Truth

“That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”

Ephesians 4:25, NIV

Christians have been taught in the ways of truthfulness and righteousness.  Why, then, is it so often forsaken?  Why, then, in a Christian society is it so hard to find?  

We suppress history because it is inconvenient.  We don’t tell the story of Ruby Bridges, who as a six-year-old in 1960 was the first black student at the previously all white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana.  She had to be escorted by U. S. Marshalls for her safety.  She was, in fact, the only student in her class for her first year there.  Ruby later related her childlike trust and innocence, “There was a large crowd of people outside of the school.  They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of thing goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.  I really didn’t realize until I got into the school that something else was going on.”  “Good Christian” adults were throwing things at a six-year-old black girl.  But because something was done long ago by our ancestors, we can’t, or won’t, embarrass ourselves by teaching about it to our young children.

We ban books because it is more important to protect our children from possible exposure to profanity or nudity, than it is for them to learn about the horrors of Naziism.  We need to realize that in at least fifty countries the Bible is a banned or restricted book.  Maybe the banned books are the ones that actually have something to say.

Then there’s this from Proverbs 12:19:

“Truthful lips endure forever,
 but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.”

But does this not require action on our part in these days of rampant untruthfulness for personal gain or power or popularity?  Is our God giving us a charge in Proverbs 12:19, more than a reassurance?

In the introduction to his 1969 book, “The Sunflower,” Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Simon Wiesenthal writes, “The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.

Robert K. Bullard