"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." -Matthew 5:6

“What is Truth?” Pontius Pilate questions Jesus' claim that He is "sent to testify to the truth" (John 18:37). Hearing the barrage of false accusations from the Jewish leaders, Pilate became confused, gave up, and eventually sentenced Jesus to the cross.
These days, the phrase “fake news” is being brandished as a weapon by people of polarizing politics and ideologies to bash those who do not agree with their views. Added to this are a volatile mix of click baits, trolls, and attention-seeking posts on traditional and social media to confuse, deceive, and further divide people. Like Pilate, most of us just do not know what to believe anymore.

Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 with the Beatitudes, a list of blessings that describe the inner character and attitudes of those who are true servants of God. In verse 6, Jesus teaches us to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to have a deep desire to be in a right relationship with God. Only by actively seeking God will our hunger and thirst for truth be filled. And we will know that the real truth lies in who God is, His emotions, His ways, and His story revealed in the Scripture.
Almost daily, we are challenged to judge information and ideas to be either “truths” or “fake news.” But for Christians, unless we are anchored to God’s truth and are earnestly seeking righteousness, we can easily be deceived, for both will draw us away from God. Many Christians revere the Bible – but we just don’t read it often enough. Without Bible literacy, we fall prey to the deception of the world that somehow the Scripture is out of touch with the modern times, innately bigoted, or unreliable. Let us strive to be messengers who know the truth, who live the truth, who are not swayed by the deceptions, and people who can present the beautiful redeeming truth of God before others.