You can't handle the Truth!

Can you handle the truth? Or are you like the film, “A Few Good Men,” where Jack Nicholson’s character yells, “You can’t handle the truth!”

We have a much greater choice about what they choose to listen to than in years gone by. In the past all of your news and information came from newspapers or the six o’clock news.

Today we have the Internet, social media, blogs, on-line magazines, and so on. We can choose whatever method suits us to get our news. We can set filters on news sites to ignore people we disagree with. On social media, if we don’t like what someone says, we can just unsubscribe or “unfollow” them. Furthermore, some social media outlets use algorithms to only serve up information that they have identified we would like to see.

Either by design through filtering, “unfollowing,” or the whim of some computer decision we only see things that appeal to us and validate our point of view.

Consequently, we no longer see the whole picture and therefore do not have a knowledge of the truth. Society has become like those people described in the following verse.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

It is even worse when we choose not to listen to the voices of godly preachers because we don’t like their style, or their message and so we “unfollow” or filter them out. They may very well be the ones God has chosen to speak the truth!

And speaking the truth can be dangerous. It can make you a prey for those who choose to reject the truth, as scripture tells us in Isaiah 59:14-15.

Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. (Isaiah 59:14-15)

When we speak the truth we stand opposed to the ways of this world. We are marked in ways that people of the world reject, and they will hate truth speakers and try to shut out their voice.

Call to action:

Are you “unfollowing” people because you don’t want to hear what they say? Stop and listen to every point of view and weigh it against the word of God to find the truth.