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In the aftermath of the very sad and tragic events during the Liverpool FC celebration parade (links to two articles), one police officer commented this morning "this was an event covered by public authored journalism. In the context of half-truths it is so difficult to explain that there is "The Truth"". In our age of prevailing relativism, we need to remember that there is such a thing as THE TRUTH. It matters in the behaviour of our lives, our desire to live lives close to God, the attitudes of our hearts before God, understanding the world He has put us in and our influence on the eternal destiny of each and every person made in the image of God.
The bible, though expressed through lives and minds of those created by God, is divinely authored. Each writer makes it clear under the process of divine influence that they are not being mechanical, He is the primary influence and they are always secondary. It is not a human book. In fact it is made clear from cover to cover that the vantage point of God is greater to see the truth, know the truth and declare the truth. Isaiah 40:22 says ...
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
In our internet culture, a little knowledge can be dangerous. Everyone who has read a blog, tweet, seen a TikTok believes they have the truth or even worse that they are an expert in it. I spoke to a teacher of A-Level history last week who told me that a kid complained when their answer was marked as wrong. It turned out they had watched a TikTok about it and that therefore belived they must be right (even though the text book said something very different.)
GOD's ENCOMPASSED TRUTH
The Hebrew word in ISA 40:22 ('circle') literally means "roundness". Above the circle of the earth there is God's complete encompassing view and knowledge of all things. Everything we are, do, think, understand and feel is contained within the knowledge of what God knows about us, physics, chemistry, sociology, etc etc. This is huge, not least in the realm where people talk of God being disproved by science.
So this is not just a matter of God's infallibility (He is, humans are not), or about Him being the creator and author of the manual (He is), it is that He remains God - what He breathes therefore must be true and be obeyed. It is this last issue that most have a problem with even though we might mask it in other ways. We might say there is an alleged error found by human ingenuity, or human knowledge has "developed or progressed" so much since this ancient book, but even this is not relevant. If He is God we are still not.
Many of the human writers of the bible actually display their own limited sphere of understanding and view. If they had fully understood what God was saying they may not have even wanted to write things in the way they did, but they were unable to change the message. Think of Isaiah's inquiry "How Long O Lord" (Is 6:9-13) or Ezekiel being sent to a people who would definitely not listen (Ez 3:4-11), but he was among them - one of the contributory factors under the view of God (Ez 2:5). The prophets wrote things which incriminated and tested themselves (Eek 33:1-11). That their understanding was not full is particularly apparent in the apocalyptic writings (Dan 12:8-9, Revelation 5:1-4). They all attest to the fact that God was and is in control and we are not (Nahum 1:3, Matt 5:45, Dan 4:17, Phil 2:13, Prov 21:1), they attest to God's view of History being authoritative (Gal 3:29, Eph 2:13,4, Rom 4:13, Acts 13:17, Num 20:7-13, Gal. 2:11-14) and trustworthy.
The best way to respond to what God says is to place ourselves personally and relationally into the truth and respond to Him, and His offer of grace. His grace covers all things, all our past, all of our history, all of our lack of past belief, all of our mistakes, all our limited understanding. We can trust Him, we can trust His word. There is great TRUTH and it is that Christ died for us whilst we were still sinners, still not listening, still didn't want Him, still unable to comprehend the extent of His mercy and love.