“True.”

H,

The truth is never easy to say or live. There is something about trying to live an honest life in all respects that does not rhyme with the practical life on earth. Everything is dressed up, polished and presented to fit in with the zeitgeist of the moment. That Geist isn’t always the most sensible thing. Once it was slavery, the superiority of civilizations over one another and the idea of a woman being property and not person. We know now this is all wrong but in that age it was all life was to the vast majority of recorded human beings on the earth. It is story we are fed now.

Right or wrong is not relative in this larger sense. Freedom, choice, democracy, human rights, equality and mutual respect have been the highest echoes of the human ideal but it used to apply to specific races and groups within a particular race. The universal application of these ideals is a fairly recent concept. It is has always been right but it has not always been true to everyone. In a real sense, it is not always true now to every mind on earth. It is said in polite society but society is not ordered to give every person their due application of inherent value.

We are no saints ourselves. It is has often been easy to group people into them and us. We have always sought enemies instead of conflicting ideas or ideals. We have been told not to hate and we forget that we “wrestle not against flesh or blood”. We make enemies of the transient and forget the eternal story of love that wraps us all together.

What is true has to be true forever. The bible, perfect exemplar as it is, revises itself within its own script to become a more perfect reflection of the eternal life of Love in God. We move from a malevolent law giver to a compassionate graceful leader. We cannot take everything the saints said at face value. They are not Christ. We cannot ban women from leading worship, from speaking up in church or allow slaves to continue to be loyal to their masters. We must move into what is eternally true: we must learn slowly to love everybody because that is where God lives.