotional. Plus they cut themselves off from God’s model for sexual intimacy between husband and wife. They are settling for the fake, diet food when a gourmet meal exists beyond where they can see it. Everything you do is like that. God’s model works better because God’s model is most authentic to being fully alive.
Adam and Eve were fully alive in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Their only limitation was that they accept the limitation so that they could be free. Adam was given the task of stewarding the flora and naming fauna. In a way, he was the first philosopher and scientist. They had everything they could have wanted or needed in paradise. Adam got to walk with God in the evenings and be in perfect fellowship. All of those freedoms they gave up so that they could be their own masters.
I’ve asked a lot of questions in this episode. I’ll end by asking you this: Do you feel fully alive? If you don’t, maybe you should ask yourself what choices and opportunities are hidden from you as a consequence of you holding too tightly the steering wheel of your life. Or maybe you’re trading a loving fellowship with God for the driving whip of sin. There’s not too many questions that have been asked consistently for 2,000 years. But one question that has been asked by nearly every person whose ever lived is: How do we make the best out of what time we have here? This is a question that has remained unanswered for 2,000 years – and there is a character named Jesus who won’t seem to go away either.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
The MHB Podcast 