My fear and concern about so many of today’s debates is that even if we win many battles, we may still lose the war. We may protect truth, but what have we gained if our triumph comes through scorched-earth battles that treat other believers as the enemy and grind them under foot? 

Sin has made our vision opaque and our minds dull. We do not see God for who he really is and ourselves for who we really are. We think far too little of God and far too highly of ourselves. On our own we are doomed to look blindly and think badly.
But as our inner nature is renewed by the Word, our vision becomes progressively clearer. Our minds become sharp. We put aside the ugly lies we once believed and embrace the beautiful truths. Thinking well—seeing and understanding the world as it truly is—is a privilege and obligation of every believer.
God’s desire is not merely that we reflect his truth in our conclusions, but that we reflect his character in our deliberations.

But the privilege and obligation upon us is not merely to believe the right things. We also need to come to those beliefs in the right way. It’s not enough to arrive at theological conclusions that reflect the mind of God; it’s also important to reach those conclusions in a way that reflects the character of God. God’s desire is not merely that we reflect his truth in our conclusions, but that we reflect his character in our deliberations.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Let’s accept the reality that there IS a singular truth about the nature of God, so we can truly begin to search for it. Then, let’s earnestly begin the search. If we are unwilling to even accept the premise that there IS an objective truth, we will never begin the search that will eventually lead us to God.

