Incline our Hearts
To Seek and Speak the Truth
In our current chaotic, confusing, and trying times in our nation and world, many are asking: what can the Church do?
There are many things, including prayer, faithful civic engagement, and standing with the vulnerable. But one of the most important things the Church can do in such a time as this is to clearly speak the truth. One of the most troubling aspects of our current cultural and political moment is that the truth itself seems up for grabs. Many seek to manipulate information, language, and even images and video by technology. Sometimes, in our AI world, we are unsure if we can believe our own eyes.
Pilate’s words echo in our minds: “what is truth?”
As the Church, we are called to seek the truth, and to speak the truth, in the Church and in the world around us. To seek the truth by not interpreting everything through ideological and political lenses, jumping to conclusions that fit our biases, but by discerning with care, with prayer, with patient curiosity, and compassion, including listening to those beloved of God with whom we disagree. One of the most pernicious traits in our current day is the leap to conclusions, in any situation, before the facts and background are known. The battle to define the truth begins the moment a controversial event takes place.
As Christians, the truth for us is grounded always in Jesus Christ. He is the cornerstone, unshakable and unchanging. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so we root everything in our confession of faith, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” If we stand firm in that one, essential truth, and if we confess it with courage not only in worship but in our lives, God the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth.
In our age of conspiracy theories, deepfakes, and manipulation, we are called to careful discernment of what is true. And also to remember what truths matter most. Only God has the essential truth, through which we come to know all the other truths that matter. And that revelation comes to us from Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, through Holy Scripture, prayer, and our God-given reason, informed by the guidance of the Church and its tradition.
The evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God are mighty, but in the presence of the way, the truth, and life, they are as a puff of wind.
The Right Reverend Poulson Reed, OA
Bishop, The Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma
