truth on Television

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...

Recently I was watching a children’s television show on YouTube with my kids, when the host asked, “What is the meaning of Life?” His response was typical: “I don’t know,” but what he said next made m...

We are a couple of decades past the vastly popular initial run of the TV show The X-Files, but its themes continue to resonate. In the show, two FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, investigate par...

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

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

Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children.

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

One of my favorite movies is Hoosiers (1986). It tells the story of a small-town basketball team from Hickory, Indiana, that finds greatness under the leadership of their coach, Norman Dale. The...

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...

Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the h...

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...

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

The last time someone said to you, “I need to talk to you,” how did that strike you? Did you think, Maybe she needs to tell me how much she appreciates me. More likely you thought, I’m in trouble. Whe...

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....

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.

Give us, Lord, a clear vision of the truth, faith in your power, and confident assurance of your love.

Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth.

Thomas Aquinas, the famous medieval theologian, created one of the greatest intellectual achievements of Western civilization in his Summa Theologica. It’s a massive work: thirty-eight treatises, thre...

Tell truth, and shame the devil.

Truth’ [is] what we think it is at any given moment of time.

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. . . . The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.

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...

Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction . . . For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way-but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.

Almighty and everlasting God, you made the universe with all its marvelous order, its atoms, worlds, and galaxies, and the infinite complexity of living creatures: Grant that, as we probe the mysterie...

Spirit of Truth, as we turn to your Word, let the light of your countenance be upon us, that we may come to know more fully the one who is the way, the truth, and the life, through Christ Jesus, our...

The shortest distance between a human being and the truth is a story.

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