For some of us, it might seem ridiculous to say that truth does not exist, because we have simply assumed the reality and existence of “truth” since we were very small. But others out there have struggled with the idea that there can be singular, exclusive truth in all areas of life, and if you ask your friends to talk about issues of faith, you will quickly discover that few of them are able to agree on a singular, objective truth. In fact, many of us have come to the conclusion that there is no one truth about anything. And when we say that nothing is objectively “right” or “true,” we are actually saying that EVERYTHING is “right” and “true”! If no one particular idea or reality is true to the exclusion of others that are NOT true, then we have to admit that every idea, notion or reality is equally valid and “true.” Something in our intuition tells us that this simply cannot be the case.
Now we may disagree on the nature of truth at the spiritual level, but it’s hard to deny objective truths at the physical level. As I step out into the street, it’s either true or untrue that there are cars racing back and forth in front of me. I make a decision to step out based on the truth that I observe and recognize. If the street is busy with cars speeding back and forth, it is not both true and untrue that I can safely step into traffic. If I do step out, I will not be both dead and “un-dead” as a result of the truth of the situation. The street is either filled with cars or it is not. It is either safe to cross or it is not. BOTH realities cannot exist at the same time. One truth must exist at the exclusion of the other.
Let’s put it another way. As I leave the restaurant tonight and enter the restaurant parking lot, I will need to find my way back to my car.  While there may be other similar vehicles in the parking lot, only one of them is mine; only one of them belongs to me. My key will only fit in one door. If I am caught trying to break into a similar car, I will not be able to tell the police that this other vehicle is both mine and not mine. There is a singular exclusive truth about the car involved here. It is either mine or it is not!
But while exclusive truth seems rational and acceptable in the material world, some people have a much harder time accepting the possibility of objective, exclusive truth when it comes to spiritual matters. For these folks, there exist any number of diverse and divergent truths about God and even more possible paths to this God, all of which are said to be true at the same time! But it’s important for us to take a deep look at this claim of diversity and religious pluralism. We need to remember that the world’s greatest (and even not so great) religions don’t make the same claims about God and the nature spiritual reality. And it’s not just a matter of each religion adding something to the larger picture. Each of the world’s religious systems makes claims about the nature of God (and life after death) that are diametrically OPPOSED! The world’s religions simply don’t agree with each other! Buddhism claims that there is no personal God, while Christianity argues that there is a personal God. Judaism claims that Jesus was simply a man, while Christianity claims that he was God Himself! Islam encourages its followers to eliminate and destroy all infidels, while biblical Christianity encourages its followers to love their enemies. These notions are very different and very opposed and they are only a few examples of the literally thousands of points at which world religions disagree. It is fair to say that ALL of these world religions may be wrong about what they believe (each system must make its own case), but it is simply crazy to say that all of the world’s religions are correct at the same time; their truth claims are opposed to one another! In spite of this obvious conflict in spiritual truths (or perhaps because of this conflict), the world around us is making a couple of claims about the nature of truth.
Truth Does Not ExistFirst, the world tries to tell us that objective, objective truth simply does not exist. This is an “ontological” issue. “Ontology” relates to the nature or essence of “being.” The claim here is that ALL truth is “perspectival” in nature. In other words, all truth depends on your perspective! What may be true for one person may not be true for another; it really simply depends on your point of view.
Truth Cannot Be KnownSecondly, the world around us is also making the claim that even if objective, objective truth does exist, we could never know with certainty what that truth is. This is an “epistemological” issue. Epistemology relates to the nature of “knowing” or being able to know something. The claim here is that we simply cannot trust our human mental faculties to tell us what we need to know to come to a conclusion about any truth we are examining.
For many great philosophical thinkers in history, understanding truth is elusive enterprise based on both its nature and our ability to comprehend it in the first place. But let’s take a close look at both of these concerns about truth. To say that truth does not exist is to simply make yet another truth claim and this nullifies any claim against the existence of truth, does it not? And to claim that all truth is “perspectival” in nature is to once again make a claim that you want others to believe is NOT simply coming from your own perspective. When someone says that all truth depends on your point of view, they want us to believe that this statement is true and not simply their point of view! See the problem? And to say that we simply cannot know the truth, even if it exists objectively, is to once again make a self-refuting claim. How can we know that we cannot know? If certainty is impossible, then how can we be certain that certainty is impossible? Are you starting to understand the silliness of all of this?
Truth is rather brutish in the way that it imposes itself on our lives. It’s like a safe dropping from a ten-story building; we either step aside or get crushed. While we may not know all that can be known about something, and while we may all have a distinct perspective about an issue, to deny the existence of truth or the sufficiency of our own knowledge of truth is to begin a series of silly mental experiments. At the end of the day, if we look up and see the safe falling, we are probably going to find ourselves stepping out of the way.
Now not everyone takes this rather common sense approach to truth. Great philosophers through the ages have at times also been great skeptics:
Andre GideBelieve those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Molly IvinsI believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.
Albert EinsteinTruth is what stands the test of experience.
BuddhaBelieve nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books, believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.
So how did we get to this place in our world where so many great thinkers distrust anything that is claimed as truth? How did we get to the point where we trust nothing and, at the same time, embrace everything? Let me tell you about my grandmother. She never had any doubt that there was a singular truth. She grew up in Naples, Italy and spent her early life in a world of common dreams, common values, common faith, common enemies, common holidays, and common lives. In a place like this, everyone agrees on what is true and what is a lie, at least when it comes to the major worldview issues. But my grandmother eventually migrated to the world’s greatest experiment in multi-culturalism: the United States. There is no other country in the history of mankind that has tried to blend so many different people with so many different backgrounds. Here, my grandmother had to confront the realization that there is more than one way to consider the world. She found herself in a place where few people agreed about ANYTHING. But she learned quickly that disagreeing about truth is not the same as believing that there simply is no truth to argue about; disagreeing about the truth does not mean that truth cannot be known.
How can we, as individuals, trust that the knowledge we hold is actually true? What is “knowledge” in the first place and how is “knowledge” related to “belief”? Well, philosophers have been thinking about this for some time and the traditional analysis of knowledge is usually described in the following way:
Knowledge=Properly Justified True Belief
Now, what exactly does this mean? It’s important for you and I to understand this simple little equation because our knowledge of ALL things (including our knowledge of spiritual matters) comes down to whether or not we hold properly justified true beliefs. So, let’s examine the definition more precisely, starting backwards from the definition of “Belief” to the definition of “Knowledge”:
“Belief”Let’s face it; you can’t “know” something unless you “believe” it. I can’t “know” that there is a God unless I believe that God exists. But my belief is simply not enough; it is insufficient. You and I can both believe things that are simply untrue. It is possible for us to have false beliefs. And people who believe something that is false often think that they KNOW it. But there is a difference between “believing” and “knowing” in this context. You may “believe” something that is false, but you can’t genuinely “know” something that is false. Now think about this for a minute. We may “know” OF something that is false, but what we “know” is that it IS false! To actually “know” something is to “know” that it is TRUE. And you and I can’t actually “know” something to be true unless it actually IS true. In other words, we can’t “know” something unless it is NOT false.
“True”Most of us like to think that we hold the truth, yet when someone presses us to define what truth is, we might have a hard time trying to define it. How do we determine when something is true? Over the centuries a number of theories have emerged related to assessing, apprehending and understanding truth:
Read More

