Responding to the Truth

By Richard

We need to understand that people don’t always respond to the truth.

We read in Matthew 11:20 and the following verses that Jesus, “Let fly on the cities where he’d worked the hardest but whose people had responded the least, shrugging their shoulders and going their own way.” (From the Message)

Sometimes I get the feeling; especially from people without faith, that since the response to the Christian faith is low it might somehow suggest that it is untrue or suspect. Jesus declares in the passage that it is the other way round…there’s a great danger that we won’t respond to the truth and that we will shrug our shoulders and go our own way.

But if we think about it, shrugging our shoulders and going our own way is our general response in all of life…not just religion. For example, every day I read articles with severe warnings about global warming and the inherent dangers, fuelled by our excessive use of non-renewable resources. Our greed is literally killing the planet! But who of us (far, far, far too few) are prepared to take the drastic measures needed to put back more than we take? Are we to think that global warming is untrue simply because our response is so pitiful? Maybe it should make us heed Christ's warning about our deadly self-centeredness!

I guess what I’m saying is that just because people are not flocking to Jesus, does not mean that he is not the son of God. We need to be honest that we all have a tendency to avoid the call to selfless pursuit. We all have a tendency to flock to people and things that offer us selfish gratification.

Blessed are those who respond to God’s call to go His way. Blessed will be the earth by those who have the power to stem their own greed.