Discovering truth - relationships versus search engines (Part 1)
“…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
I just returned last weekend from an exhilarating (but exhausting) trip to Medellin Colombia with a team of Canadian business leaders. We went at the invitation of some Colombian leaders to share our business knowledge and experience with their peers as well as our Christian faith.
The outcome of the series of events exceeded our expectations with over 700 leaders, including some big business owners and executives as well as senior government officials, deciding to put Jesus in charge of their professional and personal lives! Every member of our team shared business content and their personal faith journeys in many different venues ranging from auditoriums to country clubs to board rooms to homes.
For me, this trip validated the effectiveness of sharing knowledge “in person.” Today, a lot of us (including me!) make many decisions based on answers obtained by “googling” questions. However, the ordering of the content that appears in response to questions is algorithmically biased, which raises an important question. Are we actually discovering the truth or someone else’s opinion of truth that, while supported by some facts, is intended to persuade us of the rightness of their perspective (which might or might not be true)?
In the next blog post, I will address “search engine truth.” In this blog, I will focus on my Medellin experience. In brief, the success of the trip validated the power of conveying truth through relationships. As per the opening quote, Jesus declared that there is such a thing as truth and it can be known. He also told people that he is the truth and the truth (Jesus) will set them free. Since he is the truth and we can know him personally, the two keys for followers of Jesus when sharing truth are our relationship with Jesus and our relationship with the other person.
Our diverse group of leaders from Canada and Medellin all shared one thing in common. They know Jesus (aka The Truth)! And by that, I don’t mean that they know about Jesus. In Latin America generally, virtually everyone knows about Jesus as do many Canadians. However, as in Canada, the subset of citizens who can say with conviction that they actually know Jesus is relatively small.
Because of their relationship with Jesus, members of our Canadian group could speak with authority on the topic of faith in God. Moreover, their authenticity shone through as they shared stories from their business and personal lives. Because of Jesus’s impact on their lives, particularly in painful situations, many speakers couldn’t suppress emotions as they shared their faith stories. Indeed, when I delivered the keynote address, my emotions welled up when I spoke about my personal encounter with the person of Jesus in my mid-thirties.
The primary factor that motivated us to travel to Medellin is God’s love for their leaders. And our audiences sensed God’s love for them through us as we shared our stories and helped them understand how they too can have a relationship with Jesus. The biggest “success factor” was Jesus himself who, through the Holy Spirit, convicted hundreds of leaders of their need for both forgiveness and God’s leadership in their lives.
How about you? Do you have a relationship with Jesus? Please let me know if you would like to discuss.
Photo by Edho Pratama on Unsplash
