The key idea in this passage in the Fourth Gospel is truth. Jesus says, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

Truth has taken a beating in the past century. We have come to a supposedly post-modern era in which a lot of people think that there isn't any real truth that's true for you just as much as it's true for me. We're told that there are no grand narratives about reality that are true for everybody - just "whatever works for you." There's truth for women and truth for men, truth for rich and for poor, for Christians and Muslims and atheists and many other faiths and non-faiths - but who's to say that one person's truth is true for another? Sometimes a basis for that idea of the relativity of truth is c…