seeking the truth on Learning

Becoming a teachable person has two prerequisites: There must be a teacher and a person willing to be taught. Increasingly, Western culture has become an environment that celebrates and platforms the ...

* This story is debated among Galileo scholars, though most would agree that the story conveys Galileo’s unique approach to learning. Galileo Galilei was a man who dared to look beyond what othe...

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom: Enlighten by your Holy Spirit those who teach and those who learn, that, rejoicing in the knowledge of your truth, they may worship you and serve you from gen...

Pastor: Gracious God, Your Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our way. It pierces the darkness of our sinful world with the brightness of Your grace and shows us Your truth. We thank You fo...

At some point in childhood we all make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Martin Luther said that every Christian ought to read the Bible from cover to cover every year. But, likening the Bible to a forest, he also said that reading the Bible doesn’t become really enjoyable...

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

Truth consists in the mind giving to things the importance they have in reality.

“Here’s something to think about: How come you never see a headline like ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?”

In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Loving Father, we often come to you to get the most from you.  You remain incredibly generous, even though we neglect the greatest gift you give – yourself. Forgive us for ignoring you. Help us to enj...

What we need to realize, however, is that there is no such thing as autonomous or “self-grounding” knowledge. All systems of interpretation and all claims to true knowledge are ultimately grounded out...

Holy Spirit, open our minds to the truth that hurts and the truth that heals. Open our hearts to the love that challenges and the love that embraces. Amen.

Author and Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers suggests that instead of imagining a kingdom, a better way for us to understand what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of this script, this new way of livi...

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.

He is within us; seek him not elsewhere.

In his poem Cocktail Party , T. S. Eliot captures a fundamental truth about human nature and the source of much hurt in the world. People’s actions are rarely driven by outright malice—intended t...

If man tries to grasp at truth of himself, he tries to grasp at it a priori . But in that case he does not do what he has to do when the truth comes to him. He does not believe. If he did, he wou...

We have an outdoor church readerboard (yep, manual, press-in-the-grooves-black-plastic-letters) near a busy street that I enjoy changing every couple of weeks. The challenge of saying something meanin...

Leader: Heavenly Father, You do not want anyone to suffer in darkness or separation, but rather for everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. As members of your family, may we remembe...

Pastor: Seek the Lord while he may be found; People: call on him while he is near. Pastor: Let the wicked forsake their ways People: and the unrighteous their thoughts. Pas...

There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said “Let us pray,” and we dutifully shut our eyes....

Paradox has been defined as “Truth standing on her head to attract attention."

St. Martin of Tours was a Frankish soldier in the Roman army who abandoned his military post to follow Jesus at a time when Christianity had only begun to take root in France. He later became the bish...

My goal is to speak the truth in love. There are a lot of people speaking the truth with no love, and there are a lot of people talking about love without much truth.

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the great scientists of all time. Most men of science today agree that his great book Principia is the greatest scientific book ever written. Yet of his achievemen...

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observes that the biblical ideal is not so much that we need to deny the self as to decenter the self: To see the self in truth, as an integral member of a comm...

Gracious God, our hearts are often divided between what is good and what is evil. Not one of us is pure in heart yet we long to have a whole heart. Where there is hypocrisy in our life, please n...