Related Posts:

Written by Jonathan D. Holmes and Deepak Reju |
Monday, December 13, 2021
As you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your accountability style, remember that, in the end, a struggler needs to be willing to do the hard work of fighting sin and pursuing faith. If you are constantly tracking her down or pressuring her to take the next step, you should back off and talk about her lack of motivation. “Are you willing to do what it takes? And if not, why not?” Even the best accountability can’t save an apathetic struggler. Only God can.

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.—C. S. Lewis, “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?”
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. —Galatians 6:2
Do you know what wisdom is? It’s not just knowing about God and his Word but faithfully applying God’s Word to everyday life.
Solomon tells us, “Wisdom is the focus of the discerning, but the eyes of a fool wander to the ends of the earth” (Prov. 17:24 BSB). The discerning care so much about wisdom that they make it their focus. Wisdom is better than gold or fine jewels (see Prov. 8:11; 16:16). It’s valuable and worth pursuing. Contrast the discerning with the fool, whose eyes roam to the ends of the earth. The fool has no purpose, no focus, and no goals. He wanders through life without clear direction or wisdom to guide him.
King Solomon also writes, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Prov. 13:20). He warns us, “Take heed to the company you keep.” If a struggler walks with wise people, she will become wise. If she chooses to spend time with fools, their foolishness will hurt her—or, even worse, she too will become a fool.
Porn strugglers desperately need wisdom, regardless of how aware they are of that need. They are not meant to fight this problem on their own. Accountability is crucial to their fight for survival, because faith is not an isolated pursuit but is relationally driven. What effect are you having on a struggler? You will either help or hurt her sin struggles.
In this chapter, we’ll look at nine characteristics of good accountability. Our goal is to help you to evaluate your efforts and see which areas of your accountability need improvement.
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS TOUGH
Accountability serves a struggler well if it presses into his life and roots out his sin. These intrusive conversations are tough. The vulnerability that they require is hard because fear, shame, and guilt motivate the struggler to hide his sin and not expose himself. It’s incredibly uncomfortable for a person to let others take a hard look at his sin. Yet vulnerability is necessary for survival. It exposes the ugliness of the sin as well as all the fears, despair, heartache, and messiness that surround it.
Superficial relationships don’t root out sin and build hope. You need to go deep, even when it’s tough. As the accountability partner, are you willing to ask hard, awkward, and direct questions? “Did you masturbate this week?” “Did you lie to anyone this week?” “Is there anything you are hiding from me?” Make sure you are not presuming you know all the right questions. The struggler knows his heart better than anyone else. Ask him, “Am I missing something? What else should I ask?”
You can ask tough questions all day long, but if your friend isn’t honest and vulnerable with you, you are wasting your time. If strugglers are hiding things, not sharing the entire truth, or, even worse, lying to you, they undermine your ability to help. For accountability to work, the struggler has to be willing to respond to your tough questions with brutal honesty.
This means that even as you are tough in your accountability, you should do everything you can to celebrate and encourage honest responses from your friend. I (Deepak) had a friend call me the other day and share with me that he’d fallen back into sexual sin and was viewing porn. My immediate response was, “I really appreciate how honest you are being with me about some very difficult struggles in your life.” I affirmed his honesty because I know that’s what God wants—that my friend would not hide but bring his sin into the light (see Prov. 28:13).
Take a risk—ask your friend about the nitty-gritty, ugly details of his life. Ask about the foulest parts of his heart. His sin will naturally push against this, wanting him to conceal or deny them, but redemption will beckon him to be truthful in all his ways. Solomon states, “An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips” (Prov. 24:26 NIV). Just as a kiss is delightful, so also is honesty.
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS CONSISTENT
Good, consistent accountability is frequent and reliable.
Frequent help is better than infrequent help. Inconsistent accountability shows up occasionally but not often enough. Sin daily finds ways to muck up a struggler’s life. If he lets it go unchecked for too long, it makes a mess of things. Your friend needs your repeated assistance in order to slow down and prevent the mess.
And when an accountability person does show up, he needs to follow through with what he has promised. For example, if you get filter reports, do you contact the struggler when something unhelpful shows up? If you don’t, you’re being unreliable. Because porn struggles are wreaking havoc in his life, a struggler needs help that is regular and reliable.
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS LOCAL
Local accountability is much more useful than distant accountability. Often we’ll ask a struggler, “Who is your accountability partner?” and she’ll respond, “So-and-so, who is a good friend from a few years ago, when I lived in a different part of the country, still checks on me.” Having someone who can check on the porn struggler only via technology (email, text, video call, and so on) is not ideal. At best, this kind of accountability offers only a slice of the struggler’s life rather than a look at his entire life. Relationships that are sustained through technology are limited in their scope.
In the year 2020, we endured a worldwide pandemic, during which many people isolated themselves and relied on technology to communicate with their friends and family and even to participate in church services. As people began to share life together again, we saw the joy with which the members of our congregations returned to church, hugged one another, and spent time in one another’s presence.
God could have left Adam alone with the animals in the garden of Eden, but he didn’t (see Gen. 2:19–25). He gave Adam a partner (Eve) who was personally present with him throughout his life. Jesus didn’t stay in heaven but came to earth to dwell among us and be personally present with us (see John 1:14; Phil. 2:7–8). And we see that the apostle Paul often yearned to be with his fellow believers, especially when he was locked up in prison (see Rom. 1:11; Phil. 1:8, 4:1; 1 Thess. 3:6; 2 Tim. 1:4).
These things show us that God has designed us, as image bearers, to give the most effective help when we are personally present in other people’s lives. The most powerful way for you to give and receive accountability is for you to be regularly involved in someone’s life. This way, rather than share a few words with an image on a screen, you get to enjoy life with the person you are discipling. You can sit across the table from your friend. Sit next to her in church. Go out to lunch with her. Go for a run with her. Give her a hug. Laugh together. Search the Scriptures and pray together. All this is possible when two people live geographically close to each other.
If you aren’t able to provide local accountability for your friend, can you help your friend to find someone who is?
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS COMMUNAL
Pursuing local accountability is not just about finding folks in close proximity to the struggler but about teaching the struggler to turn to an entire gospel community for help. John Freeman says, “We need a community to help us process our soul’s discouraging elements and learn how to live a life of faith and repentance.”1 Thus the struggler needs godly friends who go to her church.
But why a church? Why can’t the struggler just figure this out with one friend and leave it at that? Consider three reasons.

