Do we interpret life’s experiences through the grid of truth…or do we interpret truth through the grid of our experience?

As human beings, we are much more prone to evaluate, define, and reshape “truth” in light of our experiences, rather than to hold up our experience to the light of Truth and allow Truth to interpret, define and reshape our experience.

A very small example comes to mind as I remember back to when my daughter was 3 or 4. She suddenly began screaming and crying that Daddy had “broken” her “house”. She was extremely upset. In her mind, her Daddy had deliberately and maliciously destroyed her personal creation. We had a small chalkboard that she had used to partition off a small section of space to play house. She had not communicated her project with anyone and only she alone actually knew that the chalkboard had become a wall of “her house.”

Daddy, in the meantime, was on his way out the door to teach a class, and picked up the chalkboard to use in his class. While Daddy was using the chalkboard for its intended purpose, our daughter, evaluating truth through her experience, concluded that “Daddy was mean and didn’t love her.” Using this process to come at the “truth” led to great misunderstanding on her part. In a perfect world, secure in her father’s unconditional and deep love for her, she could have trusted that even though she didn’t understand why Daddy was taking a piece of “her house”, it would never be his intent to be mean, nor to ever maliciously destroy a creation of hers.

Due to her young age, part of this story includes a lack of communication on her part. While she failed to communicate what the chalkboard has become to her, she was also quick to jump to conclusions about her father’s motives without actually asking him. How often do we do the same with life’s experiences? With Truth? We fail to communicate with each other, with our heavenly Father, about the importance something holds in our hearts, and then when something traumatizes us, we jump to conclusions and assign malicious motives without even asking the right questions.

So we come back to the original question. Are we interpreting truth through the grid of our experience? Or, are we evaluating our experiences through the grid of Truth? Our approach to this question matters deeply. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. He alone is Truth. Truth is a person. When we evaluate “truth” according to our experience, we are in essence redefining truth and rejecting Truth Himself. We are all guilty of doing this in a dozen little ways every day. And herein lays our greatest tragedy. We live in a broken, evil world, with far too much pain and grief. Every one of us has our own personal store of woundedness in some form or another. The Deceiver relishes it when we interpret truth through our experience because that digs us in ever deeper, and keeps us from searching out Truth, which heals and frees us.

A pig is comfortable in the mud, but its eventual end is slaughter. Many of us are wallowing in mud, destined for slaughter, but rather than face the painful circumstances of how we got there, whether through wrong actions we ourselves took, or whether by wrongs committed against us, rather than admitting that the mud is mud and that it stinks….we hoodwink ourselves into believing mud is the ultimate. We’ve become so used to the stench; we would be put off by fresh air if it penetrated the thick, putrid atmosphere around us.

It can be unpopular, and more importantly, downright uncomfortable, to reverse our deeply entrenched patterns, and instead of evaluating truth through our experiences, holding our experiences up to the Light of Truth. Most of us would be deeply surprised by the results. We’ve avoided going there because we think we already know the answers. The Deceiver/Destroyer would encourage us to keep on that path. It’s just where he wants us.

For the Joy set before Him, Truth went to the cross. The Joy of setting us free from the muck and mire that sucks us ever downward, the Joy of seeing us healed and released to become ALL, and more than we could even begin to dream of, to become ALL that we were created to be, Image Bearers of the Almighty, crowned with Glory and Majesty, just a little lower than the angels. Truth does not promise us the way will be easy, in fact, Truth is upfront that it will not be easy. But it will be worth it. And He will be with us every step of the way. It is His Joy to see us rise out of the mud we have been beaten into, and to stand clean and pure, and to rise to discover the eternal, joy-filled purpose each of us was created for.