Echoes of Truth

My little blog is six months (plus change) old, so to celebrate, I am having my first ever guest poster!

I met Tony Alicea through Twitter, and he has since become a dear friend – he is probably the nicest guy in my Twitter sphere. He lives in Florida, where he performs tech wizardry (he has rescued me from my ignorance, several times), listens to lots and lots of music, writes, and loves God; not at all in that order.

Tony hasn’t been blogging long, but you’d never know it, by his writing; it’s really good. If I could write about spiritual topics as well as he does, I would. But I can’t, so I have to stick to books and outer space.

Anyway, you can see one of my favorite Tony posts (and check out his cool website) by clicking here, and follow him on Twitter here.

You have to promise to come back to my blog, though. I had you first.

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I remember as a kid, how excited I was to find a place that produced an echo. I would sit there constantly saying words and making noises, waiting for the echo. The echo returned my voice in a weaker, softer version. When I was with someone else, invariably they would yell out as well and the result was a muffled mix of chaotic resonation. I was completely fascinated.

I’ve been studying echoes recently and I found that a true echo is a single reflection of the sound source. The human ear cannot distinguish an echo from the original sound if the delay is less than 1/10 of a second. In addition, if many reflections return back to where you are unable to distinguish them, the proper term is reverberation.

All this got me to thinking about how I acquire information. The information goes out from the source and along the way, there are walls from which it bounces. Those walls might be books, newspapers, politicians, preachers or friends. Most of the time they aren’t the source of information, they are echoes.

I can think of a number of times in my life that I accepted someone’s word as truth, only to find out later that it was not. I begin the process of classifying those whom I can deem as trustworthy and those whom I cannot. I build my own kind of knowledge filter.

The process gets more complicated when there are traces of truth in some things but not whole truths. I cannot do a black and white classification. I have to then seek another echo. All the while, I know that if I make the effort, I can access the source myself.

In my walk with the Lord, I realize that I have acquired an unhealthy dependency on echoes. Echoes of books, messages and other people’s thoughts and opinions. A single echo at a time isn’t bad and the closer I am (in relationship) to the echo, the clearer it is. But when I get a flood of echoes, the reverberation causes my brain to turn into mush. It is confusing and overwhelming. It is easy to begin to question everything and doubt any absolute truth.

However, I know that this is lazy. I am a learner. I love to read, study and acquire knowledge. I cannot depend on others to be the source. I can only look to them as echoes (a weaker, softer version) of truth. One of the scriptures that gives me the greatest comfort is John 16:13:

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

The Spirit is the source. He is the voice. If I believe this scripture, I can be confident that I have direct access to the Source of all truth.

Truth has been so convoluted in our society. Everyone seems to have their own version of relative truth. We live in a world of countless echoes and relentless reverberation. However if you want the absolute truth, you have to go to the Source.