Seeking the Truth: Find Yourself First

The first step to getting anywhere is figuring out where you are. This might seem intuitive, but stick with me. For those who have never had to navigate by map, the significance might be harder to grasp.  

There was a period, believe it or not, when people lacked the GPS systems we take for granted. For those who recall traveling in these ancient times, to another state or maybe just a few towns over, you might remember the atlas. If you were in the scouts or the military, you have likely navigated cross country with a map and compass – an even bigger challenge in many ways. Either way, you will probably remember flipping pages, folding maps over, unfolding them again because what you needed wasn’t even visible. Tracing around with your finger until, finally, you pinpointed your current location.

The first step always remains the same: Find yourself.

Figure out where you are right now, or you may never get to where you need to be. The same thing applies to faith and Scripture. This may not be an obstacle for everyone; some people just seem to have a better idea of where they are at any given time, whether navigating life or navigating the world. For many of us, though, there is a real challenge involved. Unlike in land navigation, where you have terrain to associate with – that mountain, or this river, or an intersection of roads – we must identify far less tangible points to orient ourselves by if we want to find the truth.

I want to offer a few positions that I have experienced or observed over many years as a skeptic and an atheist, and as a leader, counselor, and compulsive observer of people. If it so happens that you are close to one of these, great. Hopefully you can use it to orient yourself and get back on track. If you’re not, that’s okay too. If you find yourself somewhere far off from what I write about, so be it; it’s enough that you take the time to reflect, with brutal honesty, on where you are and what holds you back. Once you do that, you’ll be ready to move forward.

What I can’t do is provide all the answers in one article. I plan to expand on all of this eventually, but for now, what I have are a few suggestions based on my own personal experience.

Are you skeptical of the Bible?

Some people doubt the credibility, the historicity, or the accuracy of the Bible itself. They’ve been told that it isn’t consistent, that it contradicts, that it’s a fabrication of man; whatever the case, they look at the Bible and see a fraud. This seems to me to be the most prevalent form of skepticism, or at least launch point for skeptical arguments, that I have seen. It was my position for quite a while. It is also, and let me be completely frank with you here, nonsense.

This may have been a valid position decades ago, in a time before almost all the information in the world had reached our fingertips. It just isn’t, anymore. In less time than it takes to play a game of checkers you can correct what is, at the end of the day, simple ignorance. There is just no reason for anyone who has any desire to engage in a good-faith evaluation to doubt the consistency and accuracy of the Bible.

If this has been your position, I sincerely believe that you have been misled. I say this having been there, and having done the misleading. I get it. My recommendation is that you start outside of the Bible to fix it. There are numerous pages dedicated to illustrating the credibility of Scripture. You can also grab a book like More Than a Carpenter orThe Case for Christ, both of which do a fantastic job of presenting the facts. I would begin with the following questions, and I think you will find that the evidence stacks up overwhelmingly.

The reality is you can refute most of these challenges in less effort than it takes to assemble a package from Amazon. With just a bit of digging, you will find that what you have been told is simply not true. You are always free to disagree with the Bible, but that is not the same thing as discounting its credibility as a historical document.

Hopefully this allows you to take a fresh look at the truth of things.

Are you skeptical of God?

For those who are skeptical of the existence of God or the supernatural, the problem is more complicated. They are struggling with a philosophical problem that requires a philosophical answer, and very few of us are experts in philosophy. I’ll simplify (crudely) a few of the arguments here, just to give you somewhere to start. As always, I encourage you to dig into each of these further. Listen to the experts, not me!

The design argument: The sheer complexity of the universe, from the assembly of galaxies down to the form and function of DNA, points to an intelligent designer. That designer would have to exist outside of time and space, have the power to create on this scale, and have reasons to do so.

The fine-tuning argument is similar to the design argument, but focusing on the improbable likelihood that so many variables exist at just the right point in a range for life to exist. Any one of these countless factors being off by any measurable amount means life as we know it fails.

The moral argument says that there is no basis for morality that makes sense without God. It is true that people everywhere seem to intuitively understand that some things are right and some things are wrong. Objective moral law must come from somewhere: an objective moral law-giver.

The cosmological argument is this: If all things that begin to exist have a cause, which we can all agree with, and the universe was created, which is something the Bible has been saying and science no longer refutes, then the universe has to have a Creator. Circle back to design!

General revelation is, basically, the idea that one can know there is a God simply by going outside and looking around. You can call this common sense, if you like. To quote a comical video: Would you just look at it?

There is another approach that I think might be useful, but you have to do your homework first and verify the reliability of Scripture. You don’t need to believe it yet, or agree with it. But if you can confirm its reliability, you have another source to investigate: prophecy. There are many examples, but here are a few I find to be really straightforward and compelling.

• Look into the destruction of Tyre as compared to the text found in Ezekial 26
• Look into the accuracy of the prophecies found in the book of Daniel
• Look at Isaiah 53 and how it so clearly points to Jesus
• Look at Psalm 22 and the indisputable way it describes the crucifixion of Jesus

Look at how many hundreds of years separate these predictions and the events. I’m often floored at the mental gymnastics we are willing to go through to avoid concluding what is so obvious: there is simply no way anyone accidentally got these things right. There are many beautiful, often subtle ways that Scripture ties together and reinforces the Divine nature of its assembly. Prophecy is more like a giant neon arrow in the sky; it points straight to God and seems clearly sufficient to eradicate all doubt.

