“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear [to hear] them now. But when the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth [full and complete truth].” – Jesus, John 16:12-13

Quite often, during the season of Lent, I find myself turning to John’s account of The Last Supper. These five chapters, John 13-17, are the basis for my Lenten study, Reaching Toward Easter. The words of Jesus seem to carry additional gravitas at this last meal together, as he carefully goes over the highlights one more time.

A recurring theme is truth. Jesus speaks about it often and his words echo through the ages to our 21st Century, where such egregious liberties are taken and deceptions perpetuated.

It makes good sense, then for us to check in with the Great Teacher who is not only The Way and The Life but The Truth personified.

So I have to pay attention when Jesus makes a direct connection between an active, day-by-day relationship with God and being guided into full and complete truth.

In other words, we dare not separate our pursuit of, our quest for and our understanding of truth from our pursuit of, our quest for and our understanding of… God.

We already understand how important it is to pray when we read the scriptures. So why not pray before – and also as – we read the news? or do research? or fact-check? or enter into conversation or debate?

Is our relationship with God an integral part of our thinking, our emotions, our intellectual curiosity?

Jesus – and he is the very best source we can turn to – consistently pairs truth with proximity to The Holy.

How to Respond?

And so when I hear commentators referencing this time in history as “The post-truth era” I intuitively understand the implication that we live in the “post-Jesus era.”

So what do we need, first and foremost, if we say that “full and complete truth” is important? We need Jesus. And we need to be, as Jesus puts it, “Guided by the Spirit of Truth.”

We live in an era when the suppression of truth, the manipulation of truth and a wholesale disregard for truth is eating away at our freedom at an alarming rate.

But thankfully, as Jesus also pointed out, “The truth will set us free.”

We cannot leave an active, purposeful relationship with God out of the equation. We must love God, and follow Jesus, and be filled with the Spirit. Then, “when the Spirit of Truth comes, God will guide us into all truth – full and complete truth.”

I guess, then, it would be fair to say that it is our civic duty to draw closer, and become more accountable, to God – DEREK

It is our civic duty to draw closer, and become more accountable, to God