Invoke the Spirit of Truth

“If you’ll live like no one else, then later you can live like no one else.“

~ Dave Ramsey ~

“Because you peo­ple are so arro­gant. You think you have all the answers.”

When I saw this week’s quote, I was reminded of a con­ver­sa­tion I had some years back with a friend who was, and is, an agnos­tic. He remains skep­ti­cal about the exis­tence of the Divine Cre­ator, but does not pro­fess true athe­ism. Rather, he con­sid­ers him­self a ques­tioner, per­pet­u­ally search­ing for truth.

The Bible verse that invoked such a vehe­ment response was John 14:6: “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

“See? That’s arro­gant,” my friend argued. “You think there’s only one way to live, one way to achieve peace, one road that leads to heaven. That’s just over-bearing. What about all the peo­ple on this planet who believe dif­fer­ently? What about them?”

In my youth­ful naïveté and enthu­si­asm, I con­tin­ued try­ing to con­vince my friend until we agreed that, for the sake of our friend­ship, we would table the dis­cus­sion, agree­ing to disagree.

It was a con­ver­sa­tion that vir­tu­ally every believer will will at some point in his/her life. I believe that how we react to our friends’ skep­ti­cism and what we do after the dis­cus­sion ends speaks vol­umes about our human­ity and reveals whether or not we are appro­pri­ate ambas­sadors to the world of nonbelievers.

Bib­li­cal schol­ars note that it is in the Gospel of John that Jesus reveals his true nature and iden­tity through seven “I am” state­ments. Jesus is described therein as the bread of life, light of the world, good shep­herd, door, res­ur­rec­tion and life (when he raises Lazarus from the dead in Chap­ter 11) true vine, and, of course, the way, the truth, and the life. John speaks of “the Word,” mean­ing Jesus. In the book of John, Jesus reveals to the world and, in fact, is, the divine wis­dom, blue­print, and plan for the world. Jesus is the incar­na­tion of the Divine Creator.

The mes­sages con­tained in the book of John reveal that this week’s quote is accu­rate: Believ­ers live dif­fer­ent lives than non­be­liev­ers with the con­fi­dence that they will live for all of eter­nity. John 14:6 is the sum­ma­tion of Chris­t­ian belief.

How­ever, the con­cepts set forth in the Book of John are mys­te­ri­ous and dif­fi­cult for long-time believ­ers to grasp, wor­thy of a life­time of study. More impor­tantly, no one can con­vince another per­son of the truth. It is some­thing that every indi­vid­ual must find for him/herself in his/her own time. We can­not force another per­son to believe what we believe — on any sub­ject. We can only pro­vide the infor­ma­tion and allow them to review, con­sider, ana­lyze and, ulti­mately, accept or reject it.

In verse 11, Jesus also told the Dis­ci­ples “I am in my Father and my Father is in me” and promised them in verse 17 that the Spirit of truth would dwell with them always.

Thus, after pro­vid­ing non­be­liev­ers with infor­ma­tion about our faith, the best thing we can do is real­ize that berat­ing them is point­less. After all, they must come to their own under­stand­ing that the Divine Cre­ator resides in all of us and all of us are the Divine Cre­ator. We are one because we are Divine cre­ations our­selves, formed in the Creator’s image. Each indi­vid­ual must con­cep­tu­al­ize that basic tenet and inter­nal­ize it in a way that is mean­ing­ful to him/her. It is a process that can­not be forced or compelled.

Rather than talk­ing inces­santly to our friends about what we believe, in an ongo­ing effort to con­vince them of the cor­rect­ness of our view­point, the most lov­ing and pro­duc­tive thing we can do is invoke the Spirit of truth in their lives, ask­ing it to pro­vide them guid­ance, under­stand­ing, and accep­tance in the same way that we seek daily assis­tance from the Spirit in our journey.

My friend was right. My approach all those years ago was, in hind­sight, arro­gant. I was well-intentioned, but over­bear­ingly enthu­si­as­tic in my desire to share my own joy with him and see him enjoy­ing my def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness. It was also arro­gant of me to think that I could con­vey a mes­sage so pow­er­fully that he would imme­di­ately see the truth of my words and believe as I do. It is a mis­take many Chris­tians make.

Rather, in the years since and on an ongo­ing basis, I have sim­ply prayed for him reg­u­larly, con­fi­dent that the Spirit of truth is ever-present and work­ing in his life — and mine. What sep­a­rates us is the name and glory that I give that invis­i­ble, but omnipresent force, but I remain eter­nally hope­ful that we will one day be united not only in friend­ship, but also belief.

Thanks go to Amy at In Pur­suit of Proverbs 31 for host­ing this week! Drop by and read the other par­tic­i­pants’ dis­cus­sion of this week’s quote.

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