When we were little we were told a lot of things, some were true, some were myths, some were old wives tales, the media machine presented some, and others were passed down by word of mouth. We were told that if we ate the seeds of fruit that a tree would grow in our stomach, we were told that if we swallowed our chewing gum that it would stay in our stomachs for as long as three years up until eternity. We were told that if we didn’t wear a coat that we would catch our death. We were told if we stayed out after the streetlights turned on that it was unsafe. We were told that the lead in our paint, and in our blinds was safe, and it was used in dishes. We were told that asbestos was safe, and it was lined in schools everywhere.
Now we know that all of these things are untrue. You know it says, ‘know the truth, and it shall set you free’. And most of what we think we know to be true we actually learned in our formative years. And those things aren’t nearly as interesting to see debunked, as it is to look back on what we believed, to look back on what we were told about Papa, and pursue with all sincerity what the truth about Him actually is.
I was given a version of who God was. He was to be feared, He was always watching my every move, He was a King, a harsh king to be feared, and He was a punisher. And there was all of these contradictions, all of these opinions – and in addition to whatever it is that we are told, we also have the observations of how we see other people living that profess to know Him intimately.
And all of this forms this opinion of who God is.
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t convinced that a tree was going to sprout in my stomach, or that my gum was stuck in my stomach with this sprouting apple tree. I never caught my death from not wearing a coat. And the same people who told us all of these things were the same people who told us that Santa Claus was real, and the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy were very real.
So maybe, we should not hold too firmly onto the things, which we learned, in those formative years.
You see this is a substitute truth. In replace of the truth, of veritas we find a more convenient truth. It is one that easily fits into our worldview. If we grow up in poverty, our worldview is shaped around this. There is something in us that has absorbed into our beings what we believe. It is so easy to believe that we have a very strict, rigid God especially if that is how our parents were.
You know any substitute is not as good as the real thing. It adds a different flavor to things, but it is not the original. It is not authentic; it is a distorted version of the original masterpiece.
You know what I believe about this whole Christianity thing, is that if our saviour, our King of Kings, our lion of the tribe of Judah – if our beloved was so radical that his own people wanted to murder Him…then what is our walk supposed to be like? Radical. And I think, too often we get stuck living this substitute truth, the other version that is ineffective.
How about, we ask this question – what truth am I following after? And is that truth really my beloved?
More and more I encounter people who want to know this radical Jesus and not the watered down version. Not the one from Sunday school stories. And more often I find, that I don’t need to know the truth – I want to know it and that there is a huge difference between the two.
I am asking the question.
Are we living our lives based upon a substitute, or are we living our lives on this amazing, radical journey because we really do know our Papa?
