Mike and Cindy met on a blind date. A mutual friend had set them up. The friend had told Mike a little bit about Cindy. He said, “She’s really beautiful, she’s smart, she’s sweet and I think you’d make a great couple. But,” he added, “she has really big feet and she’s quite sensitive about it. So, whatever you do, don’t stare at her feet.”
Well, of course, that was the first thing Mike tried to see. Just a quick sneak peek. Yet he couldn’t see anything really unusually huge about her feet. But, of course, she had on dress shoes and they had met in a dark restaurant. He really liked Cindy though. She was everything that his friend had said she was.
So, Mike and Cindy went on a second date. This time it was a casual affair and she was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. Still, Mike didn’t recognize anything odd about her feet. He had trusted his friend’s warnings though, and he tried to avoid an embarrassing encounter.
Well, eventually his friend admitted to Mike that he had told a fib, he had pulled a prank. The half-truth was not well-received at first. It all turned out okay, however. Mike and Cindy got married and the prankster was eventually forgiven.
But how many half-truths does it take to make the whole truth? Zero…or it won’t compute.
There is an ancient story called “The Blind Men and the Elephant” that further illustrates this idea. Here’s a version of it:
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”
They had no idea what an elephant was. They decided, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and explore it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Every one of them touched the elephant at different places.
“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.
“Oh, no! It is a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.
“Oh, no! It is a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
“It is a big hand fan,” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
“It is a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
“It is a solid pipe,” said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right. Sound familiar?
The moral of these stories is that the whole truth is not always what we think at first, especially if our perspective is limited or if we listen to the wrong people. We have to be sure and test out what we hear, see, or touch…or otherwise experience.
Christian apologist, Josh McDowell writes, [1]“Belief will not create fact. Truth is independent of belief. No matter how hard I may try, believing something will not make it true.”
Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me. (John 14:6, NASB).
The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
[1] https://www.josh.org/resources/apologetics/answering-skeptics