The Great Commission.17

Whoever hears the words that you speak, hears me; and those that despise you, because of your words, despise me. In rejecting me, they reject the Father who sent me. So, endure the criticism of skeptics and nonbelievers for my sake. Stand firm, and in so doing, you will be blessed.

--Jesus

As a school bus driver not infrequently did I have to reprimand older students on the use of the “F-word.”  Usually the reprimand came with a solemn warning: “if you limit your vocabulary to one word for all parts of speech, you’ll soon find you’ll be reduced to pointing, grunting and clubbing each other to communicate ideas.”  

If one believes in Natural Law and the Creative Mind behind that law, then it makes sense that the idea of the Truth of a thing has something to do with the purpose the Creative Mind gave it.  Does it not follow that if that Creative Mind also created the ability in the created to understand the truth of a thing then we--the created--have some obligation to search for it?  Our ability to understand the truth lies in the individual and is subject to each one’s own temperament, curiosity, hunger, intellect, spiritual affinity, maturity, perseverance, teachable-ness, honesty and openness.

Jesus, early in his teachings, took a child into the midst of an argument between his disciples on the issue of "greatness".  Visually he was able to not only demonstrate the character of his kingdom--childlike loving obedience to the loving will of the Father--but the Truth of the link between that character, himself, and his father.

Here at the end of his ministry he again teaches that the link is inexorable to the worst mischief man can devise.  If his words are alive in us, the very meaning of the logos of God, in God, is God that became flesh which beloved apostle John came to grasp in the opening of his gospel, alive in a way that demonstrates that link to a corrupt, unbelieving, rebellious world then we can stand, like Him, firm in inspired confidence.