Imagine: you are offered a clear canister with a few M&M size nuggets of fool’s gold or an endless supply of real gold. Which would you take? It almost seems silly to ask. Yet, somehow our world not only chooses the fool’s gold but scoffs at the real treasure.
In this last year of my life I have had dozens of conversations with my friends who were raised culturally Christian, with my Jewish friends, and with my agnostic “self-empowerment/ whatever makes you happy is God/ let’s all love each other for world peace” friends. And most of those conversations lead to their saying that my faith is narrow. That I am limiting myself to never finding real truth or ever really finding myself (which is the ultimate goal in this life, according to them) by letting someone else decide what I believe.
But I have been in their shoes. Not long ago. I have spent my entire life trying to figure out who I am. What makes me happy. What is really true in this broken world? And there are hundreds of thousands of people selling their quick fixes, their books and answers and doctrines and philosophies. But they only go so far. Because with every nugget of truth you discover apart from God’s truth, you hit a wall. The philosophy can only take you so far. It can only explain so much. There is no absolute. Of course, you may convince a few people that your idea is right, and they may invest in your brand of salvation. They’ll purchase your pyrite (fool’s gold), and they’ll keep it on a shelf and look to it for answers in everything, but eventually they will turn somewhere else. Because they will have a question that cannot be explained by their faux nuggets, they realize that the shiny rocks don’t have any intrinsic value.
I did it. I searched in books, in people, in sports, in art, in music. And each ran out on me. None had enough to explain my newest set of questions. I was constantly throwing my time, money, energy, and convictions at limited things.
So I tried God.
And if the goal in life is to abound truths of this world, then I have learned more and felt more and healed more and grown more in this past year than the ten-gazillion other things I tried.
Because God is TRUE GOLD. But as opposed to real gold, His worth is not in His scarcity but in His abundance.
His truth is endless.
His truth is invaluable.
His truth is eternal.
