The Facts

No. 37 - 07th May 2017

First of all my apologies for getting my facts wrong last week. I was talking about Alistair Brownlea helping his brother to the finishing line at the Rio Olympics. In fact it was during the World Triathlon Series in Mexico which happened a month after their win at Rio. I think it’s important that I get my facts right, so I’ll try to be more careful in future.

It seems to me that we live in an age where people tend to see truth as anything they want it to be, regardless of the facts. I remember once watching a programme about Dan Brown’s book ‘The da Vinci Code’. There was a group of youngsters who were convinced that the claims made in the book were perfectly true. The presenter was taking them around various sites and talking to the experts. The claims made in the book were of course demonstrated to be a fiction. Then at the end of the programme, the young people were asked whether they still believed in what the book was saying. And one of them said, ‘Yes, I do. Because I want to believe it. In spite of the evidence’. The facts meant nothing to him. They were irrelevant. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

We’ve just been through the Easter weekend where part of the story is about Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus. And then in despair, he goes away and hangs himself. Well, shortly after that, the eleven remaining Apostles were trying to decide who they should pick to replace Judas as one of the twelve. A major consideration was that the man who replaced Judas, had to be one of the followers who were with them right from the beginning of Jesus’ public life. This man had to be an eye-witness to everything that Jesus did during those incredible three years. After all, they weren’t just peddling ideas, or a philosophy that you can pick up from books – well scrolls in their case. No, they were witnesses to a series of events which to them, proved beyond doubt that Jesus was who he said he was. He claimed to be the Son of God, and everything he did supported that claim. So, the facts were really important to them. They had to be able to say, “It’s all perfectly true. I saw it with my own eyes”. And that’s why the facts are so important.