“Truth is true for all people in all places and times. It’s also something you can’t invent, think up, or create. It is something you discover. It doesn’t change, no matter how much people’s beliefs about it do. Truth isn’t altered because of how it makes someone feel. Truth is entirely unaffected by the tone and attitude of the person professing it. A lie is still a lie even when communicated with humor and just the right amount of whimsy.”
- Alisa Childers in 'Live your truth - and other lies'
DOES TRUTH TRULY EXIST?
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
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If truth doesn't exist, if you have your truth and I have my truth, there is no point in discussing whether or not Christ is who He said He is - or anything else for that matter.
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If there is no such thing as truth, there would be no need to read this website. Just go out, eat, drink, dance, be merry, and just hope all will turn out for the best, in this life and the next....
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If truth does exist, then Christ's claim that He is the truth, the only way to be reconciled with and to know God, suddenly seems a lot less 'extreme', 'arrogant', or 'narrow-minded', doesn't it?
If truth truly exists, it means that only one of the religions and various spiritual paths out there, is true, and all the others, per definition, are false.
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In our current new age and postmodern or relativistic society, we've been told the impossible is possible; that two things that contradict one another can both be true. Christianity says that Jesus is God incarnate, that He died on a cross, and rose again. Absolutely everyone else, from Buddha to Shiva, from shaman to secular soccer mom, says He was not God.
It takes a willful suppressing of the truth to not see that only one of these is the truth;
Jesus either is or isn't who He said He is.
There is no middle ground here.
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We all know truth exists, because we've all been lied to.
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We all know truth exists, because we all know people who live lives dissociated from reality and how painful and scary that is (such as in the case of dementia or psychosis).
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We all know truth exists, because we all agree that 2+2=4, no matter the weather, your mood, or your opinion.
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We all know truth exists because no matter your mental gymnastics or spiritual philosophy saying otherwise, we don't go around jumping from 20 story buildings believing we will defy the law of gravity.
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Then, since truth truly exists, why do so few people today believe in truth?
Why has the truth all but been replaced with my truth?
Why, rather than search for truth, people now search for what works for them?
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To understand this, we have to understand that God is truth, and the war on truth, is a war on God...
My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God's Word defines truth.
- J.I. Packer
The reason most of humanity has been worshipping a false god(s) for thousands of years, is because there has been a war on truth.
The devil got Adam and Eve to sin, to forsake intimate fellowship with God, by having them question the very foundation of truth; God's Word.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say......."
Genesis 3:1
Fast forward a couple thousand years - and the concept of truth, or should I say the truth of truth, has been all but erased from our worldview. Ask any given person what 'truth' is, and the postmodern, socio-politically correct answer is; there are many different truths. Truth depends on our perspective on something.
You have your truth, I have my truth.
The devil has accomplished in his goal to make something as natural and good as truth, offensive.
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Woe to those who call evil good and good evil....
Isaiah 5:20
When we say that our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences and our perceptions give rise to 'truth', we say that we are the standard for truth. That we, ourselves, create truth.
What we are really saying is.... I am God.
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And what was it again that the serpent tempted us with....?
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"......and you will be like God"
Genesis 3:5
Most of us are not on a truth quest, but on a happiness quest.
- Frank Turek
Why does Truth matter?
Without truth, worship is impossible.
Or rather, worship of the true God is impossible. Without truth, we worship a 'god of our own making', a 'god made in our own image'. This is exactly what the devil had in mind all along, for the devil understands that what you worship, is who you follow, and who you follow, is where you end up.... and if your heart is set on worshipping a false god, the real God is not going to force you to spend eternity with Him (heaven).
Why is it so important to understand and embrace the concept of absolute truth in all areas of life (including faith and religion)? Simply because life has consequences for being wrong. Giving someone the wrong amount of a medication can kill them; having an investment manager make the wrong monetary decisions can impoverish a family; boarding the wrong plane will take you where you do not wish to go; and dealing with an unfaithful marriage partner can result in the destruction of a family and, potentially, disease. Nowhere are the consequences more important than in the area of faith and religion. Eternity is an awfully long time to be wrong.
- Gotquestions
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We are allowed to have opinions, preferences, biases, and perceptions. But God is the only one that can rightfully say what is the Truth, since He is truth. God is not a matter of personal taste, nor perception or experience. God is a matter of truth.
We can either take our emotions and 'intuition' as truth, we can follow our hearts, and we can choose to interpret the world around us and our (spiritual) experiences by our own finite wisdom (and, how's that been working our for you?). OR. We can let our emotions and intuition be shaped after truth, we can let our hearts be led by God, and we can have our smaller stories be interpreted in the light of the One who has written the big story; who has created everything and knows the end from the beginning. In other words... we can either imagine ourselves to be gods (sovereign; in charge of ourselves and not subject to a higher Authority), or we can submit to and know God. But we cannot have both.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship
in Spirit and truth.
John 4:24
What is Truth?
In defining truth, it is first helpful to note what truth is not:
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• Truth is not simply whatever works. This is the philosophy of pragmatism—an ends-vs.-means-type approach. In reality, lies can appear to “work,” but they are still lies and not the truth.
• Truth is not simply what is coherent or understandable. A group of people can get together and form a conspiracy based on a set of falsehoods where they all agree to tell the same false story, but it does not make their presentation true.
• Truth is not what makes people feel good. Unfortunately, bad news can be true.
• Truth is not what the majority says is true. Fifty-one percent of a group can reach a wrong conclusion.
• Truth is not what is comprehensive. A lengthy, detailed presentation can still result in a false conclusion.
• Truth is not defined by what is intended. Good intentions can still be wrong.
• Truth is not how we know; truth is what we know.
• Truth is not simply what is believed. A lie believed is still a lie.
