“Living with the Spirit of Truth”
So, last week, we explored the concept of the Logos in John 1. We hear these profound words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Here, the word Word is translated from the Greek Logos—you might remember this from last week, those of you who were here—which carries this deep and layered meaning of reason, purpose, and order.
We might even use the word logic. Logos, logic—they are derivative. But Logos is not just this abstract idea; it reflects the divine logic and design woven into the fabric of creation.
Reason is essential for healthy communities and nations, guiding us toward purpose and grounding us in order. Without Logos, we risk losing the foundation that upholds both our individual lives and the collective structures of society. Reason is the very backbone of what we need to construct worlds of meaning and to create a better world.
You might have heard about the Enlightenment. The 18th and 19th-century philosophers like Immanuel Kant and René Descartes were the guiding lights of that movement. You may remember Descartes’ saying: “I think, therefore I am.”
The Enlightenment continues to influence our thinking today. The scientific method, for example, took centuries to perfect but became a central piece of how humanity understands the world. That comes from the Enlightenment, and that’s part of modern society. The Enlightenment has also been called the Age of Reason.
Now, the Age of Reason had a pretty optimistic view of humanity. In part, it believed that humanity could use its own intellectual powers—what is known as the rational brain—to serve as a practical guide for life. In other words, you could take information and facts and make a rational decision about everything and anything.
When presented with two or more options, you get to examine both based on their merits. For example, in their perspective, in their ideal world, you would go into a car dealership and compare and contrast the various makes and models. You’d look at the gas mileage and miles per hour (MPG, excuse me). Then, you would go to the car dealer and say, “That’s the car that I want.” And no matter what the car salesman tells you, you don’t listen—you researched everything, and you know it’s the most rational, logical, reasonable one to purchase.
But what gets in the way of thinking of things clearly and rationally? Emotion.
Now, I’ve read that anywhere from 80% to 90% of decisions we make on a daily basis are based on emotion. So, in reality, when you go into the car dealership, you don’t go prepared. Maybe you’re driving down the road and you think, “Maybe I want a new car.” So, you drive in, and maybe you’ve been thinking about this new car for a while. Maybe you’re a Ford driver—or, you know, some of those Ford vs. Dodge debates—but you’re a die-hard Ford driver.
When you’re pulling into the parking lot, though, you see some Chevys. A few days ago—or maybe a week or even a month ago—somewhere in the back of your mind, you remember that holiday ad from 2023.
You remember the scene. I’ll remind you: the ad where a granddaughter, at a Christmas celebration, notices her grandma looking out the window, dazed and lost in a trance. The granddaughter overhears her mom and grandpa talking. Her mom asks, “How is she?” and grandpa replies, “Good and bad, but the love is always there. Some days she doesn’t recognize me.”
The granddaughter hears this and takes her grandma for a ride in their old family pickup truck—a Chevy. John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders” plays in the background as they drive through town, pointing out memorable spots. They pull up to where grandma was born and raised. They drive past her old school, and the grandmother starts to recognize some things.
An image of her husband as a teenager pops into her mind. As they keep driving, she becomes more and more aware. Then, they pull into the drive-in movie theater. Grandma starts singing the song that’s been playing in the background. Her granddaughter says, “This is where Pop-Pop says you had your first kiss.”
The grandmother looks at her and, very clearly, says, “No, I kissed him. He was too shy.”
Now she’s entirely out of her trance. They go back, pull up to the house, and the grandfather comes out to the passenger side of the car. The grandmother instantly recognizes him, and they tearfully kiss. The ad simply ends with, “Happy Holidays, Chevrolet.”
I remember seeing that ad for the first time and not quite recognizing it as a car commercial. Some car commercials, as we know, look nothing like car commercials until the very end. Watching it, I felt a lot of emotion.
So, imagine driving into a car dealership and being taken over by that memory. Instead of being a Ford driver, suddenly, you become a Chevy driver.
It’s not wrong for us to base our decisions on emotions. In fact, it can be helpful. It can be a reasonable thing to do. Sometimes, the gut instinct is the right instinct. A friend of mine once said something that CEOs have often noted: sometimes, the gut instinct, despite what the numbers are saying, is actually the right choice.
Emotion here isn’t a bad thing, but it is something to be mindful of when we make decisions because it can cloud our minds.
Our minds: I’m going to lift up this line from the Gospel according to John. This is the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him or knows him. The spirit of truth is the Holy Spirit. That’s how John — how Jesus in John — talks about the Holy Spirit. As we saw with the baptism water, we are therefore then baptized by the Holy Spirit. We’re then baptized by the spirit of truth.
The Holy Spirit, uh, both leads us as individuals and as a church. Individually, we are baptized to be persons of truth, and as a church, we are to be allowed by the Holy Spirit to be a place of truth — to be a place of truth, to listen to the truth, and sometimes, always, to speak from a place of truth.
The quality of our relationship with God is based on our proximity — our relationship — to the truth. Have you ever told a lie, and then later on, someone found out about it? It breaks that trust. So, when we lie, God, too, feels that trust being broken because our relationship to others is deeply connected to our relationship with God.
Today, we want to talk a little bit more about truth. There are, uh, in particular, two different understandings of truth. Now, if you go back to Aristotle, Socrates, or whatever, you’re going to find a lot more nuance, but generally speaking, there is subjective truth, which is what is true for you — experiences that have shaped you into who you are today. The other one is objective truth. It’s a verifiable fact. For example, there is a Madison, Wisconsin. Do you know how you can verify that? You go and get in your car and drive to Madison, Wisconsin. Or you have a person take a picture — someone you trust — of Madison, Wisconsin.
