A Moral Compass

 In an entirely upside-down world, we need a moral compass. This week, Israel was savagely attacked by terrorists, leaving some 1,300 dead and another two hundred taken as hostages. Israelis were brutally killed in their homes, babies and soldiers beheaded, and women raped. The shocking part of all these week’s events has been that much of the world supports the terrorists. There is an unexplainable hatred of the Jewish State of Israel.

Even more confusing is that Israel has agreed to a separate state of Palestine, but the Palestinians will not agree. They want death to the state of Israel. Their slogans have said, “From the river to the sea,” meaning Israel must cease to exist. When people here in the United States were asked about the brutal attack on Israel, the answers varied from whether Israel deserves it or it is all propaganda.

Toward the end of World War II, the Nazis were losing the war. In desperation, Hitler ordered his army to make one final assault to break through the Allied lines. One of the ways they did this was to use deception. Major Otto Skorzeny and 500 men were sent to confuse the enemy, all wearing American and British uniforms and speaking English. Their mission was to seize bridges, spread rumors, change signposts, and create panic. That is a picture of what Satan does to the truth today. He utilizes the media, organizations, and governments bent on deception and lies to take control of uninformed minds.

The truth was never more critical today. There is a war for young people’s minds, and Satan is winning many. We who know Jesus Christ and have God and his Word as our moral compass must stand against the lies and stand up for the truth. These are challenging times, but now is the time to know and communicate the truth.

What is Truth?

 

Joseph Rochefort was an intelligence officer in World War II who co-headed a team with Edwin Layton, assigned to break the Japanese Navy’s cipher system during World War II. This team was called Hypo, whose job was to figure out what the enemy was planning. The team earned its keep when they decoded messages about the island of Midway.

Rochefort was a disheveled nerd, making his appearance unimpressive. However, with his team, he figured out almost to the minute when and where the Japanese would strike the island of Midway. The information was accurate, and the United States Navy won one of the most strategic battles of all time. Admiral Nimitz, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, took a chance and believed this guy when no one else did.

Appearances can be very deceiving. It was that way for the Jews and even for Pilate. Jesus didn’t look like a king---not any king they had seen or even imagined, so they dismissed any possibility of Jesus being anything other than an impostor. They were dead wrong!

In response to Pilate’s question of whether he was a king, Jesus proclaimed himself a spiritual king. Jesus’ answer threw Pilate into an agonizing dilemma. Pilate would have immediately given the execution order if Jesus had declared himself an earthly king. But a spiritual king? Jesus was guilty of nothing. And his wife had warned him to have nothing to do with this man.

Christ was born to establish a new kind of kingdom. He cried, “For this, I came into the world.”On that day, life was not as it appeared. Christ was in control, not Pilate. When Pilate stated, “You are a king, then!” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37).

Pilate responded, “What is truth?” With that, he went out to the Jews. Pilate did not know the truth, but sadly he wasn’t interested in finding the truth. He did not honestly want an answer because he did not wait for one. Pilate exemplifies modern man. With his “What is truth?” Pilate stood transparent before Christ, as does the whole world. The truth that comes from Jesus Christ is what we all need but are not willing to look for. Even those who know the truth are often afraid to speak it because the crowd will cancel them. This story tells us truth is Jesus Christ, and those who follow him find the truth.

Truth

We are living in a time of incredible instability in almost every area of life: financial markets, family relationships, broken lives, and threats to our security, but the most vulnerable area is truth. Truth is under attack today like never before. Like Pilate, our world is asking, “What is truth?” Some even argue there is no such thing as truth. They say truth is what you make of reality and there is no such thing as God. Secularists and materialists who reject the idea of God say that matter is God—what you can touch and see. For others of us, creation itself is evidence of a God of creation who is the origin of truth.

In the first book of the Bible, the very first verses tell us the origin of our world: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen 1:1-2).

When Moses wrote these words, the world was full of polytheism (the belief in many gods) and pantheism (the idea that everything is God). Our world has not changed much. Even today, when we can see far into the universe and discover incredible and intricate design in our universe, people still believe it all happened without a God of creation. Every schoolchild learns that Darwinian evolution is an explanation of our beginning, but it is just a way to defend atheism. Never mind that Darwin’s theory continues to be shot full of holes by the intelligent design scientists. The story of creation as told in Genesis is about God from end to end. Absent are all the elaborate myths and love affairs of the gods of Egyptian mythology.

All of us long to know our origin and the origin of our universe—it is here in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, which means book beginnings. The opening lines “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1) give us a firm understanding about God, the universe, our planet, and even ourselves.

We need truth more than anything today. The truth about life, death, our purpose for being on the planet, and our future. It is all in the Bible, and it makes sense. The Bible gives us the most comprehensible explanation of evil that can be found anywhere. Most importantly, the Bible, right from the book of Genesis, introduces us to God’s grace. It points out that we are flawed and even sinful, but it does not leave us there, it offers hope and redemption. Darwin’s theory offers very little hope. It declares that there is nothing beyond the grave. For me, there is too much evidence in this world that supports the existence of the God of the Bible. I want that hope, and I need that redemption that God offers.