Responding to Geri Jensen’s March 31 letter:
Who determines what is true and what is falsehood? What is fact? What is fiction? Who is appointed husbandman of a person’s beliefs…cultivating the soil of heart and mind; planting seeds of thoughts, philosophies and doctrines; weeding and pruning according to the impulse of our will? Who stands as anointed arbitrator in the public court of dialogue? Whose voice is allowed to bear witness and whose voice is silenced or discredited for fear of revelation? To whom are we willing to entrust the verdict?
Where do we picture ourselves in the courtroom where truth is tried? Are we seated passively in the gallery as naive observers? Among those who will be called to bear witness? The dutiful bailiff who awaits direction? Do we imagine ourselves as a juror? Or do we, given our selfproclaimed exalted positions—or probably more honestly, our need to control the outcome of such a trial—seat ourselves on the bench as judge.
Is it not ironic that we play out this disputation on the advent of Easter. Did not Pilot and Herod contend with the same issues? “What is truth?”(John 19:38) “Where did you [Jesus] come from?” (John 19:8)
Poignant, and powerful questions; but also dangerous…. because they unrelentingly cut to the existential core of our relationship with the divine—the selfdisclosure of God in Jesus and our response to that disclosure.
Consider Luke 18:8b—“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
We should never underestimate our proclivity to self-serving self-deceptions that leave us estranged to the transforming, enlivening presence and power of God. A loving God who knows the thoughts and intentions of our heart. (Hebrews 4:12). Risky business, surfacing the thoughts and intentions of our heart.
Each of us answers these questions for ourselves, and our answers will disclose as much about us as they do about him. My answer? You are the one in whom I am loved, and called to love.
Lord, free me from both extremes of naive passivity and contemptuous aggression. Very practically, show me what “obeying God and not man” looks like when the claims of your kingdom clash with the values of this world.
Garry Gamble
Grand Marais
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