One time a man named George came to me (Henry) for counseling. Actually, I was the second counselor this man had gone to. George wanted me to interpret what the first counselor had said.
George’s perceived problems included feeling bored with church, dissatisfied with his wife, and annoyed with his colleagues at work. He had a gnawing sense of anxiety and unhappiness that he hoped to clear up. But he did not know what lay at the bottom of it all.
The first counselor pressed George to say what he was angry about. George kept insisting that he had no antagonism—until suddenly he blew his top about some things that had been bothering him. The counselor told George he was filled with hate and anger.
George came to me and explained the situation. He said, “Ever since this counselor forced me to blow up, I’ve been nasty to a lot of people. What did he do to me?”
I pointed out to George that the other counselor had forced him to face the facts about himself. George had been pretending to be a happy man and had even believed he was. He had acted like a kind, loving person, when in reality he was annoyed, bitter, and even hateful. What George was dealing with now was the truth.
The truth. It is sometimes hard to discover and even harder to accept. As much as we may like to think that we are smart people who have got life all figured out, we actually get off base in our thinking or our feelings in many ways. As we have already seen (chapter 3), we may have a distorted image of God. But it goes beyond that. We may also have false convictions about ourselves, about others, and about life in general. These false convictions can contribute in a major way to our sin problem, as they did for George.
We might say that wrongdoing starts with wrong thinking. Step two in the process of breaking a sinful habit, therefore, is to revise your false beliefs. We need to start believing what is true. Being mistaken is not necessarily a sin itself (we might have just had an honest misunderstanding), but it can lead to sin. That’s why having convictions based on truth is so important.
But someone may jump in here to ask, “Can we really know what is ‘true’? I mean, is your truth necessarily the same as my truth?” Let’s consider that.
How True Is Truth?
If we had written Soul Prescription fifty years ago, we would not have needed to defend the concept of truth. Back then, if anyone had been asked, “Do you believe there is such a thing as absolute truth?” he or she would almost certainly have replied, “Well, sure there is.”
Today that is not the case. It is far more common nowadays for people to think of truth as an unstable quality, varying from situation to situation and from person to person. Ideas about truth develop differently within different cultures, relativists insist, and therefore what anyone believes to be true is just that person’s opinion. Truth is a human “construct,” not an objective reality.
Is this perspective—dare we say it—true?
First let’s make some admissions. To some extent, one’s upbringing and culture do color how one looks at the world. Also, there are areas where the issue can be one of preference rather than rightness. Sometimes people are too dogmatic, close-mindedly promoting a certain viewpoint even though what they are talking about lies in a genuine gray area. We do not know all the facts, and in any case, facts always require interpretation. Even when we know the truth for certain, our attitude in defending it can turn others off because it contains none of the love and respect that we ought to have for those who disagree with us.
Nevertheless, we have to accept that there is such a thing as absolute truth, or what the twentieth-century theologian Francis Schaeffer called “true truth.” This is truth that is true for all people at all times and in all places. As a matter of fact, we cannot go forward in addressing our sin problems unless we believe in this kind of truth. And we have good reason for such a belief.
When relativists declare, “There is no absolute truth,” they are making an absolute statement. Theirs is a self-refuting claim. If everything is relative, then the idea that everything is relative is itself relative.
Furthermore, no one can consistently live according to the belief that truth is relative. Law, society, and relationships are impossible to sustain in an environment of thorough relativism. We cannot invent reality for ourselves at every turn.
The way it usually works is that people trot out relativism when they want the freedom to do something that deep down they know is morally wrong. In fact, there is a close connection between a relativism of truth and a relativism of morality—this is a valuable warning for those of us who want the wickedness rooted out of our lives.
There really is such a thing as absolute truth. If there were no God, then perhaps human beings would have to make up their own “reality.” But since there is a God, He is the determiner of truth and reality. Truth is rooted in His unchanging nature. “I am … the truth,” said Jesus (John 14:6). It is no wonder, then, that “the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
Furthermore, because God’s nature is truthful, people who have entered into a relationship with Him through His Son can know truth. “Jesus said to the people who believed in Him, ‘You are truly My disciples if you keep obeying My teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ ” (John 8:31-32, emphasis added). Faith enables us to have convictions based on truth.
More specifically, we believers have God’s personal guidance in knowing what is true. Before departing this world, Jesus said that He would send the Counselor, or the Holy Spirit, to dwell in the hearts of His followers. Jesus added, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).1
The primary way the Holy Spirit guides us into truth is by opening our minds and hearts to the truth that God has inscribed in His Word, the Bible.