The Lord tells us that his manifold wisdom is displayed through local churches (see Eph. 3:10). If that is God’s plan, we want to be a part of it! We want to root our accountability in a gospel community.
Scripture tells us there is more success with many counselors (see Prov. 11:14; 24:6) than with one.
It’s not good for the pressure and burdens of accountability to fall on one person’s shoulders. Especially when things get difficult for the struggler, the situation may be

a lot for the discipler or close friend to bear alone. Ideally, several people together will carry the weight of the struggler’s problems, working as a team to care for their friend. This is something churches are designed to do (see Gal. 6:2; Heb. 10:24–25).
So if someone says, “I’m not sure who I should tell,” we respond, “How about someone at church? A small-group leader? A godly discipler? A few of your closest friends at church? And, most importantly, your pastor?”
We all have concentric circles of relationships. Those in the inner circle are our most intimate friends. The further out we go into the concentric circles, the more superficial the relationships get. A struggler tells a few folks from his or her inner circle—a pastor, a small- group leader, a few close friends, and a discipler. It’s normal for the struggler and the discipler to meet up. But what if the small-group leader or pastor occasionally shows up too? They talk, pray, and press in at the same time, working together for the spiritual well-being of the struggler. That way, they all get on the same page about what’s wisest and best in the struggler’s fight against sin and striving for faith.
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS MATURE
Immature accountability is marked by a lack of wisdom. The apostle Paul describes the spiritually immature, who are worldly in their thinking, as infants who drink milk instead of eating solid food (see 1 Cor. 3:1–3; 14:20). All too often, a single person finds another single person who is fighting against sexual sin or a married person finds another married person who also struggles. That makes sense—a friend will understand what the struggler is going through (after all, he or she struggles with the same problem!). However, that friend likely won’t have the aggressive disposition needed to help the struggler to fend off his or her sin (see Matt. 5:27–30).
Instead, accountability must be mature—a godly person who is loving, wise, and faithful, who is a season or two ahead of the struggler, and who doesn’t wrestle with sexual sin. If you are a discipler, does that describe you? If not, where do you fall short? Listed below are criteria to help you to see if you are growing in spiritual maturity:2

