Obscured Truths

As I sat in our small library in our home I looked across the space and saw an open magazine sitting on a little end table. It was our Church's youth magazine. I peered at the title of the article and immediately scrunched my eyes and questioned why such an article in a church youth magazine would even be included. Yet, there it was, staring back at me: How the Law of Chastity is a Bad Idea. I could not believe my eyes!

Why the Church would even consider publishing such an article was beyond me. This had to be a joke! I forgot what I was working on and reached across to the magazine and pulled it toward me, knocking the magazine that was on top of it onto the floor. When I knocked the other magazine onto the floor, I saw the full title of the magazine article. It now read, "How do I Explain to my Friend that Breaking the Law of Chastity is a Bad Idea." A critical part of the article had been obscured by the magazine that had been on top of the article I was looking at.

Sometimes when we look at the world around us, as the flow of information comes to our lives, bits and pieces of that information may be missing or obscured. As a result, we make decisions based on faulty information. Often, those decisions are as faulty as the information we rely upon to make them. Truth is always there, but because parts of it are obscured, missing, and in some cases willfully withheld from our view, we don't see it. And we dangerously make decisions on faulty information. Only upon closer scrutiny, often by pulling it closer to us and by knocking away those things that obscure truth can we find the full picture. Such action requires diligence and a relentless quest for truth.