With the rise of social media, our voices have taken over the internet. Where information was once king, story and experience now reign. Facts and information carry less emotional weight than story, so if any facts are given that go against the way we feel, we often let the intensity of our feelings win out.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling, experience, and story. We aren’t human without such things and we can’t be our unique selves without acknowledging them. But the difficulty is that feeling, experience and story naturally bow before us as royalty. When isolated, such things become truth to us and do not hold themselves accountable to anything or anyone else. To be “true to ourselves” or to “follow our feelings” is the most simple and natural thing to do in the world, and it is in this context that every sin ever committed can be contextualized.
Christians, too, have often found themselves living in the world of personal truth. When our version of Jesus doesn’t convict us at all, but lines up perfectly with the way we think and live, we should be given pause. If we can read the Gospels without being phased by anything Jesus says, we should wonder if we tuned out at some point in the last 14 seconds. If our Jesus is unaligned with Scripture, we should wonder if it’s actually him or something masquerading as him.
For the Christian, “Truth” is a person named Jesus, not a feeling. “Truth” is the God of the cosmos, not an experience. “Truth” is what the Holy Spirit guides us into, not our feelings. And if this Trinity is not our Truth, then we will exalt our story and all stories like ours, while passionately shunning anyone with a different one.
If we truly follow Jesus, then we must forget the idea that “truth is subjective”—for “the way, the truth, and the life” is Jesus, himself. And while our own thoughts, feelings, opinions, stories, and experiences are always going to be a part of us, if these things do not ultimately bow before the Truth, they will one day be disclosed as idols of worship that look eerily like ourselves. We do much better to make Jesus king and then let all of our experience bow before him. For if we believe that real truth does exist, then it is always true regardless whether we agree with it or not. Therefore, our hope must be to learn better who Jesus is and subject the entirety of our heart, soul, and mind to him.
Jamin Bradley 