Their Truth, My Truth, and GOD's Truth:
Three Different Trees
While praying for one of my clients from the food pantry where I volunteer, I thought about his life story that he told me and how he ended up where he is living now, if you could call that living. It's a very rewarding and frustrating job to deliver food to these people, especially the ones living in such abject and pitiful situations. One client, in particular, has everything under the sun gone wrong against him, and he is completely innocent in his dire situation, or so he thinks. I want to help them in other ways, besides just bringing them their monthly food boxes, but I am powerless to help some of them. There are just too many problem with their living situations for me to tackle. I decided its best to help where I can and pray for them about the other things. I thought that I could offer solutions and ideas to help them, but then it occurred to me that I only know their side of the story.
While praying about this one in particular, I told GOD that his story just seemed a little off, and then the wisdom of GOD hit me like a ton of bricks. The Holy Spirit put it in me like this: Their stories may be an exaggeration, but to them it's their truth. To them, it really did happen that way, and their plight is really as bad as they have told me, even if it's not the whole truth. Then, GOD related it to us, all of mankind, and He hit me with another ton of bricks to really flatten the curve of my own story. I've been blaming quite a few people for my own plight and situation, while they have been blaming me for being in the wrong as far as they are concerned. There are many people who have done me wrong, as I see it, but I will use two men in particular to best describe the point I am trying to make.
To one, nothing I say is truth to him, it's only truth to me in his eyes, and none of it means anything to him, because it would interfere with his current happy lifestyle. Biblically speaking, the truth I've been speaking to him comes straight from Scripture. GOD has already shown me that this man has created God in his own image, an image that is acceptable to him, one who accepts his actions as okay, not offensive to YHVH GOD in any way, when clearly what he has done is spoken against in multiple places in the Bible. He doesn't read those passages. He is not in the least bit interested in reading those portions of the Bible, but he goes to church on a regular basis. He likes his last seat in the back row, way up in the balcony, where no one will bother him. The soothing message of just how much GOD loves him, regardless of how he lives, makes him feel better about himself, while the Scripture passages I share with him make him uncomfortable enough to ignore them as if they do not exist or as if they are obsolete today. His truth is that today we live under grace and not law, as he's been taught by the New Testament Church. To him, he's not obligated to keep any of the Laws, especially the parts about making vows to YHVH GOD. According to him, this wonderful pastor and the enjoyable music that is played at this mega church speak quite the contrary to the things I've been telling him are in Scripture. In essence, he prefers his "truth" to the Truth. The real truth makes him look bad. It says that because he has turned his back on GOD he may have lost his salvation, and well, that's just unacceptable to him.
The other man has many things against me, none of which I really know, because he refuses to speak to me, but his truth is just as viable and real to him as the first man's is to him. I can't fight this second man's truth with Scripture, because I don't know what his truth is to him. I only know what my truth is to me, and how it relates to me. The crux of the problem is that we have two different truths. I only know mine, he only knows his, and I'm going to venture a guess that neither one of our truths are GOD's Truth. I can only make assumptions about him based mainly on misinformation that I myself have had to conclude or deduce, and quite frankly, I could be way off base here. He has a huge advantage over me because he knows all about me, and I know nothing about him, that is his choice.
My fruit tree may be an apple, another's fruit tree may be a peach tree and another's an orange tree. They are all trees to us, they are all truths to us, but the actual truth for all our trees is in the roots, which are under the ground and they all look exactly alike, because the roots are GOD's truth. So, what can we do about all these differing lies we convince ourselves are the rock solid truth. Nothing, absolutely nothing.
We cannot ever convince the other that their fruit or leaves aren't really GOD's truth, only GOD can do that. Our own leaves and fruit are likely not GOD's truth. Somehow, we have to learn to live with each other's lies, and just keep searching our own trees' roots, and pray that somehow, we can live acceptable lives to GOD, and thank Him with all we have that Jesus's death on the cross is the grace that keeps our trees standing, until it's time for our trees to fall. The best we can do is to keep praying, keep studying, and keep believing that the Living Water of Jesus will extend to the next generation we leave behind when our own trees fall to the ground. (Pun not intended, but if the fruit fits, eat it!)
