How to Tell What’s True from What’s False

SOMETIMES IT SEEMS WE’VE STEPPED THROUGH ALICE’S LOOKING GLASS into a world in which it’s become all but impossible to differentiate truth from lies and reality from wish fulfilling delusion. In this social context, Pilate’s question to Jesus (Jn. 18:38) becomes achingly relevant. What is truth, indeed? Who knows anymore, and how?

In Paul’s first letter to the nascent and rather chaotic Jesus community in Corinth, he says the Spirit gives various gifts to various people “for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). Included in his list of gifts is one we especially need these days, namely “the discernment of spirits” (v. 10). If you want to know whether something is true, you need to be able to identify the spirit from which it has come.

Truth comes from godly spirits, lies from spirits aligned with the Prince of Lies, the Satan. Unfortunately, the qualities “godly” and “satanic” are too vague, too abstract, to be of much practical use in discerning the truth. So, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Whatever leads us toward greater love for one another and greater communion, is true.
Whatever leads us into increasing hatred, division, separation, and violence is false.

Although the terms I’ve used in my statement of the criteria for discernment are based on the biblical “great commandment” to love God and neighbor, so familiar to Jews and Christians alike, the criteria are both perennial and universal, recognized and proclaimed through all time by every one of our religions and spiritual traditions. And the “rule” is simple enough to understand, even if it’s oh so very challenging to practice:

Abandon hate. Embrace love. Now, go live your life more abundantly.