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The Sovereignty of Truth
By A.W. Tozer
Sail, Don’t Drift
I find the greatest thing in this world not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it, but we sail, and not drift, nor live at anchor.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Almost everywhere it is assumed that people are seeking truth, that society is literally swarming with dedicated truth seekers.
Colleges and universities are forever releasing promotional material with pictures of strong young men and beautiful girls walking side by side into the sunrise with rays of ethereal light illuminating their upturned faces; the idea being, one would gather, that those who enter our halls of higher learning are one and all burning with desire to walk in the way of philosophers and sages, if not indeed in the way of prophets and apostles, or even of martyrs if God so wills.
This fallacy is obviously maintained by our educators for the time the student remains within the envied walls, for the baccalaureate orator chosen to do the honours at graduation is almost always one who will go along with the pleasant deception and assure the innocent graduate that after years of searching for the fountain of all wisdom he has at last found it and is now prepared to go out along with his fellow graduates to "build a better and a finer world."
Why this kind of pablum is swallowed so eagerly by the outgoing students and by their smiling and misty-eyed parents can be understood only when we remember that people like to hear what they want to hear and at a time like that they are not willing to spoil the pleasure of it by checking on the accuracy of anything they are told.
The fact is that men have never in any numbers sought after truth. If we may judge people’s interests by their deeds, then of the young men and women who stream forth from our halls of learning each year the vast majority have no more than a passing and academic interest in truth. They go to college not to satisfy a yearning to discover truth, but to improve their social standing and increase their earning power. These motives are not necessarily to be despised; but they should be known for what they are, and not hidden beneath a pink cloud of specious idealism.
What are people actually seeking? Of course they seek satisfaction for the basic urges such as hunger, sex and social companionship; but beyond these what? Certainly for nothing as high and noble as truth.
Ask the average American what he wants from life and if he is candid he will tell you he wants success in his chosen field; and he wants success both for the prestige it brings him and for the financial security it affords. And why does he want financial security? To guarantee him against the loss of comforts, luxuries and pleasures, which he believes are rightfully his as a part of his American heritage. The ominous thing about all this is that everything he wants can be bought with money. It would be hard to think of an indictment more terrible than that.
The notion that the world is full of truth seekers becomes stronger as we approach the Church and mingle with religious persons. The liberal and humanistic churches bear down especially hard on this point, their ministers constantly flattering their listeners that they are engaged in a heroic quest for the truth. That a few hundred persons will gather in an air-conditioned building once a week to sit on cushioned pews and listen to good music appears to be enough to satisfy the too easily satisfied minister that his congregation is composed of crusaders of the first water.
Either to avoid embarrassment or because he is not sure of his own beliefs the said liberal minister is usually careful to avoid definitions, so no one knows exactly what it is he is supposed to be looking for. But it gives a tremendous lift to a man’s self-respect to think of himself, if only briefly and once a week, as a lofty idealist searching for truth, a kind of cosmic prospector digging for gold among the hills of God. If his wife fails to recognize him by that description it really doesn’t matter, for no one takes the whole thing very seriously anyway. But it is a relief from the grind of business, traffic and taxes.
The world is full of seekers, true enough, and they gravitate quite naturally toward the Church. Seekers after peace of mind are plentiful enough to keep the printing presses busy; seekers after physical health are always with us in sufficient numbers to make our leading faith healers comfortably rich; seekers after success and safety are legion, as our popular religious leaders know too well. But real seekers after truth are almost as rare as albino deer. And here is why:
Truth is a glorious but hard master. It makes moral demands upon us. It claims the sovereign right to control us, to strip us, even to slay us as it chooses. Truth will never stoop to be a servant but requires that all men serve it. It never flatters men and never compromises with them. It demands all or nothing and refuses to be used or patronized. It will be all in all or it will withdraw into silence.
It was Christ who capitalized truth and revealed that it was not an "it" at all but a Being with all the attributes of personality. "I am the Truth," He said, and followed truth straight to the cross.
The truth seeker must follow Him there; and that is the reason few men seek truth.
*****
***
It is born in every man to want to dramatize his life and to cast himself as the star of the performance.
Once let a man become persuaded that he is a hero in quest of the holy grail of truth and he becomes a victim of a pretty and pleasant delusion that inflates his ego and blinds him to the very truth he claims to seek. And if he is later forced to admit that he has not found it he absolves himself from all guilt, for has he not searched? Has he not hunted through the years for the precious treasure? Where is the stone he has left unturned? Where has he not drilled or digged among the philosophies and religions of the world? Why then has he not found?
To him there can be only one answer: The Spirit and Wisdom of the universe has let him down. The great Oversoul has withheld the secret from him. So he tells himself and in wounded dignity walks stiffly into the sunset convinced that he has been deeply wronged in his effort to discover life’s summum bonum. His is a tragedy worthy of Aeschylus and he himself grand in failure and noble in defeat.
Disillusioning people is a thankless task and quite plainly does not come under the category of making friends and thinking positively. Nevertheless it must be done if we are to rescue lost men from the consequences of their delusions. So let me say boldly that it is not the difficulty of discovering truth but the unwillingness to obey it that makes it so rare among men.
Our Lord said, "I am the Truth," and again He said, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." Truth therefore is not hard to find for the very reason that it is seeking up. Truth is not a thing for which we must search, but a Person to whom we must hearken.
This is taught or taken for granted in the record of God’s dealings with men throughout the Sacred Scriptures. After the sin in Eden it was not Adam who cried, "O God, where art Thou?" but God who cried "Where art thou?" as He sought for Adam among the trees of the Garden. Abraham heard God speak and responded, but it was God who was the aggressor. God appeared unto Jacob before Jacob came to appear before God. And in the burning bush God revealed Himself to Moses.
Again and again did God take the initiative. He sought for Gideon and found him on the threshing floor of Ophrah. He showed Himself to Isaiah when there is no evidence that Isaiah was seeking Him. Before Jeremiah was born God laid His hand upon him, and He opened heaven to let the discouraged priest Ezekiel see a vision and hear a voice. Amos said he was not a prophet neither a prophet’s son, but the Lord "took" him as he followed the flock. Again God was the aggressor.
In the New Testament things are not otherwise. True, multitudes came to Christ for physical help, but only rarely did one seek Him out to learn the truth; and even that rare one usually turned away when the truth was told him. The whole picture in the Gospels is one of a seeking Saviour, not one of seeking men. The truth was hunting for those who would receive it, and relatively few did. "Many are called, but few are chosen."
The truth in the Person of the Logos, the Word, is seeking to illuminate the minds of men. "That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." For this reason, when we conceive ourselves to be honest seekers who cannot find the light we are in a state of dangerous self-deception. It is a grave situation. Unless help comes quickly the darkness may close down upon us permanently. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness."
Behind all our failure to find light is an unconfessed and possibly an unconscious love of darkness. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God" (John 3:19-21).
We should always remember that we are accountable not only for the light we have but also for the light we might have if we were willing to obey it. Truth is sovereign and will not allow itself to be trifled with. And it is easy to find for it is trying to find us. Obedience is the big problem: and unwillingness to obey is the cause of continued darkness.
Reference: The Set of the Sail, A.W. Tozer - chapter 27-28.
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