Truth Is As The Truther Says

One thing I have learned in life is that for many people, truth is a relative thing. The truth is what they say it is, and you can't convince them otherwise.

I wrestle with telling the truth all the time. If you tell the truth, you do not have to remember what happened. But when you lie, you have to have a good memory of what the last lie was. Unfortunately, I do not have that kind of memory.

What I do remember is good old Uncle Dan. Now, he was not a biological uncle in that sense. But he was so much a part of our family and our family gatherings that everybody treated him like an uncle.

Everybody in the family really loved Uncle Dan. He had a charm about him that nobody could really refuse. He wasn't married and had no siblings, so, apart from my family, he had no family. We gladly welcomed him into our family circle.

What most of us liked about Uncle Dan was his humorous stories. He never ran out of stories to tell, and they were all hilarious. He was so funny I believed he could have been a comedian, but we accepted him and enjoyed his comedy.

Uncle Dan has been gone now for at least 20 years, but I still remember quite a few things about him. Of course, my memory is focused on his stories. For every family gathering, he had at least one story to tell.

As soon as Uncle Dan began one of his stories, he had our attention.

We all laughed almost uncontrollably while he told his story. We didn’t know at the time, but we laughed because he told different versions of the same story. It was when he went fishing at the lake. I don't know where it all started, because it was always a different lake.

At the time, nobody realized he was telling the same story, just different versions. Every time he told the story, it turned out differently from the story before.

My cousin and I were the first ones to realize what good old Uncle Dan was doing. Whether Uncle Dan knew he was doing it or not, I will never know.

After one of his storytelling episodes, my cousin and I were together, I looked at him and said, "Wasn't that similar to the story he told the last time?"

My cousin looked at me, scratched his chin, and then said, "You know, I think you're right. That was similar to the one he told last time, and the one he told before that, and the one he told before that one. They all were similar."

Together, we laughed as only cousins could. We couldn't wait until the next family gathering with Uncle Dan. We wanted to see if anybody else caught on to what Uncle Dan was doing.

My cousin and I agreed that Uncle Dan probably did not know he was changing these stories every time. To him, it was like he was telling the story for the very first time.

Several years after he passed away at our family gathering, I brought up the subject.

"I sure miss Uncle Dan stories. They sure were very entertaining." Then the family group laughed together and smiled.

I could not help it, but I had to take it one step further: "Do any of you know what Uncle Dan was doing with his stories?"

Nobody understood what I was saying. One person said, "They were very funny stories and I enjoyed every one of them."

I then presented another question, "Can anybody tell me how many stories Uncle Dan told?"

A silly chuckle ran through the crowd, and finally someone said, "He told us a new story every time we got together. I don't remember how many stories he told us."

I looked at my cousin and said, "Mike could you answer that question?"

With a hearty chuckle, he looked at the family group and said, "Uncle Dan only ever told one story throughout the years."

Nobody in that crowd understood what we were saying. But as we pursued in that direction, one family member said, "You know, that thought occurred to me about 10 years ago when he was telling his story. They all sounded similar and I couldn't put it together."

My cousin and I laughed together, and soon everybody said a profound "awe.”

The rest of that family gathering was very interesting as people began to remember similarities in Uncle Dan's stories. Everybody thought he was telling a different story every time we gathered.

I don't believe Uncle Dan was lying to us; he didn't understand the truth as it really was.

Remembering Uncle Dan and his "story" helps me see truth differently. Was he telling the truth? And was that truth from his perspective?

In thinking about Uncle Dan’s stories, I was reminded of what Jesus said about the importance of telling the truth.

“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32).

Uncle Dan’s stories were just entertainment. However, the Word of God is not entertainment but the basis of all truth. When I know God’s truth, it will set me free from everything else.