True Facts

“If we speak truth it is because we have borrowed it from the One who is true” (Fenelon). We suffer from a common deception in our fallen existence: facts, data, masquerade as truth. Facts can be true, but not necessarily. Facts often lie. Correct data easily yield to the agenda of the presenter, making appear true what is mere vanity. Beware of facts. Beware of carefully reasoned syllogism. Gifts of God’s grace and tools for navigating God’s creation, careful observation and sound reason, when wielded by a true and honest heart, produce trustworthy facts and reliable logic. But when the heart is perverse, twisted by wounds and by wounding, driven by fear of want and will to power, then the twistings of the heart bend the observations of the eye and lead the reasonings of the mind down a skewed pathway. There is but one who is true, and this One is known by the humble, not the wise, not the well informed. The heart is like a bow that shoots arrows of fact or reason. If the bow is true, the arrows fly true; if the bow is crooked, the straightest arrows fly off course.