All posts tagged: John 18:38 What is Truth

For An Opportunist, There is No Truth

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You might know the story of Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer, sometimes called the father of modern astronomy. He discovered ‘Heliocentrism’ which means the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not the other way around. For this, he was tried and condemned by the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church, forced to repent of his sin, and placed under house arrest for life. RELATED: Galileo Galilei: Wikipedia It turns out he was correct, but his research interfered with the powers of his time and place. Truth was less important than the opportunity to gain and hold power. This happened at the time of the Protestant Reformation, and it’s one of the reasons why we have Protestants today. Clever people moved north to Protestant regions, and initially research and industry were mostly in the northern parts of Europe, in countries like Germany and Sweden; the wealthy countries, today. That was a big mistake for the Catholic Church, and they are still embarrassed. The story of Galileo is also a warning to us today, especially religious believers …

Credit: miranda/Flickr/Creative Commons

The Lying Truth

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I love to tell stories Sometimes it’s hard to tell if what I am saying is actually true. When I worked in a clinic for a few years as a counselor, my co-workers would phone my wife to ask if what I was saying was true. Kind of weird since how did they know she was not lying to them? I guess you could say that some of my stories were deceitful. I disguised them as the truth until the very end when I admitted I made the whole thing up. One time my son and his girlfriend, Judith, were camping. I suppose he was bored because he asked us to join them around the campfire. Now I have a reputation as a bit of a story-teller so when we get there, I sit at the campfire and start making up a story. I can make up a story at any time about anything. On this particular night I started rambling on about nothing in general until it formed itself into a story. Although I …

Pontius Pilate presenting Christ to the crowd by Antonio Ciseri (1821-1891)/Wikipedia

2,000-year-old ring discovered belonging to Pontius Pilate?

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A copper alloy ring discovered 50 years ago during a dig at Herod’s burial tomb and palace between 1968-69 may have belonged to Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect who ruled Judea between 26 and 36 AD (CE). The ring was part of hundreds of artifacts discovered at the dig. After being in storage for several decades, the Israeli Antiquities Authority had the ring cleaned and analyzed. Using a special camera, they discovered the words “of Pilate ” (Pilatus) engraved on the center of the ring around the image of a large wine vessel called a Krater. Because of its discovery in the Herod excavation, there is speculation the ring belonged to Pontius Pilate, the man who ordered Christ’s crucifixion. The down side is the ring is not of great quality which caused some to question whether it would be a ring Pontius Pilate would have worn. However, the best evidence that it belonged to Pontius Pilate is due to the name. While Pontius is common enough, the name Pilate was “extremely rare.” In fact, there …