Or, if somebody says X, Y, or Z, but then, when asked later, the person says they did not say it, you can pull up the video and say, “Here it is.” Politicians like to do that one, don’t they? But do we like learning the truth? For many of us, it depends on what the truth is. It depends on whether the truth shatters our long-held beliefs. It depends on if we’re ready for it.
Each of us, in a way, builds a house of meaning — a house of belief — where we live. A house that we live in should be of, and I recognize that’s not always the case for everyone. But we build these houses of belief to be comfortable by our beliefs, and we become so tied up with that energy of belief that it becomes our personality. Anytime that a truth comes through that house, it feels like we’ve been robbed a little bit of our identity.
It’s one of the problems that we have as a society. Not “I have created a house of belief around me,” and when a truth comes through, it makes me somewhat uncomfortable. That’s the case for every single one of us. It seems to be a growing case throughout the country and around the world.
But what if our house of beliefs is built entirely on lies? What if lies are more desirable — more intoxicating — than the truth? We may not even realize that. I don’t know what it is about the human spirit lately that seems to latch on to the most recent lie and run with it.
Let’s just say this: the last week has been really ridiculous. To see misinformation being put out about the fires in LA, to the point where the governments of California, in the midst of a massive fire, felt it was necessary to say, “Actually, here’s the context; here’s the information.” One of the ways that lies take shape in this time is disinformation. Disinformation is intended to deceive and mislead the public. It’s part of those lies that we see so often.
One of the technologies we need to be aware of — and more concerned about — is what’s called “deep fake” technology. People use deep fake technology to make a false reality. Now, if you haven’t heard about this, a deep fake is when someone takes an image and/or voice of a real person, and by using AI, they can mimic the very words, face, and voice of that person.
For example, you can really do this — because I did this a little bit yesterday. You can go online to the Parrot app (like the bird), and you can manipulate Morgan Freeman to say what you want. So, I typed in, “Hi, my name is Morgan Freeman, and I want you to join your annual church.”
Now, of course, much of this technology is, uh, easily detectable. But I guarantee you, it’s not going to be very long before it’s going to be nearly indistinguishable. At some point, you won’t even be able to notice the difference. Not even another AI will be able to recognize another AI. Just a disclaimer: AI technology in itself is not necessarily bad. There are wonderful applications for it.
Another piece of disinformation is taking something deliberately out of context. Sometimes there is information that is withheld, but when there is more information, you understand that, in fact, there is more information. This thing that made you angry perhaps was misplaced.
When someone intentionally uses disinformation, it’s intentional. We’re just going to simply call it what it is: a lie. It’s not a falsehood, as the media likes to say; it’s a lie. And it is our responsibility, as people of truth, to call out those things and to ensure we don’t continue to spread them.
Misinformation is not intentional, but it is probably one of the bigger spreads of deceit. Some of that comes from individuals reposting things on Facebook. If it’s the thing that makes you mad, it’s the thing that’s going to spread like wildfire.
Sometimes it’s not recognizing the type of material you’re reading. It was shocking to me when I was in college. At my freshman orientation, afterwards, I met up with my parents, and they handed me a copy of The Onion. We had no clue what The Onion was about. They said, “Did you know James was actually killed by the bee?” And I said, “Really? That’s crazy.”
Well, little was it a surprise to me when later I’d find out that, no, in fact, he was alive and well. Probably happened before he actually died in 2013. It wasn’t until a little later — when I was in college by this time — that I realized, oh, The Onion is satirical. People take things out of context, even satire.
A lot of people just don’t seem to understand sarcasm either these days because we have built these houses of belief so tightly constructed around us as spirit, as people of the spirit of truth.
Here are the applications to us: we have to prevent this stuff. So, when a claim on Facebook, Twitter — all the other, I mean, X — leads you to have an automatic reaction, definitely double-check. See if one of the fact-check websites has covered it: check out PolitiFact, Snopes, FactCheck.org, VerifyThis.org.
I also know that it’s not fashionable these days to check out The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, CBS, and other news agencies. One of the things that’s recommended is to actually look at your local news because there are reporters on the ground. It’s also important to diversify your news sources.
Let me say this very clearly: you should not depend only on Fox News or MSNBC or CNN or Newsmax for all of your information. All of those really are about entertainment and sensationalizing the views.
You know, I’ve had to, at times, fact-check myself, and I’ve had to fact-check some friends of mine. So, all of us have had this experience, and we must do it. It is imperative for our society, and it is imperative for us as individuals.
What we can do personally in our own dialogue and conversation is say, “From what I understand.” Oftentimes, I’ll say that: “From what I understand.” Hopefully, for the other person, knowing that, I’ll imply here that I might be wrong. I might have gotten the information wrong. I may have misheard.
There are many things that I heard as a kid, and I heard someone say, like, a word or something, and then mispronounced that word or name until I was in college, and people said, “That’s not how you say that.”
From my understanding, to create communities and countries with reason and order in mind, we must advocate the return to truth. We must stop lies. We must prevent the spreading of those lies. We must carefully read and seek out context. We must do this before we, as a people, devolve into chaos.
Let the Holy Spirit — the spirit of truth — guide us in this responsibility.
Amen.