What will threaten the health of the church in 2019? While many threats may exist, one particularly comes to mind: a lack of love. Lovelessness deforms truth. It embraces evangelical jargon to puff up its ego. Yet this embrace represents an artifice of truth and not the real thing. To speak truly, we must speak the truth in love. That’s the realist truth. Truth devoid of love is a styrofoam staircase. It looks like the real thing but falls to pieces when anyone steps on it.
Today’s tribalistic culture deforms truth by making it a weapon of warfare. Political discourse thrives on discrediting the other side. It uses truth rather than honouring it. Winning is all that matters. Love-lacking speakers defile any truth in their words. For their true words become a “ringing gong or a clanging cymbal.” But truth without love is a halfway house that requires rehabilitation. This is because the realist truth analogically participates in God who is true, holy, just, and love.