Desiring the truth vs. loving the truth

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ResidentAlien

ResidentAlien

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Apr 21, 2021
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I believe a lot of people who are deceived and follow after false doctrine truly do desire the truth. However, desiring the truth and loving truth are two different things. When someone desperately desires the truth, but without a love for the truth, they're vulnerable to every kind of manipulation and deception out there.
 
I'm having difficulty understanding how one can, "...desperately desire the truth, but without love of the truth."

I understand how we can seek truth and then reject what we find, but something gave us the desire to seek truth in the first place. (This is prevenient grace). Can we really seek what we don't desire?

Sorry if I'm splitting hairs here, I totally agree with your conclusions. My parents really did teach me to "Stand with Christ or fall for anything."
 
Seeker47 said:
I'm having difficulty understanding how one can, "...desperately desire the truth, but without love of the truth."

I understand how we can seek truth and then reject what we find, but something gave us the desire to seek truth in the first place. (This is prevenient grace). Can we really seek what we don't desire?

Sorry if I'm splitting hairs here, I totally agree with your conclusions. My parents really did teach me to "Stand with Christ or fall for anything."
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It's really a matter of being in touch with reality. Our desire may tell us we want truth, and we may think we have truth; but unless our mind is solidly grounded in reality, the truth we think we have may actually be shifting sand. So we must love truth and reality as well.
 
I think you are observing that there is a civil war going on internally in every believer, even you, and even Paul had this conflict within.

“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭14‬-‭23‬ ‭NIV‬‬
 
Another thing at play Is unity in the faith. There are infants in the faith and mature in the faith. Confusion comes when we use the worlds standard or that of the 5 senses to determine if we are mature or infants , we become self deceived and spiritual pride follows.

“until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4‬:‭13‬-‭15‬ ‭NIV‬‬
 
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FollowingtheWay said:
Another thing at play Is unity in the faith. There are infants in the faith and mature in the faith. Confusion comes when we use the worlds standard or that of the 5 senses to determine if we are mature or infants , we become self deceived and spiritual pride follows.
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I don't really see the correlation between maturity and loving the truth. Everyone is at a different level of maturity in their understanding; but there's a difference between lacking understanding and being out of touch with reality. I've seen sincere believers who seemed mature, and were on the right track, who inexplicably fell down a hole never to return.
 
ResidentAlien said:
...but without a love for the truth, they're vulnerable to every kind of manipulation and deception out there.
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To love the truth means to be willing to give up our humanistic ideas for spiritual and supernatural realities. Not only give them up, but totally abandon the ideas of the natural man, and adjust our thinking to God's thoughts and God's ways. This is where the cults fail. They try to use human reason to understand things which are beyond human reason. A good example is the deity of Christ.
 
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Nehemiah6 said:
To love the truth means to be willing to give up our humanistic ideas for spiritual and supernatural realities. Not only give them up, but totally abandon the ideas of the natural man, and adjust our thinking to God's thoughts and God's ways. This is where the cults fail. They try to use human reason to understand things which are beyond human reason. A good example is the deity of Christ.
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I'm not sure cults rely on human reasoning that much. They appeal to a person's desire for supernatural things, only what they offer is a counterfeit of God's supernatural. Christianity doesn't demand a person give up their human reasoning but many cults do.
 
ResidentAlien said:
I believe a lot of people who are deceived and follow after false doctrine truly do desire the truth. However, desiring the truth and loving truth are two different things. When someone desperately desires the truth, but without a love for the truth, they're vulnerable to every kind of manipulation and deception out there.
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About 31.2% of the world’s population is considered to be Christian. There are more than 45,000 Christian denominations globally and more than 200 in the U.S., according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.
 
Grace911 said:
So in your estimation of these 45000 Christian denominations, how many have all truth and no error?
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You don't seem to understand the nature of the topic. You've proven you can troll; come back when/if you have something relevant to say.
 
Psalms 118:142. “Thy righteousnesses is an everlasting righteousnesses: and thy law is the truth”.
 
It is perfectly proper and normal when replying to an alert to a message awating in a thread for the receiver to respond to the content of that message. It occurs in just about every thread, and most people understand this and it is perfectly normal.
 
ResidentAlien said:
I don't really see the correlation between maturity and loving the truth. Everyone is at a different level of maturity in their understanding; but there's a difference between lacking understanding and being out of touch with reality. I've seen sincere believers who seemed mature, and were on the right track, who inexplicably fell down a hole never to return.
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Read this scripture slowly and carefully, it is literally explaining exactly what you have described in your initial post.

“until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4‬:‭13‬-‭15‬ ‭NIV‬‬
 
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FollowingtheWay said:
Read this scripture slowly and carefully, it is literally explaining exactly what you have described in your initial post.

“until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4‬:‭13‬-‭15‬ ‭NIV‬‬
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I hate chess and I hate guessing games. If you'd rather post scripture than discuss the topic that's okay; but you'll have to do it with someone else.
 
Nehemiah6 said:
Take all that with a pound of salt. But first be clear about the biblical meaning of "Christian".
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Does it not translate as in the Anointed? I know some of the elievers were dubbed such at Antioch,. Now whether it was by other desciples I think I do not know. Was it in Greek? Was it in Hebrew?
They were considered converts to Yeshua, sons of Abraham. Abraham may be a reference to the Patriarch or to our Father.
Yeshua teaches we become sons of Abraham.............This would be my denomination, had I one. Sons of Abraham.
 
Grace911 said:
There are more than 45,000 Christian denominations globally and morethan
200 in the U.S., according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.
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That is a false number based on an egregious misunderstanding.

That misunderstanding gets thrown around as if it were truth when it is not.
Even under the most liberal definition of what constitutes a denomination, there are
nowhere close to 45,000 denominations. Many of these groups are merely subgroups
of larger denominational groups such as Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, or Baptists.

Evangelical apologist Eric Svendsen exposes the falsehood of this fabrication. Briefly:

Svendsen shows that the source of this figure is the World Christian Encyclopedia (David A. Barrett; Oxford
University Press, 1982). Barrett cites a figure of 20,780 denominations. Still, not all of them are Protestants.
According to Barrett, Protestants account for 8,196 (and incidentally, Roman Catholics account for 223).

However, even this figure of eight thousand Protestant denominations is misleading, for Barrett defines
"distinct denominations" as any group that might have a slightly different emphasis than another group.
The distinction is made on the basis of jurisdiction, rather than differing beliefs and practices.

Barrett breaks down the Protestant bloc into twenty-one major "traditions" which are much closer to what we usually
mean by the word "denominations." It is interesting that Roman Catholics are subdivided into sixteen such "traditions."

Svendsen concludes, "In short, Roman Catholic apologists have hurriedly, carelessly - and, as a result, irresponsibly - glanced
at Barrett's work, found a large number (22,189), and arrived at all sorts of absurdities that Barrett never concluded." source
 
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FollowingtheWay said:
Read this scripture slowly and carefully, it is literally explaining exactly what you have described in your initial post.

“until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4‬:‭13‬-‭15‬ ‭NIV‬‬
Click to expand...
Thank you for this reminder to us all. Let us strive to be such. I also thank you for posting the scriptures of reminder to me,.
 
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