Do you hunger for God?
Do you study God’s Word such that you are growing in confidence in God and his promises? Is your life increasingly governed by Scripture?
Do you pray and depend on the Lord for help?
Are you committed to a local gospel-preaching church and modeling for younger believers what commitment looks like? Have you grown more concerned about the needs of others?
Have you become more loving?
Do you grieve over your sin? Are you quick to forgive? Have you learned to apply the gospel to your sin and suffering?

After reading these questions, you might think, “I fall far short. I’m not ready.” If that’s you, it’s good to humbly admit such a thing and then help your friend to find a godly person who is ready to take on this responsibility. (If you are not sure what to think, then consult with your pastor or a wise Christian in your church.) Don’t be surprised if a godly person’s study of the Word and life experience make her well of wisdom much deeper.
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS BROAD
Accountability must be placed in a larger framework of Christian friendship rather than restricted to the topic of fighting the sin of pornography. A relationship quickly becomes static if it is built solely on checking on sexual struggles. Your friend wants help with fighting his lust, but he needs much more: hope for daily struggles, more honest relationships with godly believers, and instruction on applying the gospel to the different aspects of his life. Accountability for sexual sin is just one component of his growth in Christ, and good accountability acknowledges that.
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS GRACIOUS
A gracious attitude is essential for good accountability. You need to encourage the hopeless believer, show kindness to the fool, and love the struggler who has failed for the third time in a week. Remember, it’s God’s kindness that leads a sinner to repentance. If God is kind, shouldn’t you be too? Don’t be harsh and demanding, evoking the law often and displaying little of God’s grace.3 God is the final judge, and he has already forgiven the struggler in Christ. If you act like you, rather than God, are the ultimate judge, repent of that attitude.4
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS FAITH-FOCUSED
Anyone can spend a lot of time focused on the horizontal dimensions of life—building friendships, paying bills, exercising, eating well, working hard, helping a neighbor—and lose sight of the vertical. Don’t lose sight of faith. Faith in Christ is the chief goal.
When I (Jonathan) was meeting with Mateo, I knew he was discouraged because of his repeated falls over the last few weeks. We talked about the tactics of shutting down access to the Internet, not staying up late but getting to bed early, and rebuilding friendships in his church community. But I knew I shouldn’t let him go without talking about Christ. So I asked him, “How does your faith make a difference in the fight against sexual sin?” Over the next few minutes, we had a fruitful conversation about how Mateo wanted to grow in greater trust in Christ. He desired greater faith.
GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS WORD-BASED
It is the Word that revives a dead heart and brings life. If you find you are not bringing the Word into enough of your conversations, change course right now. Rather than talking about anything and everything but God’s Word, commit to making your conversations Word-driven.
As you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your accountability style, remember that, in the end, a struggler needs to be willing to do the hard work of fighting sin and pursuing faith. If you are constantly tracking her down or pressuring her to take the next step, you should back off and talk about her lack of motivation. “Are you willing to do what it takes? And if not, why not?” Even the best accountability can’t save an apathetic struggler. Only God can.
Wisdom will grow through tough, consistent, local, communal, mature, broad, gracious, faith-focused, and Word-based accountability. If this is not what you are offering to a struggler, you can change. Ask the Lord for help, and adjust your approach in your next few meetings.
Chapter 7 of the recently released book, Rescue Skills, by Jonathan D. Holmes and Deepak Reju. Used with permission.