I can’t help but appreciate how we had answers to the philosophical debates on His existence long before we were foolish enough to question it.

Are you angry?

There are many people out there who have been hurt by the world, and in so many ways. Abuse is a real thing, and so are flawed people acting as poor representatives of something that should be beautiful and good. Hypocrites abound, and they are not always quiet about it. Whether misguided or truly wicked, bad people that claim the name of Christ are responsible for more people turning away than we want to admit. And when they go, they go hard. This was evident to me even before I believed, and nothing has changed in my evaluation.

If this is you, I am sorry. I truly am.

I am no stranger to the harsh reality that is our legacy on this world. It’s disheartening to see how foolishly hypocritical, carelessly malicious, or even deliberately evil people can be; I can only imagine how much worse this gets when the offense comes from someone who represents a faith you might now mistrust. Unfortunately, I can’t take away your scar tissue. Chances are, you will always have it. What matters more, I think, is that we recognize it.

All too often there is a deep anger buried beneath that caustic, biting skepticism that people swing about like a weapon. It is not intellectually grounded, but emotional. That friend who scoffs at the mere idea that God could ever be a loving father? Dig a little and I bet you will find pain. My point is this. While skepticism and apathy are the more visible fruit, hurt and pain are often the root.

What we should not do is blame the church for the people. What we cannot do is mistake human fault for God’s failure. If we are lost and can’t seem to figure out why, we need to sit still and have uncomfortable conversations with ourselves. If we are willing to open closets and look under the bed for the monsters we’ve long forgotten about, we might discover what has truly been holding us back. It might not get us all the way there, but it could let us find the trail and get moving again.

Are you your own God?

We want to sin.

This is objectively true. Accept, for the sake of argument, that even without the spiritual or Christian connotation, sin is still a useful word to categorize behaviors. I think you can follow me there. Let’s acknowledge that sin describes things like selfishness, lust, greed, envy, sexual depravity, dishonesty, murder, and a host of other similar and predictable traits.

I will assume you agree in principle that this list generally describes things we ought not do. The fact that most people would agree that most of the things on this list are poor behaviors indicates that this isn’t an outrageous claim, either. We might see deviation in specific behaviors that some people decide don’t belong, I suppose. One might agree with everything except the lust, while another thinks envy isn’t all that bad. In a society that has taught us any attempt to corral our desires is tantamount to spiritual slavery, quite a few might roll their eyes at the idea of sexual depravity. Even where we disagree, though, we tend to disagree on scale more often than not. Of course, too much of something is never good. We shouldn’t take that too far, however.

I think you can also follow me when I say that people everywhere do these things, on a spectrum ranging from occasionally and regretfully to excessively and unashamedly. This is what the Bible means when it says that people are slaves to sin. That we, when left to our own devices, will act according to our own desires. That this will result in us doing things that are on the list we already agreed we ought not do. Period. It is inescapable, as objectively true as the fact that your phone will eventually hit the ground if you throw it out of a window.

This is where so many of us are. We want to sin. We live in a world that is as full of temptation as we could ever want it to be, surrounded by a culture that is deathly allergic to accountability. I could fill these pages with the myriad ways we justify our actions, and with all the words of encouragement we receive from a thoughtless and morally numb society urging us to live our lives in whatever way we see fit. What we have, then, is an environment that seems scientifically formulated to enable sin.

For some people, it is this. The desire to be their own God keeps them from finding their way. The purely human arrogance – the pride – that we are cursed with is what blinds us to the reality of things. When we find ways to justify our actions, knowing well in our hearts they are wrong, it is pride that blinds us. When we convince ourselves that our actions are blameless, it is pride that encourages us. And when we refuse to name sin because of the stain we think even speaking such a word in today’s culture will leave, it is pride that steals our courage.

This becomes much, much more difficult to do when you are confronted with the knowledge that what is right is clearly revealed in the teaching of God’s Word. It is for this reason and often this reason alone that so many will turn away from Jesus; because once you do, you can tell yourself the lie that what society sells you is true. That you are good enough as is.

I do not spend a tremendous amount of my time considering how to reach those who cannot see the blame in their own mirror. I think the best we can do is find ways to show them how they are being deceived, and to make clear to them that there is another path. The rest, I sincerely believe, is on them. This isn’t a matter of critical thought but personal conviction, and I pray that God might take a more direct hand in that one.

Finding Yourself

I truly believe that the first step for many of us involves a brutally honest look in the mirror and a willingness to admit where we’ve been wrong. Not in terms of sin or repentance, although that will hopefully come. I mean the ability to raise our hand and acknowledge that we haven’t done our homework, that we don’t have a good reason for the skepticism that fuels us. That we actually have very good reasons to believe what God has revealed to us. I mean the ability to recognize our emotions for what they are, set them aside for a time, and try to see the good news of Jesus Christ for what it is: a beautiful truth that will meet us where we are, save us if we let it, and completely transform our lives.