The Importance of TRUTH

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Let's say you have one hundred million dollars, and you're looking for a bank
to place your money with, having become unhappy with your prior bank. So you
arrange a meeting with the bank president -- perhaps a nice lunch at a local,
expensive restaurant -- and you begin to ply this bank president with a series
of questions related to the stability of his bank, and how they treat their
"high rollers", and what sort of rates you might expect to enjoy given your
enormous wealth, etc. etc.

(I don't know much about how all this works, really... I'm just using it as
a loose analogy)...

What if that bank president told you something like this: "Well, sir, we like
to let our clients take their OWN view of our bank. We're not into a lot of
self-promotion, so if you think we're a good bank -- if it 'works' for you to
think that we're stable and so forth -- then that's what we are. The most
important thing is that your perception of us gives you fulfillment and peace."

Well of course you'd look at that bank president like he had gone absolutely
insane, and you'd let him know in a flash that he had better come up with
a much better response than that! Or perhaps you'd excuse yourself with a polite
but terse rebuff along the lines of "baloney" and leave him sitting there...

Or what if you were taking a parachuting class, and your Jump Master asks you,
just prior to take-off, if your chute has been properly packed and is ready
for the jump, and you replied, "Well, I feel like it is, yes.." If his tack
was anything like the military, he'd jump down your throat, curse your "feelings"
and tell you you'd better make damn SURE it's ready...

Why? Well because there is so much at STAKE in these two scenarios... If you
fail to ascertain the TRUTH in these matters, you stand to lose a great
deal (your very life, possibly, in the second one)...

We can all think of world events where, when the Truth came out, the "shock and
awe" of its impact changed things forever... The Holocaust is a good example...

Our contemporary culture's relativistic attitude toward Truth is no less significant,
because of what's at stake and because of the potential impact when the Truth
does finally come out:

When Oprah -- and those like her -- say "we all find our own way to God", she
is affirming a Truth statement whether she realizes it or not. And of course the
right response is, "Is that statement TRUE?" If it IS, then those who claim that
there is only ONE way are a menace to society and a blasphemous affront to a god
that "welcomes any old way we choose" to get to him; if it's NOT True, then those
who listen to this Lie are doomed, and will, sadly, discover the Truth in the first
moment after death...

Let the weak-minded pursue "whatever works for them", but personally, I am willing
to do the work required to find the Truth (and hopefully Wisdom, too). When it
comes to these most important of questions, it's the TRUTH we should be
seeking, not some self-focused "realize your potential" mantra nor a system of
beliefs we accept by default because we were raised that way...
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