Truth is the one essential element of life beyond the here and now. In answer to Jesus’ claim that he is the Truth, Pontius Pilate asks sarcastically, “What is Truth?”

He may have meant that to say, “Can truth ever be known? I doubt it!”, but that’s a question whose answer is the difference between life and death.

I am retired and thus, by definition, I have too much time on my hands! I listen to NPR (because I despise advertising) and read several newspapers almost daily. As I listen and read, that one overarching question I ask is, “Who is this who is telling me these things? And why should I believe him/her?”

The longer I live the more convinced I become that no one is an objective witness or dispassionate observer. We all come to every event, every fragment of information, every word spoken and every letter written with the filter of our life experience and education, the influence of friend, mentor, and, yes, foe fixed firmly in place. When life presents us with a series of either/or-s, we are forced to choose either – or, and that choice is the product of every experience we have had prior.

So, when I listen or read, I really want to know what filters the reporter/commentator has in place. I want to know if he/she is married (biblically speaking) and how frequently does she/he change beds, and does he/she have children. I want to know if he/she is same sex attracted. Where was she/he born and what was the structure of the family of origin? Where was she/he educated and what major (if any) was pursued? Does he/she attend church/synagogue/mosque/temple regularly, and if so, what denomination or theological orientation? (I really should just follow traditional language usage and use the male pronoun as the collective pronoun for humanity just as the Hebrew text uses “adam” as both the name of the male and the name of the race. This he/she stuff gets old quickly and using plural pronouns when the singular is required is a violation of the very principle of truth I wish to uphold!)

Now the Washington Post doesn’t have a chart on the contributor to its pages showing us WHO that person really is. It doesn’t answer any of my questions that will enable me to determine the believability of the writer. So I have to look at the literary structure and word choice to get an inkling of the writer’s prejudices. Does he confuse the language using terms like cisgender, or does he call a man in drag a transwoman and use feminine pronouns when referencing him? Does he call the lesbian partner of a woman her wife? Does he differentiate between rape and a pat on the butt, or is everything called, “sexual assault”? Does he call a murder an incident of gun violence when the instrument of death is a gun, but does not call a murder where the instrument of death is a knife an incident of knife violence?

If a reporter wants to focus on the evil of the weapon rather than the evil of the perpetrator, we should know that that reporter is not telling the truth and indeed may not even know what truth is. It is true that a high velocity projectile was used to kill someone, but neither the projectile nor its launcher is responsible for the death resultant. The cause of death is the evil in the heart of the murderer and not the instrument used to murder.

We can apply the same principles to anything the papers’ owners/editors want us to believe. Are they telling the truth about the President? Brexit? The French Yellow Vests? The Climate? Afghanistan? Syria? Ocasio-Cortez?

What is Truth? I don’t think any of us know with absolute certainty – none of us possess the divine attribute of omniscience, but if we are to be honest with ourselves and our fellow travelers on life’s journey, we should seek diligently for an objective standard by which to measure our beliefs and then strive to bring our thoughts into line with that standard. And I believe that standard to be the Word of God both inscripturated in the Bible and lived in Jesus Christ. And that’s the TRUTH!