Can I just tell you how much I love these three little words?

Is it true?

Oh goodness – how many hurt feelings, conflicts, confrontations, messes, countless hours of counseling, mending, and healing could be avoided, all for the wont of these three little words.

This is the first thing Paul exhorts us to think about in Philippians 4:8:  whatever is true… think about such things.  So in determining whether a thought should roam around in our mind or whether we should take it captive, a good first test is, “Is it true?”

Now some things are a little obvious, like, “The devil is a good guy.”  Well, that’s definitely false.

But what about the things that we don’t know if they are true?  There is the true/false paradigm, but there is also the fact/opinion paradigm.

Remember that from when we were little?  “Put an F in front of the statements that are fact.  Put an O in front of the statements that are opinion.”  It’s a little simplistic, I know.  But it definitely helps me sort through situations.

Take, for example, this situation…

The scenario:  Small group starts at 7:00pm. Samantha arrived tonight at 7:15pm.

____  Samantha was 15 minutes late to small group.

____  Samantha isn’t committed to small group and disrespects her group               members.

Which of those two statements should we say is a ‘true’ statement?  Like really, truly, factually true?