Make Believe Truth

Seems like there are a lot of "truth tellers" in this world today.  People who say they believe in the truth, but what they believe in is their own version of the truth.  If truth is whatever you believe, then it seems to defy the definition of truth which is:  conformity with fact or reality, and a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle or the like.  So, I can say 2+2=4 and that's a true statement.  But, someone else might say, well, I believe that 2+2=5 because I really feel strongly about that.  And then it seems like in today's world, if you feel strongly that 2+2=5, then that's your own truth.  How can we even trust in what is true then?  How can we find solid foundation if our foundation is constantly shifting with different definitions of what is true?

Says something about our human nature that we all want something to hold on to, a stronghold, a foundation, something to drop our anchor on and rest.  Maybe that's why there are so many lost souls searching for the "truth" and loosely hanging on to something that might appeal to them as they claim they've found what is true! only until the next "truth" comes along.

I can believe that the Bible is true because I really feel strongly about it, but then I become just another person claiming that my truth, what I believe in, is true because, well, because I said so.  But truth has to be grounded in evidence that you can't contradict and not based on one's feelings.  So, how do we know the Bible is true?  (Here's a great article, written way better than me and lots of great information)

First, some facts about the Bible - the Bible is a collection of 66 books, written over a period of about 1,500 years by about 40 authors.  It was not written directly by God, but by people divinely inspired, "God-breathed"

Once you believe the Bible to be true, then answering questions based on the Scriptures is reliable and can be trusted, but until you see the truth of the Bible, that "goes in one ear and out the other," because you don't believe the Bible to be true anyway.  We have to look at physical evidence, reliability - both of which are more than just words, but point to the validity and truth (that word again!) of the Bible, which has been researched by people WAY smarter than me.

**There have been copies of the manuscripts found throughout history and these copies show that the Bible has been transmitted accurately, in fact, the scribes who copied the manuscripts followed a pain-staking process to copy accurately and rightly.  There's the original translation of the Bible - Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek - and our English translations come directly from the original translation so it's not like information gets "lost in translation."

**Archaeological finds have proven again and again that the Bible DOES correspond to historical data - check out these finds...

**There's also the internal evidence - the bible was written over many centuries by different authors - and the messages and truths found in the Bible are cohesive, coherent, and consistent.  It reminds me of the writing activity I used to do as a kid - someone would start a story off and write for a period of time and then you would  pass it on to the next person and they would continue the story, only having read your part.  This keeps going until the end of the story- think about that new story, not even close to what you were thinking when you originally started it off! So, imagine a book taking 1,500 years to write, and the main idea/s is the same!

If the Bible can be proven reliable and trustworthy, we can believe the truths found in the Bible and believe them to be true/real.  And that is where we can find a foundation with which to build our lives on that will not shift with the changing winds of truth.