Your Truth Won't Set You Free
One of the best Disney cartoon characters ever created may be Genie from Aladdin. Voiced by Robin Williams, Genie is captivating because he’s wacky, funny, and bound to do the bidding of other characters. That’s what it means to be a genie. You’re not your own, but you’re a slave to others and forced to grant their wishes and enact their will. Many people talk about wishing they had a genie, but you never really hear people talk about wishing they were a genie.
No one wants to be a genie because no one wants to be a slave. However, what we see in our current culture is widespread slavery. People are enslaved to lust, materialism, food, drink, sports, greed, and the list could on and on. People find themselves addicted to many of these things in the name of trying to find hope, joy, and freedom. Lately, our culture has seemed to celebrate it under the banner of “living your truth.”
Living your truth sounds great… until it isn’t anymore. There are plenty of problems with every person having their own truth, but I think it begins with the insanity of that phrase. Truth, by definition, is objective. It doesn’t change. If this isn’t the case then we can’t actually know anything. We live in an absurd world. Logic has gone out the door and you might as well quit reading this. Truth must not change to actually be able to know anything for a fact. If we are each “living our own truth” and our truths contradict one another then whose truth is true?
Thankfully, we live in a logical world with objective truth. The world was created by a good God who is the standard of truth. The Bible calls what many refer to as “their truth,” sin. The objective truth is that we are all born in slavery to sin. We aren’t created sinful by God. We are born sinful and inherit our sin through a corrupted, sinful world. We try and use our sin to bring us hope and joy when in reality those things can’t be found within ourselves. Trying to “live our truth” only leaves us enslaved and empty.
Genie couldn’t set himself free. He could do a whole lot of things, but he couldn’t rescue himself. He was funny and charming. He was clever. None of that was enough to be able to free himself. He needed someone else to rescue him.
Like Genie, we can’t set ourselves free. Going after all of our hearts desires will never satisfy us or free us.
The good news of the gospel is that because we can’t set ourselves free, God sent His own Son to free us. The Lord Jesus lived the life we couldn’t live and died the death we deserved to die so we could be made right with God.
To find true hope and joy, we don’t embrace the sinful desires the Lord Jesus died to pay for and call them “our truth.” Instead, we repent of those things and embrace The Way, The Truth, and The Life (John 14:6). We don’t celebrate the things for which Christ gave His life. We don’t identify with those things. Instead we rejoice in a good and holy Savior and we give our lives to identify with the One who can truly give us the joy and satisfaction we crave.
When Jafar pursued his desires for money and power he wished to be a genie. However, pursuing these lustful desires of his heart led him into a life of slavery and put him in a place he never imagined. “Your truth” won’t set you free, but will do just the opposite.
