Truth and Time

Being from Tennessee, Elvis Presley is one of the state’s top national icons who once observed “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.” From my personal experiences in life, this is an absolute truth as running and hiding from the truth does not change what is truth which reveals an important principle: truth is not changed by emotion or feeling or what we perceive one way or the other.

Unfortunately, truth Is something too often missed and/or ignored due to overcomplicated ponderings such as “what is truth?” This is the very question that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus Christ in response to the declaration Jesus made: “….You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).

For Pilate, a secular politician whose loyalty was to the state and Caesar, he did not understand that truth was right in front of him, at least not completely, but there is evidence to suggest that Pilate did have an inclination that Jesus was being truthful. When Christ was resurrected, Pilate made light of the situation by explaining “I find no fault in him” (John 18:38) as a way to wash away his guilt from the situation but this did not change the fact that Christ—an innocent man—was being sentenced to death simply for truth.

Pilate may have been truthful to his job, to his position, to his government as the dictionary defines true (truth) as “loyalty or faithful. Another important definition for truth is: “in accordance to fact or reality: a true story” and Jesus says that “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). In regards to truth, or absolute truth, Jesus also explains “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

With this explanation, whether from a secular or Christian perspective, we can now understand that truth is not in the eye of the beholder as there is absolute truth. There is still right and wrong regardless of how much society’s philosophy changes so a better definition of truth may be “that which is constant, consistent, and unchangeable.” Although the world continues to change, the truth does not regardless of the situations and events surrounding it and the Bible explain how “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever:” (Hebrews 13:8).