God measures truth by a different standard than the world. The world measures truth by economic, academic, and social standards none of which are evil by themselves. Those interpretive standards can become evil if they are used to dismantle truth and offer the Church a lesser standard by which to live.

Just moments before Jesus was arrested, He prayed to the Father, “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world” (John 17:14).

Jesus gave His disciples the standard of the word to use to measure the standard by which they would live and make decisions. The truth of the word personally expressed by the disciples is what caused the hatred they would face once Jesus left earth and ascended to His throne.

The standard of truth the disciples used to guide their lives was not some fuzzy, soft-edged, migrating definition of truth molded by every whim of human opinion. It was based on the word of God. When placing our standards on the scales for evaluation, they will begin to move toward a point of revelation. At that point, we have significant decisions to make.

If you are facing a critical life decision, place your standard on the scales opposite the standard of God’s word. Only by allowing the standard of God’s word to be weighed against our personal standards will we know how to proceed.

If we choose to weigh the validity of our standard against God’s standard, we will need to ask for wisdom to apply what the scales reveal. It will take wisdom, wrapped in love to know how we should relate to the surrounding culture once we have allowed the truth to craft our choices and show us our next steps. As Jesus revealed in His prayer to the Father, that choice will cause the world to hate us because we no longer accept an equal measurement between human opinion and God’s word.