A Strategy That Works
In this life “we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror,” admitted Paul the apostle. Mirrors at the time Paul wrote were mere polished pieces of metal, and so their imperfect reflection, especially in the worst of them, well represented how the truths about life are often murky or incomplete to us. At death or when Christ returns, whichever comes first, we will “see everything with perfect clarity” (1 Corinthians 13:12). But how about until then?
On one of his missionary journeys, Paul and his companion Silas preached to a community of Jews living in a town called Berea in Greece. These people listened eagerly to the preaching, then “searched the Scriptures day after day to check up on Paul and Silas, to see if they were really teaching the truth” (Acts 17:11). They saw that the two men were in fact teaching the truth, and these Bereans believed in Christ.
This gives us our procedure. We can search the Word, not only to test what others are saying, but also to check up on what we ourselves think and feel about things. After all, we pick up ideas from many sources, and these may or may not be accurate. Some older translations of the Bible describe the Bereans as “noble.” It is a noble thing to test all our convictions by biblical revelation.
The Bible lets us see into the areas where we have blind spots. The Bible “is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right” (2 Timothy 3:16). In fact, we will not know that we are mistaken in our convictions until the Scriptures reveal our error. The Bible is a great gift that God has given us for our betterment.
The word canon—often used for the body of biblical writings—means “measuring stick.” Of course, each one of us has his or her own measuring stick for what is right, but our own measuring stick is never as reliable as that of Scripture. Let’s measure our beliefs by the Bible, identifying our false convictions and correcting them according to biblical truth. As our thinking and feeling become more godly, so will our acting. By correcting our convictions about ourselves, others, and life in general, we will be well on our way to beating the sin habit.
What Do You Believe about Yourself?
There are many false ways of seeing ourselves. These perspectives are fueled by guilt, insecurity, selfishness, pride, hate, and numerous other negative emotions. The input of others can serve to establish and reinforce these beliefs. Events in our lives may also seem to validate what we believe and have been told about who we are.
For example, a single person who looks at life from a fatalistic or “destined to fail” perspective might reason, I’m unattractive and I’ll never get married. I might as well get all the loving I can while I can, because this is as good as it’s going to get. This person’s projection of a lonely future might lead him to indulge his sexual drives in improper ways.
Another person who has risen in the ranks of her profession might come to think of herself as superior to others. She might think, I have accomplished all this by my own brains and hard work. If others were as capable as me, they could have done as much. But they have not. So she tyrannizes her employees and makes others around her feel small.
A third person might feel it is not his fault that he gets into fights. My father was a violent person. My grandfather was a violent person. And my grandmother was even worse! he thinks. It’s in my blood. So he excuses himself when he resorts to using his fists at the slightest provocation.
The list of possible convictions about ourselves is almost endless. But are these convictions biblical?
We need to develop a scripturally based view of who human beings are. On the one hand, God loves us and has fashioned us in His own image. So we have great worth. On the other hand, we are finite, created beings who have been twisted by sin. Thus we have every reason for humility.
In the case of believers in Jesus, we have been made over anew. “Those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The following verse reveals what is new about us. “All this newness of life is from God, who brought us back to Himself through what Christ did.” Due to our salvation, we have access to a whole new source of life. We are not depending on our willpower, our education, or any other personal resource to live a good life; we are depending on God. And that dependence is rewarded.
There are many reasons why we do not always live like the new creations we are. These reasons include tendencies in our personality, spiritual warfare, and the conviction that these two verses in 2 Corinthians are not really true. Nevertheless, we are new creations—we know this because God said it. And we can live as such, by God’s grace.
God said to the Israelites, “You must consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). Jesus echoed this sentiment when He said, “You are to be perfect, even as Your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). God makes it possible for us to be holy through the power of His Spirit.
This image of what it means to be human, as revealed by Scripture, is more realistic than any of our false and distorted opinions of ourselves. Furthermore, it gives us a real basis for triumphing over the sin in our lives.
Other opinions about who we are may have their allure, but the truth about ourselves is what we must seek. “Be honest in your estimate of yourselves” (Romans 12:3).
What Do You Believe about Others?
It stands to reason that if we cannot see ourselves as we are, there is no way that our perceptions of others can be accurate either. We look at others through lenses that have been distorted by our own mistaken beliefs. We do not see them as God sees them.
