Journey into Lightl

A couple of weeks ago I had a tooth ache so I went to a dentist to have it checked out. After he looked at the x-rays and examined where it hurt, he found nothing wrong.

As he was preparing the paperwork to send me to a root canal specialist, I asked if he thought that this pain could be caused by emotional stress.

He looked at me like I was from another planet. Of course not, it had to be something wrong with the tooth or root canal he told me.

I then explained that I had had a similar pain five years ago and it was not due to something being wrong with the tooth or root canal. I knew this because I had four root canals and one tooth pulled in that year chasing the pain that never went away. Only when I treated the pain as caused by emotional stress did it go away.

He wasn’t impressed.

I wondered if this was yet another example of someone not able to handle the truth.

Now, I am pretty sure it is. The pain is almost gone treating the cause as emotional stress.

I have also wondered if not handling the truth were behind some of the resistance I have met  as I have tried to teach others about spiritual formation that I learned in seminary. Grant you that some of the teachings and practices are new to a lot of churches, but that does not make them wrong?

Does it make any difference that they are biblical and have had a profound effect on my spiritual life? Evidently it makes no difference to some people. I suspect that they cannot handle the truth.

So, what is going on here? Why do we sometimes not handle the truth to our own peril?

There are a lot of reasons for this. I resisted the truth that I needed to work with God, and not for him for a long time. God says, “apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

This means that I cannot do anything of eternal value without depending on him. This hurts my pride. Therefore, I chose not to handle this truth for many years.

Another big reason we struggle with handling the truth is that it often conflicts with our traditions and habits. The pain of embracing new truth can be too great. So we “become old and foolish kings who no longer know how to receive instruction” (Ecclesiastes 4:13). We become set in our ways.

Yet, God wants us to change. He wants us to grow more like him. He wants us to handle the truth that our pride, complacency, and self-sufficiency need to go.

May we humble ourselves and ask God to “teach us to number our days that we present to You a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). This heart of wisdom comes from handling the truth (Psalm 51:6).