You can’t handle the truth
A Few Good Men is a great film. Tom Cruise plays a rookie military lawyer who has to defend a squad of marines accused of murder. They claimed they were acting on orders. Jack Nicholson plays a tough guy marine officer. One climactic scene has Nicholson on the stand being interrogated by the Cruise character. Cruise is getting nowhere and finally yells, “I want the truth!” The Jack Nicholson character shouts back. “You can’t handle the truth!”
Most people today say truth is based on feeling out the situation. Therefore moral and ethical decisions are made based on feelings, or what is most comfortable to do. That’s called moral relativism, where the prevailing mantra is ironically an absolute – there are no absolutes! There’s nothing new under the sun. In John’s day, truth was relative for many non-believers too.
Another untruth, Gnosticism, was also coming in – the belief that matter is bad and spirit is good, so Gnostics were denying that Jesus came in the flesh.
John in this “New Testament Postcard” is exhorting the family he was writing to: know the truth; walk in the truth and protect the truth. Doing so will lead to a full reward – v.8.
Grow in grace, peace, love and truth!
Andy Moyle
