So what’s the value of truth? What can we exchange for the truth? The Bible says nothing. The Bible says you should pay anything for the truth
By Sam Amadi
What is the worth of the truth? How much can you give to know the truth? Is the truth that important? Should we bother about the truth? Should we be really careful to distinguish truth from untruth?
The answer to all these questions is: yes. The Bible counsels everyone to “Buy the truth, and sell it not.” (Prov. 23:23). Buy the truth.
When you buy a thing, you exchange it for something else. You exchange the less valuable for the more valuable. If you buy a car for N30million, you are saying that the value of N30million is less than the value of the car. We exchange the less valuable for the more valuable.
So the Bible says you should buy the truth because truth is valuable. How valuable is truth? We cannot know until we know what we can exchange truth to have. The valua of a thing is measured by what thing we can give up to have it. If we buy a house and we can give it up for a car that is the value we place on that thing. If we buy a car and we can only give it up for the value of a house in a highbrow district, then that is the value of the car. Whatever you can give up for something is the value of that something. It is on this principle that the market economy works. The value of a thing is the price we can pay for it. That is, the value of what we can exchange for it.
So what’s the value of truth? What can we exchange for the truth? The Bible says nothing. The Bible says you should pay anything for the truth (buy the truth). But you should never exchange the truth for anything (sell it not).
Why is truth invaluable? Why should we never sell the truth for anything? The Bible offers a clear and unfalsifiable answer: “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”. Why should we never sell the truth. The reason is because truth is invaluable. How invaluable? Truth is invaluable because it is the key to our freedom. Only the truth can liberate us. In many ways, we are in captivity. Ignorance is captivity. Falsehood is captivity. The truth is liberation.
So, truth is what sets us free. Therefore, our overriding preoccupation in life should be to know the truth. Once as an undergraduate, one of my uncles was unhappy with my voracious reading of advanced philosophy texts. He counseled me to focus on making first class in law and leave philosophic texts. I answered him that it is more important that I understand the nature of life and the purpose of my existence than making first class in law. What comes first is knowing the truth. Buy the truth.
“Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father, but by me.” (John 14:6)
The Bible has an unparalleled simplicity and symmetry. It does not leave any question hanging in the air. It goes further to declare the truth you should buy at any cost and never sell for any price. That truth is: Jesus Christ. Not just Jesus Christ as a person. But Jesus Christ as a series of facts: (1) that the earth is created by God to reflect his divinity, (2) that the earth fell into sin and the divinity was lost, (3) that God himself came down to redeem the earth, (4) that by this redemptive love, the earth is blessed, (5) that as long as we acknowledge and accept the redemptive love, we manifest and institutionalize this redemptive, and (6) that ultimately the earth will finally be restored to its original state when knowledge of God fills the earth.
There are many who believe that there is no truth. It is all about clash of preferences. We each have our truths. Your own truth can lead you to hurt another person and another person’s truth may lead him to destroy a race. It is all ok. We can only regret the devastation. But we cannot judge their truth. All those who believe this plain falsehood have refused to buy the truth or have sold it for a vain thing.
The worst thing that happens to us is to sell the truth for anything. We sell the truth when we reject the obligation of walking and doing the truth for the benefit of any other thing. When we refuse to speak the truth to both the powerful and the powerless; when we defend the wicked because of what we stand to gain; when we compromise our life of holiness and righteousness for material or fleshly enjoyment; we have sold the truth.
“Buy the truth and sell it not”, should guide our everyday life. We should accept nothing in exchange of a life of truth.
It should also guide us as we march toward 2023 general elections. We should do everything to seek out the best candidates. And when we find them, we should not exchange them for anything, be it a bag of rich, a potential appointment, or the delight of ethnic or religious affinity.
• Amadi, a lawyer and policy expert, wrote from Abuja.