One of the worst ways to view others is through the lens of prejudice.
An employer may pay his Latino workers less than their Anglo counterparts and never give them a chance to rise into management positions. Why? Because he has an unacknowledged belief that immigrants from south of the border are not quite as good as whites like himself. He thinks he is treating his employees as they deserve, but he is sinning against them.
Similarly, a woman might believe that men are clods who have only two emotions—anger and arousal. She sees this stereotype on television and hears it in popular music. She even sees examples of it (or at least what she thinks are examples) in the men around her. And so she is suspicious of every man she meets. If she marries and has children, she disciplines her male children excessively for their aggressive behavior.
If we look upon other people as mattering less than ourselves, we will use them for our own selfish purposes. This view will encourage sin habits such as stealing, dishonesty, betrayal, sexual immorality, and violence. After all, if our neighbor is not even worthy to live on the same street as we, then he deserves to have his property trashed, right? And why stop there? If women are inferior to men and are only good for “one thing,” then lustful advances are exactly what women desire and deserve.
Just as bad is putting others above us, seeing them as somehow more worthy or better than ourselves. This places us in the position of a victim and reduces our existence to a less than human level. Our behavior can become antisocial because we do not believe we are worthy or capable of relating to others. This belief will also justify personally destructive habits (such as drug abuse) as we think, It’s not important that I’m hurting myself, because I don’t matter anyway.
Jeremy was a young man who thought little of himself. He saw other people achieving greater success than he did, so he assumed the fault was in his circumstances. Other people went to college, but they had wealthier parents than he did. Other people got good jobs, but they had more skill and intelligence than he had. What was the result of such thinking? Jeremy concluded that he would just go along in life, not working hard at anything, not dreaming, not accomplishing more than the minimum.
The same truths about humanity that apply to us apply equally to others: we are made in the image of God (that’s good); we have been damaged by sin (that’s bad); we are enabled by God to overcome our sin (that’s really good). And so we should look at people neither as objects we can use for our own desires nor as superior beings who have a right to dominate us. Perhaps that is in part why Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and “Do for others as you would like them to do for you” (Luke 6:31).
We are equal with others in terms of our humanity and how much God loves us. This is the truth that can help us relate to others more wholesomely.
What Do You Believe about
How Life Works?
Beyond our mistaken convictions about ourselves and other people, we may not understand how the world really works. And so our choices about how to act may be equally as faulty.
One commonly held false conviction has to do with the purpose of human life. Are we here on earth for our own pleasure, or are we here to honor God? Let’s face it: hedonism makes for a workable philosophy of life. However, those who follow the “eat, drink, and be merry” approach to life discover at the last that they are spiritually bankrupt and that what they had pursued all their lives adds up to a heap of ash. Serving God is the harder road to take. Still, Jesus said, “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give it up for Me, you will find it” (Matthew 10:39). In the upside-down economy of God’s kingdom, the counterintuitive idea is often proved correct.
Another common falsehood about life is that we can get away with our wrongdoing. Of course, in human justice, this belief is often true. Many a criminal has escaped being caught, and many a guilty defendant has manipulated the court system to escape judgment. As a result, perhaps we have come to believe that we will find a loophole to slip through God’s justice, too. But there is no such loophole. God knows all that we do, and He will call us to account in the Last Judgment. We ought to admit with David:
I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from You. —Psalm 139:11-12
True, Christ takes the punishment for our sins upon Himself when we trust in Him, but this does not mean that our sins are not known and will not be revealed (as pardoned sins) on Judgment Day.
A third type of false conviction about life has to do with God’s commands. To many, the biblical refrain “Thou shalt not” speaks only of restriction. They want to shout, “Hey, I can do anything I want.” But when they violate God’s commands, they find that it brings hardship along with whatever fleeting enjoyment the sin may offer. God’s commands are actually designed to keep us safe and give us a life of peace. Our suffering due to sin is a measure of how wrong we are when we behave in ways that are not consistent with the sort of people God created us to be.
Someone who lies, for example, may get out of a tight spot in that way. But then he has to remember what he said so he does not contradict it later. And quite likely, he will have to compound his dishonesty with a second and a third lie to buttress the first one. All the time he is sweating over whether he will be found out. One who tells the truth, on the other hand, knows the serenity of being in an unassailable position.
God’s commands are given for our good by our heavenly Father, just as a human parent instructs a small child in what the child may or may not do.
