What is Truth?

Pilate asked the question, and I wonder if his tone was exasperated. "What is truth??" I don't wonder he was befuddled. Outside his palace was a mob of people, waving their scrolls, demanding the death of the Man before him... The Man he had found guiltless. And yet, the scroll-wavers said their scrolls contained the truth. They said that, by the words therein (or their interpretation of them), this Jesus of Nazareth had committed crimes worthy of execution. 


Pilate wasn't exactly a compassionate man. I wonder if his reluctance to sentence Jesus is indicative he had a gut feeling that Truth stood before him, incarnated and epitomized in the Man named Jesus. 


Each of us, individually, is left with the same question: what is truth? We look at the Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus' day, and marvel that their thinking contained such an elephantine disconnect. How could they have searched the Scriptures with such avidity and missed the Fulfillment of the purpose of the giving of those very writings? 


Jesus Himself answers that question quite nicely:

^37"And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen,³⁸and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. ³⁹ You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, ⁴⁰yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." (John 5)

In their frenzy to be right, they produced their own righteousness. They assembled, in their studying, a god that looked like their expectations of Yahweh. Could it be because they deemed the study of His words an end in itself that they missed Who He really was, even when He conversed in a human tongue? 


Though we quietly scoff at their educated ignorance, it is in our critical interest that we take warning. Sure, let's read the Bible. But let's remember that, while it is true, it is only a telescope through which we can know... relationally... paramount Truth, Jesus Christ. Though it may seem an insignificant nuance, focus [worship] is important. Very, very important.