Who’s telling the truth
Have you ever heard someone tell you their opinion about an event and another person give you a totally different opinion about the same event? Have you ever wondered how two normal, rational people could have two totally different points of view? Are they both telling the truth or is it their truth mixed with facts and emotions according to how they see it?
If a person is not careful their emotions can recall details that never happened. It’s not exactly what they saw but it explains exactly how they feel.
The Bible says in Proverbs 19:17: “The first to state his case seems right until his opponent begins to cross-examine him.”
The first person to tell you a story sounds true but it doesn’t mean that you heard the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We have courts that are to help people discover some of the misplaced facts. The judge will tell witnesses to keep their testimony to only what they saw. Why? People have the ability to say what they feel happened and not what did happen.
The question is if first-hand information may be only half true, what do you do with second- or third-hand information? So and so said that so and so told them that your cousin told them that you didn’t like me. To act on what so and so said may send you on a fool’s errand.
Our emotions can cause an event to grow much larger than it really was. It’s like when you are fishing and you lose what you think was a pretty nice trout. You saw something that looked to be eight or 10 inches long swim away but your emotions were high so it stretched the fish to be much larger than the fish really was.
You arrive home and someone asked: “How was the fishing?” You say: “I lost a nice one.” They ask: “How big was it?” Do you answer according to what you saw get away or do you answer according to how you felt? Thus the story is retold and soon you must have hooked and lost a great white shark in Blacketts Lake.
Have you ever heard someone tell you something that must have been said after their emotions were raised? I have talked with couples who are arguing. She said this, he said that, I hate him, I want to leave her, I should have never married you!!! I jump in and ask: ‘ What was it that started this lifedefining divorcing moment?” They pause, look at each other, have a s t r a n g e look on their face and then tell me that they couldn’t remember how this mud-slinging, dragout fight started. There was no substance but plenty of emotions.
The above proverb said the first to tell you a story seems right. Proverbs 11:14 says: “Where there is no counsel (no one but you speaking) the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.”
Often people don’t want advice because they hate to be proven wrong. They would rather be wrong by themselves than made right with the group. They avoid counsel because they don’t know how they would feel if the counselor ever said that they were wrong.
Acting upon one voice and bad feelings leads to loneliness. As you walk in the love of God be open to the voice of God and the caring voice of someone you trust will tell you the truth. Find a good church to attend, God bless you all.