As you endure … divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Whoever heard of a child who was never disciplined? If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children after all. Since we respect our earthly fathers who disciplined us, should we not all the more cheerfully submit to the discipline of our heavenly Father and live forever?
For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always right and good for us because it means we will share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it is painful! But afterward there will be a quiet harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. —Hebrews 12:7-11
When it comes to our convictions about life, just as with our convictions about ourselves and others, we have to make a choice: will we believe the messages we receive from worldly sources, or will we believe that what the Bible says is true? If we will let the Bible form our ideas and feelings, we will find it easier to abandon our sinful ways.
A woman named Mrs. Washington learned the importance of seeing things the way they are.
Free to See the Truth
One day in the summer of 1998 I (Henry) got a call from the Christian ministry Prison Fellowship requesting that I evaluate a woman who wanted to visit a prisoner in a penitentiary in Houston, Texas. I agreed and was on a plane headed to Texas the next day, ready for my meeting with Mrs. Washington.
When I was introduced to her, I discovered that Mrs. Washington was a stately, well-dressed woman in late middle age. She had been a schoolteacher for more than thirty years and was a pillar of her church. The reason Prison Fellowship wanted a recommendation on whether such a fine woman should be allowed to visit a prisoner was that this particular prisoner had murdered Mrs. Washington’s daughter.
She told me the story.
Fourteen years earlier, when Mrs. Washington’s daughter, Dedra, was twenty-seven years old, the daughter went out on a date. Unfortunately, she had chosen her boyfriend poorly and he stopped at a crack house to buy some drugs. Three men were in the process of holding up the crack house when Dedra and her boyfriend arrived. In the mix-up, one of the thieves, a man named Ron, fired shots at the new arrivals. Soon Dedra lay dead.
Ron was arrested, tried, and convicted of the murder of Mrs. Washington’s daughter. But that was not the end of the tragedies. Mrs. Washington’s husband was grief-stricken at the death of their daughter, became bedridden, and died within months. Some years later, Mrs. Washington’s son died of AIDS acquired through taking intravenous drugs.
Mrs. Washington felt that drugs had deprived her of her entire family, and she focused her hatred upon Ron, the killer of her daughter. Whenever a parole hearing came up, Mrs. Washington sent a letter of protest to the parole board. Ron remained behind bars for fourteen years, although he denied any guilt in Dedra’s death. Meanwhile, Mrs. Washington remained inside the prison of her own hate.
Then in June of 1998 Mrs. Washington learned that Ron had been transferred to a penitentiary near her home in Houston and that he was coming up for parole again. Deciding that she had carried her hatred long enough, she repented and turned the problem over to God. Then she wrote to the parole board, telling them that she had forgiven Ron and that she recommended his parole.
Word of Mrs. Washington’s change of heart reached Ron. He was deeply moved by her forgiveness as well as by the grief he had caused her. As a result, he finally admitted that he was the one who had pulled the trigger, killing Dedra.
I was convinced of both Mrs. Washington’s repentance and of Ron’s (I met with him, too), and so I gave approval for their meeting. Mrs. Washington told me later that she locked eyes with Ron as she was coming down the hallway and knew exactly who he was, even though she had never seen him in person up to that point. With tears, she repeated her forgiveness of Ron in his presence.
Now, I have told this story in some detail, not only because it is a good reminder that people can turn from their sins under even the most difficult conditions, but also because it illustrates the way we need to clear away false convictions before we can repent.
For fourteen years, Mrs. Washington believed that she was entitled to nurse her grudge for the terrible crime of her daughter’s murder. That was false. With God’s help, she was able to forgive.
Mrs. Washington also believed that Ron was the personal embodiment of all the evil that had beset her family. That was false too. He bore only partial responsibility for the death of her husband and no responsibility at all for the death of her son.
Seeing the truth for what it was, Mrs. Washington could turn from her sin of hatred. In the same way, we need to give up our false but cherished ideas and feelings about reality if we are ever to see our sin habit broken. But that means humbling ourselves. It means admitting we have been wrong.
This takes us to the next step in the process of breaking a sinful habit: repentance.
Life Reflection
1. Do you accept that God’s truth is the truth? Why or why not?
2. What falsehoods in your convictions about yourself, others, or life have you uncovered so far?
3. What topics might you need to study in the Bible to uncover more truth that will help you?
Visit www.SoulPrescription.com for more insights and resources, and to download a free leader’s guide for small group Bible studies.