"You Can't Handle the Truth"

Lately I've been revisiting some old movies with my youngest son.  He's seeing these movies for the first time, and I'm enjoying "watching him watch" the movies.

We recently saw A Few Good Men, about a Navy lawyer who questions a Marine Colonel during a court martial.  Since then, at least once a day, my son sort of sneers at me and then repeats that famous line:

"You can't handle the truth!"

I started going to a baptist church when I was eight.  I learned that there was a God who created the world, that He gave us rules to follow, that Jesus died and rose again, and that the Bible is full of history, miracles, and teachings.  

And then I went to college.  From my Christian classmates, I heard about: evangelism, purgatory, speaking in tongues, healings, and so on. 

All during my college years and for years afterwards, I frequented Christian bookstores looking for the truth and trying to find out what this Bible really said and what the Christian faith should mean to me.

A lot of the books I read, even those that purported to be Bible study books, were actually "How to" books:  how to raise children, how to manage time and money, how to pray, how to get the Holy Spirit.

I also listened to Christian radio, and I regularly read my Bible.  Like Tom Cruise's character in A Few Good Men - I just wanted the truth!  

Now, when I think about all those teachers and writers, I'm sure that their intent was and is to help people.  But I wonder, "Do they know the truth?"  Or maybe it's that they think their readers "can't handle the truth."

The truth of the Christian faith is, I sin, and I'm dead in my sins.  We all are.  Because of our sin, we're like zombies, the walking dead.

And it's hard to hear and it's hard to handle that truth.  I want to think of myself as good, as honorable and hard-working.  But I know that I'm just like Paul.

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Romans 7:15 

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Romans 7:24

This truth that's often lost, even in Christian circles - it comes in two parts.  God's law convicts me of my sin, tells me how bad I am.  When I hear that part, of how bad my sin is, my tendency is to make excuses and to justify myself.  

But when the gospel of Jesus, that He paid the price, died for my sins on the cross, and freely gives me forgiveness - when that Truth is given to me, right on the heels of God's convicting law, it's then that I know the Truth.  That Truth comforts and assures me.  It gives me hope.  It's a Truth I can handle.

Martin Luther is known for saying that he preached the gospel to himself every day, because he was prone to forget it.  And the more I hear the gospel, the Truth every day, the more evident and precious it becomes to me. 

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.  1 Timothy 1:15b