Should We Look For Truth Inside Or Outside Of Us?

It’s popular in many “spiritual” circles to poo-poo the idea that we can look for the truest answers outside of us.

Many even look down on people who look to, say, religion for “answers” to the big questions in life. The places some look to outside themselves are seen as a crutch. “The answers lie within,” they insist. “Reality is what we perceive it to be.”

(This can be backed up, to some extent, by quantum physics. Because our perception actually changes the thing perceived, they can say that there is no “objective reality,” as everything is a matter of perception. Unless, of course, there is an objective reality outside of perception.)

These spiritual people may even use scripture to back it up, quoting Jesus as saying, “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). (This is a misquote, by the way. More on that below.)

Others (often of a religious stripe, of course), insist that one can’t trust one’s “inner knowing”; human beings have a “sinful” nature, and can’t trust it. They too cite scripture: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

This is an important issue for anyone who truly wants to live out their spirituality authentically.

So where do we turn for truth? How can we know truth?

Here’s my take on it.

As usual, posing this as an either/or option is not accurate. (Either/or thinking seldom is; it’s usually a sign of dysfunctional thinking.) It’s a matter, in my opinion, of order.

Some don’t believe there is such a thing as absolute truth. I do. There is an objective reality which we call God, who exists above and beyond us, and above and beyond human perception. This “God Most High” made the world, and continues to sustain it. This God revealed himself in the Bible, a revelation of truth that could not otherwise be known apart from the revelation.

Since this God made us and everything else, he knows exactly how things work. So it is pure wisdom to look to the revelation of Truth to pattern our lives around.

What Jesus actually said in Luke 17:21 is “The kingdom of God is among you [or in your midst].” This is posited as the more accurate translation, and it refers to Jesus himself. He also called himself “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” So we look to Jesus, a being apart from us, for Truth and Life.

Yet that’s not the end. Because there is an inner knowing to be had. Some people live just in their heads, thinking that just believing the truth intellectually is enough.

It is not.

The truth—i.e. Jesus who claimed to be the Truth—must be welcomed inward, into the heart. This Truth is meant to be experienced, not just intellectually believed.

And we can only experience it through connection. That is the “subjective” part. It is experienced only in relationship to the One who is above and beyond us.

In that sense, the Truth, the Kingdom of God, Reality, is within us. We can have an inner knowing from a heart that is being purified through its connection and relationship to this Truth who is a Person. This Person can guide us, comfort us, strengthen us, give us peace.

This Person can take Truth and show us, through the indwelling Holy Spirit of Jesus, how it applies to our particular life, our particular situation.

It is the connection between outer an inner reality where the balance—and the magic—lie.

This is why we can trust our Heart, that inner knowing that comes when we are Connected to the Truth. Our hearts are being renovated, and we can now live from that renovated heart that Jesus gives us.

This is why in my Align with Your Divine Design program, the foundational module is the Connection piece of the CHRIA Cycle of Transformation. (CHRIA = Connect-Heal-Release-Infuse-Activate.) We heal the blocks to that connection, and learn several ways to Connect and deepen the relationship with Immanuel, the God who is with us.

THAT is the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10.

I share all this because it’s my passion that everyone experience this abundant life that I know, that lifts me above the very real and difficult circumstances I’m facing now. I’d be lost without my Connection to Immanuel.

As indeed, we all are.

If you would like to develop your connection to Immanuel, I encourage you to check out my Immanuel Connection calls. I will facilitate that connection and you will receive the recording to go back to. It is one of the practices that has healed and sustained me the most. Learn more here.