• Is faith irrational?
• Does religion do more harm than good?
• Has science disproved God?

Is God a delusion?

Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.
Luke 12:51, NIV

Not everyone will accept Jesus’ teaching.  But what about inside the church?

Paul writes to the church in Ephesus pleading for unity in the believers.

Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
Ephesians 4:3-6, NLT

Now I don’t think this means we should all be uniform.  God has given everyone gifts and talents, and different local churches use these in an amazing variety of ways.  The music we use, for example.  What a wonderful diversity of styles we use to worship our great God.  Nor does it mean we don’t challenge our leaders.  Our pastors and leaders are human and can make mistakes.  Don’t we all?  In matters of doctrine, there are different interpretations.  For example baptism – children or adult?

But above all that is unity.  And in the unity there is seeking after truth.

Paul continues:

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
Ephesians 4:11-16, NLT

As I wrote in an earlier post, the Internet has given anyone the ability to write what they like.  This includes the new teaching and lies so clever they sound like the truth.  I want to seek the truth.  I want to learn from other believers and other denominations.  I want to know truth when I see it and realise the lies when I see those.

I used to work in a bank.  We handled a lot of money, and we would get passed a forged bank note now and then.  Some of the forgeries were very good.  But the best way to tell the forgery was to hold it up against a real note.  Forgeries stand out in a pile of real notes.  Lies stand out held up against the truth.

I’m not interested in the websites that knock the church or what it believes, or seek to break the unity in the body of believers.  I want to seek the truth.   I want to post about the truth.  Show me what is real, not the forgeries.

31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Later on in verse 36 Jesus says:

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

Free from sin, free from slavery to sin, free from the judgment of sin. Jesus came to give freedom. Not freedom to do what you want, but freedom to be what God designed you to be. Freedom to find God’s purpose for your life. Freedom to be all you were meant to be.

What is truth?

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6

There were two Soviet Union newspapers. One called Pravda, meaning “truth”, and the other Ivestia, meaning “news”.

The joke was: “There’s no news in Pravda, and no truth in Izvestia.”

Consider the Earth.  Popular opinion at one time thought the Earth was flat.  It could be.  The bit I live on is flat.  I can see a long distance from where I am and that is mostly flat, apart from the hills.  I’ve been to the coast and looked out to sea.  It is mostly flat, but waves change the shape and there may be a bit of a curvature.  But I will dismiss this if my world view is that the Earth is flat.

If my perspective is changed then my world view could change.  To know whether or not the Earth is flat I would have to look from a different perspective.

So I look up.  Night time on a clear evening, away from street lights.  Lots of stars.  If I were to trace them all they move across the sky.  But the Earth could still be flat.

A few of the points of light are different.  If I look at them through a telescope I see that some are small discs rather than points of light.  Some of the discs are round.  One looks like it’s got ears.  One looks like it has little dots around it.  These are the planets.  They are different to stars.  If I trace the movement of planets across the sky they sometimes move forwards, but sometimes they move backwards.  This is evidence that the planets don’t orbit around the Earth, but that they orbit around some other object that the Earth must also orbit around.  Also, the planets look different.  They could be spheres.

So observing the creation hints at a possible different perspective.  But the Earth could still be flat.  The planets might be different to the Earth.

OK, so changing perspective again.  I have a trip on a rocket and go high above the Earth.  Now I can see that the Earth is round, and not only that it is a sphere.  It isn’t flat it’s a sphere.

So my former believe that the Earth was flat has been replaced by a new believe through the change of perspective, the additional evidence and observation.  So can others still believe the Earth is flat?  Both cannot logically be true.  Only one reality exists.  The Earth isn’t flat.  There is only one truth.

So do all paths lead up the mountain.  The only way to know the answer to that question is to have the perspective of looking down at the mountain from above the top.  The God perspective.  To claim that all paths lead to the top is to claim the perspective of God.

Can we know the God perspective?  Has God revealed anything to point to this answer?

If you search Google for the answer to a question, then you are presented with many answers.  Often contradictory.  In the equality of publication that is the Internet, anyone with a view can publish their version of the truth and back it up with their reasoning as to why it is true.

• But who are the people with these views?
• What is their source of information?
• Can their claims be substantiated?
• Do they speak with authority?
• Is one truth more valid than another?
• Could they all be correct?

Twenty or more years ago if you wanted your truth to reach a wide audience you’d have to publish a book, write an article in a journal or magazine, appear on TV or radio. You would have to validate your comments, citing references and authority.  It would take time and dedication.  Your work would be reviewed and critiqued and time would tell if it would be accepted.

Now a view can be authored and published within minutes to a worldwide audience.

I am not saying that this change necessarily means that all is untrue, rather that it is easier for the untrue to be found on an equal footing with the truth.

So how do you differentiate?

A possible answer is an anagram of the phrase: est vir qui adest - ”it is the man who is here.”