What is truth?

When Pilate asked Jesus Christ, "What is truth?" he was asking the most important question he had ever asked. Unfortunately, he didn't stay long enough to hear Jesus' answer.

This is a question that is being asked a lot today. The media is called out for its fake news. The White House is often challenged by statements coming from the spokespeople there. People in Congress, from the leadership to its incoming freshmen, struggle to understand truth and its importance to a society.

Perhaps no one elected to office in recent history has generated more interest that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an incoming freshman from New York elected to the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, much of the interest surrounding her has been the fact that she is a Democrat Socialist who struggles with the truth and with how the American system works.

During a 60 Minutes interview she was challenged by a statement that she had made that earned her four Pinocchios from the Washington Post. She responded that being morally right was more important than being factually right. What? Even CNN criticized her reasoning. Perhaps she doesn't know that one can be both morally right and factually right. In fact, I would argue that you can't be morally right if you are not factually right. The ends do not justify the means. Let me quickly state that anyone can make mistakes and say things that later prove to be not true, and to be fair, the same thing happens from Republican speakers as well. The problem is that she makes such errors on a fairly regular basis, and it doesn't seem to bother her.

Perhaps she just enjoys the attention. More than one person in the public eye has said that the only thing worse than bad press is no press at all. Or maybe she just doesn't know the truth because, like many of her generation, she has been misinformed.

In a 2016 article in The Washington Times it was noted that one-third of millennials believe that during his time in office George W. Bush killed more people than Joseph Stalin. Although exact numbers are not available, most historians believe Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 20-60 million people. The article also stated that one-third of millennials had never heard of Vladimir Lenin, and another 25 percent of them viewed Lenin favorably. A stunning 42 percent had never heard of Mao Zedong.

When one stops to realize that American Civics is no longer taught in most schools anymore and, evidently, neither is world history we can see one reason why this nation is in the trouble it's in today. We have a nation of young people who do not understand what makes this nation unique and how it functions. These are now being elected to the highest offices in the country by voters who evidently do not care if they are qualified for those offices or not.

As upsetting as this is, the same thing is happening in many of our churches today as well. Every study of persons identified as Evangelical Christians find that many are uninformed of basic biblical teaching and principles. Many seldom, if ever, read their Bibles, pray, or do anything that would help them grow as a disciple. Younger people in particular are ill prepared to defend their faith when they leave home for college or the work force.  We have failed to pass the faith on to young people in a way that will enrich their lives and prepare them to live in a world that rejects that faith.

It's time that the church becomes serious about teaching truth to our people. The Bible is the truth. It is the Word of God. Preach it. Teach it. Without apology. Without compromise. We don't need to know what some pop psychologist says about life's issues. We need to hear what the Bible says about them. Teach the morals and ethics found in Scripture. You will run into people who don't like the truth. Preach it anyway! You will run into snowflakes who will have their feelings hurt. Love them, but preach the truth anyway! If ever there was a time the church needed to stop playing games and standing for the truth it is now.