Once, again, our four year old daughter, Caroline, has reminded me that:

a) The English language is very convoluted, and

b) She understands it better than I... er, me... I mean...

Last night, my wife, DJ, and I were trying to watch something on television that required more than passing attentiveness. Caroline would have no part of it. I had been away from home for most of the weekend preparing for and presenting a game show at a youth conference at church, and DJ had offered to babysit for some married friends so they could have a Valentine's eve dinner. Caroline is a "quality time" child and she wanted mommy and daddy's attention, now!

(If you've never read Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages, from which the "quality time" reference comes, I would highly recommend it. It is one of the five best and most important books I have ever read.)

Hoping to not miss the meat of the show we were watching, I looked at Caroline and said, "Mommy and daddy want to watch this for just a minute. If you're going to stay in here, for the next few minutes, you can't talk out loud."

Caroline didn't miss a beat. There was no sarcasm. There was no smirk on her face. She was as serious as a four year old can be. She looked intently into my eyes as she asked...

"Can I talk out quiet?"

DJ bit her tongue to keep from laughing. I chewed holes in the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing. Neither worked.

I grabbed Caroline and hugged her. And whatever was on television became much less important.

Her comment reminded me of the seminar we had attended at church only a few hours earlier. We are viewing a series by Focus on the Family called The Truth Project. For the first session, they conducted several "man on the street" interviews asking people the question, "What is truth?"

The hesitation, the equivocation, and the consternation of the people they asked was, at times, humorous and, at other times, deeply disturbing.

Nobody wanted to "hang their hat" on absolute truth... except a 13 year old boy. He said words to the effect of, "Truth is reality and reality is what God has created. However God sees things, that's truth."

So, technically, I was outsmarted by two children - one of whom is my child and the other who's young enough to be my child - in one evening. Something tells me I should get used to this.

Later, the Truth Project video contained a clip from R.C. Sproul that really struck me. He said, "God's perception of reality is never distorted." The implication, of course, is that - if you're not God (and you're not) - your perception of reality (and mine) is distorted. Wow!

If I'm getting the point of The Truth Project, it is this: All the problems we face in our homes and families and jobs and societies come down to choices between the truth and lies. We can chose Satan's lies for how to deal with people and situations, or we can choose truth and do it God's way.

And Jesus drew a pretty clear line in the sand when he said, "Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." (John 18:37 NIV)

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