• Truth is not what is publicly proved. A truth can be privately known (for example, the location of buried treasure).
Source; Gotquestions
Truth is transcendent
In truth, truth comes from outside of ourselves.
It is objective, transcendent even.
We did not create truth, we can only discover it has always been there.
No one 'decided' that 2+2=4 - we discovered it.
Truth is in the 'object' (God), not in the subject (us)
Truth is unchanging
Truth doesn't change, nor evolve.
Truth isn't subject to the age or the culture we live in.
2+2 has always been 4 and will always be 4, regardless of whether it 'goes out of style' to say so.
2+2=4 whether you are gay or straight, man or woman, young or old, African or American.
For I, the Lord, do not change...
Malachi 3:6
Truth is exclusive
Two opposing things cannot both be true (law of non-contradiction).
A banana can be a fruit, but it cannot be a pear.
A man and a woman can both be a parent, but a man cannot give birth.
No matter how many numbers there are, the answer to 2+2 is 4, not 5, not 89, not 189712, not any other number.
In other words. Two opposing things can both be wrong, but they cannot both be true.
It is not 'narrow-minded' nor mean to uphold that 2+2=4, and not 5 or 7.
Truth is more than 'fact'
Facts and discoveries may change, truth doesn't.
We may have believed at one point that the sun revolved around the earth (taken as fact) - the truth that the earth revolves around the sun, never changed.
The 'no such thing as truth' fallacy
'There is no such thing as objective truth' is in itself a statement of objective truth, proving the very point it is trying to disprove. 'There is no one truth' is a self defeating prophecy...
We do not 'create our own reality'
What about the popular new age belief that we 'create our own reality'?
I once believed this too, but nowadays I have to admit I have not once created a galaxy, a dimension, not even so much as a tree. I have creative abilities, to be sure, but those are used to re-arrange things that have been previously created by a Creator who created something (everything) out of nothing (ex nihilo).
Our beliefs, then, either line up with reality (truth), or not. And in doing so, they either obscure reality, or are shaped byreality.
Truth is not God
When humans make a god in their own image, we make a god out of love, and we can also make a god out of truth. This sounds like the truth, but isn't. Truth is not God, God is Truth. To say that truth is god is to take one of God's eternal attributes and characteristics, separate it from His whole being and personality, and have a 'relationship' only with that aspect of Him, which is to forego fellowship with the entirety of Him, in other words... to not know Him at all.
God is Truth
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God's Word is truth - John 17:17
The Word became flesh - John 1:14
I am the way, the truth, and the life - words of Jesus in John 14:6
When we say that we can all have our own path to God, or our own experience of God, independent of God's revelation to us, we yet again make ourselves the starting point. We don't have a path to God - God had to come to us. God came to us in Jesus, and this is the only revelation of God that reconciles us with God. Our own ideas, opinions, and experiences, no matter how spiritual, transcendent, blissful, or lofty, don't.
If we want to know the truth, we have to stop having ourselves as the starting point of the search, the wisdom, the interpretation, the intuition, the path.... and simply let Him reveal Himself to us.
Truth is hard to find- not because it hides itself but because we're looking in the wrong place; within ourselves. It's like trying to find your way with a compass by positioning yourself so that the needle always points to you. Measuring yourself by yourself is like navigating through the wilderness by throwing away your compass and pretending you are magnetic north.
- Dr Jeff Myers
[.....] of men who in their wickedness suppress the truth.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:18-20
Romans 1 reveals to us that people actually, actively suppress the truth. God is not hard to find, He is just hard to want. By nature (since the fall), we are born separate from and in rebellion against God. Our compass (our heart), is pointed away from God, not towards Him. If you have been searching for spiritual truth, you may have found all sorts of experiences and 'truths', that brought you nowhere closer to the one true God, all while your heart told you that you were close to God.
The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?
Jeremiah 17:9
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As it is said, 'people are looking for God like a criminal is looking for the cops'....
If we can't truly trust our feelings, our experiences, our beliefs, and our intuition, when it comes to truth - then how are we to ever discover truth?
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God needs to come to us to reveal Himself.
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He does this by giving us His Holy Spirit, which then begins to lead us into all truth. Light equals truth, by the light of the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures are illuminated. The Holy Spirit is the light by which we see God. The Holy Spirit is the only light by which the Scriptures open themselves, whereas our natural mind would see a bunch of religious nonsense.
We don't reject the truth on the basis of logic or reason, nor are we innocently ignorant; we actively suppress the truth (by suppressing our conscience), because of the implications. We want to keep doing what we're doing, we want to keep believing what we're believing, we want to keep being the final authority on right and wrong, good and evil (at the very least in our own lives). In a collision course with real, unadulterated truth... we would have to give up all that is not true, no matter how much pleasure or comfort it brings us.
The true follower of Christ will not ask 'if I embrace this truth, what will it cost me?'. Rather he will say 'this is the truth, God help me walk in it, come what may.'
A W TOZER
If we want to know the truth, we have to love the truth and pursue it at all cost.
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The moment we can honestly say, I want the truth more than anything, is the moment God will reveal Himself to us, as Jesus on the cross, as Jesus alive and risen, as Jesus saving and reigning.
For the Christ is God's revelation of Himself (who is truth) to us that transcends time and space.
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There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one. -C. S. Lewis
If we say we are seekers, we need to eventually find and land at truth, not just a truth, but the truth. To be continually seeking but to never find is not to be a seeker, but an avoider. To be open-minded to anything but the the truth, is not to be open-minded but to be empty-minded.
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Anyone who really wants the truth ends up at Jesus.
- Johnny Cash
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If you want to find out why Johnny Cash said that all who want the truth end up at Jesus, continue here.....