Learning to Recognize the Real

There comes a moment when something shifts internally—

when what you’re seeing can no longer be explained away, softened, or reframed into comfort.

Once you’ve seen capital-T Truth, you cannot unsee it.

You cannot close your eyes again.

You cannot unknow what you now know.

We have been told for so long that everyone has their own truth that it appears we now actually believe it. I include myself in that human tendency. I’m no better than anyone else. But truth does not multiply into versions without consequence. When truth fractures, discernment weakens.

What is unfolding in places like Minneapolis is not merely political, cultural, or social. It is spiritual. And it is dark.

The question that presses on me is not whether deception exists, but how long we have lived alongside it without recognizing it.

All media dabbles in deception. All of it. And we have been drinking from those wells for so long that our consciences have dulled. What once would have alarmed us now barely registers.

I remember scripture teachers using the illustration of counterfeit currency. You don’t learn to spot the fake by obsessing over counterfeits—you learn by studying the real. The counterfeit always mimics first… then subtly morphs to deceive. The real never changes because it is real.

Truth—capital-T Truth—does not evolve to keep pace with culture. Culture drifts when it abandons truth.

We are always learning, yet often not doing. Always hearing, yet not acting. Knowledge makes us feel informed—even righteous—but it can quietly paralyze obedience. Faith without works is not neutral; it is incomplete. It is dead.

Faith does not erase danger.

It anchors us within it.

Daniel still stood in a den full of lions. His faith did not remove the threat—it sustained him inside it.

Words matter. Definitions matter. Even language can be reshaped over time to reflect culture rather than anchor it. That, too, is a form of morphing truth.

Sobriety is not panic.

Discernment is not fear.

And refusing to lie to ourselves is not a lack of faith.

It is the beginning of clarity.