Judy Garland in “For Me and My Gal” (1942)
I love everything 1940s – the movies, the music, the clothes…If I could travel back in time, that is the decade I’d want to return to. I would gladly exchange my straightening iron for pin curls and my skinny jeans for A-line dresses.
But it wasn’t perfect. World War II battered that decade, and the generation who lived through it lost more than just husbands, sons, daughters, and sisters – they lost the hope that one “Great War” is all we’d ever have. They learned that evil can’t be stamped out for good – one evil is wiped out, but another comes on the horizon.
Most of the people in my grandparents’ generation believed in right and wrong, good and evil. They didn’t see Hitler and argue that what he believed was all right for him. They recognized Hitler’s ideologies were sick and destructive. Men like my grandfather went over to Europe to fight against Hilter’s Nazi regime so our country could remain safe and so other countries could be rescued.
My generation, though, and the ones coming after me, hate the idea of right and wrong, good and evil. We want to believe truth is what we make it. We even see that in some Christian circles! As long as we’re not hurting anyone, we can do what we want, how we want. Truth is relative and anyone who says otherwise is close-minded (never mind that those who say that are, themselves, close-minded!).
Here’s the Truth: We don’t get to determine the Truth!
Whether we like it or not, agree with it or not, there is One Truth. That Truth is found in scripture and was given to us by a gracious God. He did not leave us without divine revelation, nor did He give each one us our own personal revelation. He created us to be in community, so he gave us His word as a community – to read, study, and learn together. He gave us teachers to understand it, preachers to challenge us in it, those with gifts of mercy and helps to show us how to live it out. We have Truth, and it is neither unclear nor unfair. It is, at times, uncomfortable.
We believers, then, have to make a choice. Are we going to believe in the One Truth and take a stand against the lies that oppose that Truth? Or are we going to allow the world to dictate what we believe?
Let us learn from the Greatest Generation – there IS right and wrong. There absolutely is Truth. We have it, we can know it, and we should share it.
