Truth As Life
Are you living out the truth?
“Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
Why are you here (in university)? How did you get here?
Did you come here looking for a new life? For an education? For new friends?
Or did you come here to escape? To escape yourself, your family, your former life… your God?
For me, it was a bit of both, but more of the latter. I wanted to experience living away from home (GTA) and living in the city (I grew up in the country). I also wanted to try studying at a “real” school (I was homeschooled all the way through high school and completed my bachelor’s degree entirely online). And I was interested in and enjoyed (and still enjoy) programming. So, studying Software Engineering at Conestoga College seemed like the perfect idea.
But more than that, I wanted to escape. I wouldn’t have admitted it if someone had asked me then; I don’t think I even admitted it to myself. I was in a dark and discouraged time in my life. In recent years, I’ve had a friend walk away from God and his own family. Since I was (and am) close friends with his sister, I saw the pain it caused his family. My own faith was shaken. This was a friend I respected and admired; what if he was right about the Bible being fallible? Why did God allow such great suffering for his family, who were strong believers? On top of that, I had grown to be quite cynical because of Covid; it was obvious the world was in a mess, and it seemed like nobody cared and God wasn’t doing anything about it.
The fire in my soul that was once there — the fire for truth, life, and beauty — was almost entirely quenched. Only a few small embers remained, flickering weakly.
Maybe going away for a while would help. Maybe if I go to a place where I barely knew anyone, I would be able to “find myself”. Maybe I could explore the world a little. Maybe nothing really mattered. Maybe the God of the Bible was just an option, just one small part of life; I might as well see what the other options were and pick the one I liked best.
“In relationship to God one cannot involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is ‘to a certain degree’.”
~ Soren Kierkegaard
I never stopped believing, or so I told myself — but it was not translating to a life of true submission. I knew all the core Christian doctrines; I confessed to believe in them. I went to church. I hung out with other Christians. My spirit had the desire to live God’s way. And yet I was still trying to live life my own way: I was treating Christianity (going to church, Bible studies, etc.) as a lifestyle, as head knowledge. Christ was not my life… I was still hanging on to that.
“The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
I thank God for His faithfulness. He watched over those tiny embers, not letting them die.
Here in Waterloo, He surrounded me with people who were on fire for Him, and by their testimony and the light they radiated I saw how far I had fallen. How many lies I had been telling myself. How distant I really was from God. How I was letting my pride and sense of independence rule my life instead of surrendering all to God.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
— Jeremiah 17:9
“Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
To show my stubbornness and God’s longsuffering: it took 4+ months after realizing all that to finally admit that I had been deceiving myself. I didn’t know what to do about it, though. Eventually, I thought I knew what the problem was: I wasn’t broken enough. I wanted to do good, but I still thought I could do it by myself.
“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
I remember there was a day I had the thought of asking God to break me, if that was what was needed. I knew I wanted more of God’s presence in my life; I wanted His leading. But there was something keeping me back, and I couldn’t get rid of it. I didn’t dare to earnestly pray for God to break me; it seemed like a scary request.
“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
God heard the unspoken prayer; He took compassion and answered in the most loving and Fatherly way. He could have used some catastrophe, some significant disappointment, to teach me a lesson, and it would have been perfectly justified. But instead one night about a week after, He quietly showed me the truth about where I was and it hit me like never before. The contrast between His faithfulness through all those months (and years) and my pretenses at being a good person stared me in the face, and I came to the end of myself.
“Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.”
— Job 5:17
As I phrased it to my sister, my heart finally caught up with my mind and spirit. I was able to lay down my pride and admit weakness. The pressure I had given myself of being the “good kid” by my own strength was lifted. I saw that all the “good” I thought I had was pathetic at best. For the first time since the more innocent days of childhood, I prayed with the attitude of “Here, take it; I trust that You know best. What You decide to do with it will be infinitely better than anything I could come up with”; and not, “Okay, God, I really don’t know what to do with this; I’ve tried it my own way and it didn’t work. You can have it now”. I realized that feeling like I had failed somehow if I prayed about something I couldn’t figure out on my own actually reflected a lack of trust in God.
“There was one who relied upon himself and gained everything; there was one who in the security of his own strength sacrificed everything; but the one who believed God was the greatest of all. There was one who was great by virtue of his power, and one who was great by virtue of his hope, and one who was great by virtue of his love, but Abraham was the greatest of all, great by that power whose strength is powerlessness, great by that wisdom which is foolishness, great by that hope whose form is madness, great by the love that is hatred to oneself.”
~ Soren Kierkegaard
There is freedom in knowing that I am weak, but He is strong. No longer do I have to “prove myself”. No longer do I have to rely on myself and feel frustrated because of my limitations and failings. No longer do I have to be afraid of admitting weakness. For that is the truth; to deny it is to deceive myself. To deny it is to refuse to see the power of God.
“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
— 2 Corinthians 12:9
I don’t know where you are today; I don’t know the story of how you came to Waterloo. I don’t know what your struggles are, if you have the struggles I did with pride and self-reliance, or if you struggle with something else. But this I know: that our God is faithful, and that He chastises those he loves (Hebrews 12:6).
If you think yourself a Christian, I encourage you to find a group of people as soon as possible who are on fire for God and fellowship with them. Being close to fire, it’s either too hot to stick around, or your own fire is built up. Don’t be afraid to face your own weakness, because that is the way to see the glory and power of God. Ask God to show you the truth, and when He does — because He will — let it become your life.
“Nobody knows more of the truth than what he is of the truth. To properly know the truth is to be in the truth; it is to have the truth for one’s life. This always costs a struggle. Any other kind of knowledge is a falsification. In short, the truth, if it is really there, is a being, a life.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
God be with you all.
