The Truth Drug

An acquaintance of mine was experimenting with what he called the truth drug: LSD.

Initially he got a real buzz out from the fascinating mind trip he got. Then he started seeing sounds and hearing colors and the trips began getting less fascinating and more frightening, with weird faces starting to appear that were more like the grotesquely carved figures that are found on old churches.

The truth is this guy died not too long after getting heavily into drugs.

This guy began experimenting with the truth drug because he thought trying to live a life of self-discovery and putting God to the test required too much effort. A faster way would be to explore the mind with the truth drug.

One thing is for sure, now he knows what it is like to die and reject the offer of eternal life that is promised through accepting Jesus Christ.

Truth is a funny thing. There is subjective truth and objective truth. According to some, there is my truth, your truth and the real truth. My truth is subjective truth and your truth is subjective truth, so real truth must be objective truth. However,even what is termed objective truth is subject to interpretation, so what we might call objective truth may not be real truth.

You might well ask "What is truth?" According to the Bible, the Roman governor Pilate asked this very same question of Jesus. Jesus gave no answer.

When Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?", he was being dismissive and making a statement rather than asking a question.

Jesus had told Pilate that he had come into the world to testify to the truth, and all who were of the truth heard his voice.

Basically, Pilate was speaking as a politician. To a politician, success is about perception and not truth. To be a successful politician it is important that the people that matter have a favorable perception of you. This was the case 2,000 years ago and it is no different today. If suppressing truth helps then, so what?

Jesus came to testify to the truth.

Even though Pilate may have been dismissive of the value of truth, it was something that he knew he had to deal with. Every politician knows the value of truth, even though it might seem expedient to suppress the truth for personal gain, no one likes being lied to.

What was the truth to which Jesus testified?

On the surface, this seems a difficult question to answer, because Jesus claimed he was the truth.

If Jesus is the truth, then Jesus had to be real. He had to be eternal.

One thing, we all know is that Jesus was a historical figure who died. Josephus, the non-Christian, Jewish historian testifies to this, as do the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. There are other biblical books that testify to eye witness accounts of Jesus existence. The physician, Luke interviewed people who had seen Jesus and recorded this in the book of Acts, as well as the gospel that bears his name. Saul, who persecuted the church, and who changed his name to Paul, claims to have seen Jesus, and was told by him to celebrate the communion. Peter wrote that he was an eye witness of Jesus. The First Epistle of John begins stating that the author and others had seen, heard and touched the eternal one, who the writer says is Jesus.

The problem for non-believers is there is no burial site for Jesus and they simply refuse to believe that because he had the power over death, his physical body was transformed into an eternal body. The difficulty with this for unbelievers is this means Jesus had to be more than just a mere human, because all humans die.


Oddly enough, many of these non-believers of Jesus death and resurrection even doubt Jesus existence. Yet they accept that the Buddha existed and lived on Earth, even though they only have religious writings to attest to this. It is easier for them to believe the teachings of the Buddha, because he was a human who died from food poisoning and was cremated.

As for Mohammed, he too was just a mere man, only not a peace-loving one like Guatama Siddhartha, the Buddha, appears to have been. There is even a burial site which is said to have his bones, to support that Mohammed actually lived. What is odd about Mohammed is he believed in the Virgin Birth of Jesus, but not in his resurrection. His followers must have dismiss this fact, otherwise they would all have to admit that Jesus was a superior individual to Mohammed.

One of the interesting biological facts about those who claim to have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ is they are much happier people than those who don't. Maybe the truth is they have learnt how to release endorphins into their body and experience a much more blissful life as a result. Endorphins are addictive and those who smoke, gamble and have other addictions, unknowingly find pleasure as a result of endorphins being released into their brain. This is what keeps addicts addicted, and not the thing they do that ruins their life.

The truth drug that took the life of my acquaintance when he was twenty-two was only a substitute for the real thing. And you know there are no substitute for the real thing. But sometimes the real thing requires a dose of reality we do not want to admit. As someone once said, "The truth hurts."