To All my Artists, Writers, and Preachers
For everyone who is involved in the arts, writing, and preaching, you will find that there are some striking similarities in the art of preaching/proclaiming truth and the task of the artist. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his 1970 Nobel Prize speech, "In this cruel, dynamic, explosive world, on the brink of a dozen destructions, what is the place and role of the writer? We writers have no rockets to blast off, we do not even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle, we are indeed altogether despised by those who respect only material power... writers and artists can do something more: they can vanquish the lie... We must not seek excuses on the grounds that we lack weapons... we must go out into battle... One word of truth outweighs the whole world. And on such a fantastic breach of the law of conservation of mass and energy are based my own activities and my appeal to writers of the world."
The power of a word of truth must not be underestimated. Today, our culture has a disenchantment with all words. We deconstruct and manipulate them to mean whatever will be most expedient for us. Though words are ignored and fall on deaf ears, we must never fail to recognize the power of one word of TRUTH.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John 1:1 Jesus is this Word of Truth (John 14:6) with all the power of God in Himself.
posted by Jim Shultz @ 11:50 AM
2 Comments:
We are starting to view words less as vehicles of truth than as bendable reeds to build our own little reality with. On NPR yesterday they mentioned a pattern of bending the truth, from the White House to random authors exaggerating their memoirs. With the barrage of information on the internet today, we must habitually question what we read.
When it's free and easy to throw words out to the world on a blog, it's easy to forget the power that the Word has.
I agree that actions are more powerful than words. I do believe that lies/sin can be powerful as well. I am not arguing here that truth must be all powerful now (though I believe that one day that will be the case at Christ's return). I am arguing that words have much more power than we give them credit for, so we must take the words we say very seriously.
jim
Post a Comment
<< Home