You Can't Handle the Truth...

If you are not familiar with that phrase, it comes from a movie titled "A Few Good Men" starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson. A soldier is accidentally killed by his peers on orders from their superior officer (Nicholson) because this soldier did not fit into the superior officer's perspective what a soldier protecting America in Guantanamo Bay, the military presence between the United States and Cuba, should be like. All through the movie, the superior officer sees no wrong doing of his decisions and even tries to cover up his actions, but in the end, the prosecutor (Cruise) pushes him to admit the truth and Nicholson retorts back, "You can't handle the truth!" It's a military drama and deals a lot with unwritten codes of conduct and the pressures and stress people face when in a high tension situation, but individual biblical truths can be drawn from this story.

In the Bible, it says in John 8:32, "...and the truth will set you free." Later in that chapter, John also tells us that we are a slave to our sins. We all have vices or bad habits. Whether it's chocolate or smoking or television, these sins (when taken beyond moderation) displace God as our priority and once we displace God as our centerpiece, our actions begin to be harmful not only to our spiritual lives, but to our physical, mental, and emotional lives as well. That's how dangerous sin is especially sin that we don't acknowledge or that we covered up that it's taken on the guise of truth. We have become a slave to a dangerous master and we use whatever means to justify it in our souls even though the Holy Spirit is pounding on the doors of our hearts to tell us how wrong we are.

Not only until we break down in humility and admit our wrongdoings can God begin to help us patch up our relationship with Him. Here is some good...no great news. God promises us in I Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." So all is not lost once you become a slave to sin because God has an exit strategy for us. I hope this promise makes it easier on all of us to break the bonds of slavery and not to lose all hope and think the situation is unfixable.

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