Suggestions for those searching for the truth

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - TRUTH

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

Suggestions for those searching for the truth

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

If you are among those who are looking for the truth and still have an open mind about it, then I suggest you begin by reading through one of the gospels at the beginning of the New Testament, in a modern translation.* However, before you do, pray a prayer something like this:

Lord, I don't know whether you are there or not, but if you are, then I want you to know I am sincere about wanting to know the truth about you. As I read this Gospel, I want you to reveal to me in some way whether this Jesus is really who he claimed to be and if it is true that he died for me. If you should convince me of this, then I will accept him as my Saviour and my Lord and follow wherever this truth leads.

*There are many good translations available including Good News (for those with English as a second language), New International Version and Contemporary English Version.

It takes some courage to pray a prayer like that, as we can never be sure where it will lead. However, it is a good test of our sincerity. And it makes sense that we will always be better off facing whatever truth is out there than avoiding it. Jesus once said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me" (John 7:17). In other words, whether or not I am going to know the truth depends on what I really want. George Macdonald, in The Curate's Awakening, warned: "To try to explain truth to him who loves it not, is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation."

The prominent Chinese Christian, Watchman Nee, spelled out more fully the kind of attitudes we must have if we are to know the truth:

Lies have no price upon them. They are cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always a price to pay. First there is the price of humility, for it is to the meek that light is given from God. If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it. Then there is the price of patience. Quick verdicts and impatient decisions have little to do with the divine light which is given to those who will wait upon God and wait for God. And supremely, there is the price of obedience. "If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know." Unquestioning obedience is essential if we would know God's will and God's ways. Is our faith the cheap, easy kind that pays no price? Or are we prepared to have it founded on the truth of God, however great to us the cost of coming by that truth?

In his book Wise As a Serpent, Harmless As a Dove, Charles Strohmer tells of his own search for truth:

There is a real sense in which this book started to be written more than twenty-five years ago. It was in the late 1960s, and I was in my teens, when the inspiring idea broke in on me that 'whatever the answer to the problems of the world was, it must be Truth with a capital "T".' Within months this insight cast like iron in my soul and I resolved to make a search for Truth, whatever that was. And then when I found it, I wanted to communicate it to others who were likewise disenchanted...

In my early twenties, astrology, meditation, visualisation, 'spirit guides', vegetarianism, asceticism and psychic healing, roughly in that order - along with a spattering of other so-called New Age beliefs and practices - dominated my search for Truth. It did not take eighteen years this time, but roughly eight, for complete disenchantment to set in. The joy within me died when the ttruth' of the Aquarian Dream was found to be lies. The hope of more and better lives through reincarnation disappeared. Trusted New Age practices like meditation no longer brought tranquillity; others lost their appeal. As a friend said, "I was no better, I was no god." What I now know to be the power of God had smashed my Aquarian Dream.

Not knowing then in what direction to turn for the Truth, I dropped into deep depression. If Truth wasn't in the West or the East, or in a metaphysical marriage of the two, just where was it? I hadn't a clue now.

After several weeks of bewilderment, by God's grace I met the Truth Himself and became a Christian in July 1976. What an awakening, I can tell you! And indeed I wanted to tell everyone about the Truth, Jesus Christ.

The certainty that Charles Strohmer found when he met Jesus has been experienced by countless others over the last 2,000 years (including myself!) regardless of where they started from, or what their past life may have dished up to them. Of course, meeting with Jesus is only the beginning, but the beginning of a wonderful new relationship that will deepen and become more satisfying as your faith grows and he leads you into more and more truth about himself and his plans for you, in this life and the next.

The Russian writer, Dostoevsky, met with Jesus through reading the New Testament while imprisoned in Siberia. Shortly after his release, he wrote to a woman who had befriended him during this period:

To believe that there is nothing more beautiful, more profound, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more manly, more perfect than Christ, and not only is there nothing but I tell myself with jealous love, there can be nothing. Besides, if anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth and it really was so that the truth was outside Christ, then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth.

The great thing is, however, as Dostoevsky found, that you may have both Christ and the truth, for in him truth finds its ultimate expression.