Title: What is Truth?
Central idea: contrast Jesus truth with truth in American culture today
Specific purpose: define the culture in which we must live Christ
Scripture: John 8:31b-32
Jesus said, John 8:31b-32, “If you hold to my teaching, you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." This is an often-quoted scripture; so, what did Jesus mean by the word "truth”?
The New Testament authors wrote in Greek. Therefore, to understand completely what Jesus was saying, we need to understand what the Greek word translators translated into the English as “truth” means. You see, words do not necessarily translate as directly as we would wish. For example, the word “love” in English has many different meanings. I love hotdogs. I also love my children. I love these beautiful Blue Rindge Mountains. Now loving a hotdog is different than loving my children and different than loving where I live. Well, the Greeks have four words that we translate into the English word love. Each of these Greek words has a different meaning. The Greeks had different words for loving hotdogs than they had for loving my children.
Our Biblical translators translated the Greek word a-lee-the-i-a into the English word “truth”. Looking at aleetheia’s translation, we see that Jesus was saying that you would know that he could be trusted and relied upon. You would know that his truth is not only intellectual; it is moral. Jesus truth has to do with our relationship with God and with people.
Through history, people have sought to know truth. The ancient Greeks sought truth. Their best and brightest became our early philosophers; indeed, in Greek, philosopher means “lover of truth”. We still study the works of ancient philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle and Plato for in them we find truth. Our Founding Fathers relied on the Word of God for truth. Because of that, our Nation grew in freedom. We knew the truth, and the truth did set people free.
Today, the philosophers in our culture question whether truth exists or not. They ask is there “absolute truth” or is it just something we make up. Others modern philosophers want to know if anyone can know truth with any kind of certainty. They asked is truth even important? This uncertainly about what is truth has made a mess of things. It is why we face so many uncertainties, so many disagreements in our culture today because we no longer agree on what is truth.
Because of this uncertainty, truth often takes a backseat to emotions. People live according to their feelings rather than Biblical truth. Many base their decisions, moral and otherwise, on how they “feel”. Passions have become more important than one’s ability to think things through, more important than truth. Relativism is the name given to this view. Relativism means that ethical truths depend on the biases of the individuals and groups holding them and not on absolutes as found in our Bible. Relativism says that what is moral depends on the society in which you happen to be living.
A powerful example of relativism occurred in Germany in the 1930's and the first half of the 1940's. The great unfairness of the Germans having to pay war reparations to the Allies for the damage done in WWI plus the pain of the Great Depression, the German people were literally starving. The Nazi Party promised better. Early on, Nazi Brown Shirt attack dissenters. Then they burned books. Before the end of 1933, there were work camps for the undesirables. In March of 1934, the Nazi's had enough power to take control of the government. Quickly, the Nazi's outlawed all other political parties. From then on, whatever the Nazi's decided was moral and was made law. To disagree could be fatal. By mid-1942, the genocide of Jews, undesirables and Gypsies was a consuming Nazi goal.
Relativism has invaded our American culture. It is so rampant that in a recent Barna poll, 57% of Americans believe that right and wrong are personal choices. This relativistic approach has led to many errors. The sad result is that we have lost the ability to have and discuss honest differences of opinions for what we hold as true differs so drastically. This relativistic approach is why we hear from many politicians and some in the media remind us of what Plato said, “Imposters and fools speak as loudly as saints and scholars.” Political "spin" has replaced truth. When politicians often spin the facts into lies, they cause others to reach false conclusions. This is an attack on people's ability to make sound decisions. This is dangerous for the debating what is true is the vital process of making good decisions in a democratic society.
Look at the well thought out wisdom of our Declaration of Independence: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The authors of our Declaration of Independence declared our rights and laws come from God. His law is above the laws of men. His Word was truth. Further, Nature’s God endowed us reason. It is from reason that the Laws of Nature we find truth for God gave human beings a spark of the divine; therefore, all human lives are sacred and of infinite worth. No human can remove these rights. By reason, we can know what is right and what is wrong. We can infer that murder is wrong. It simply stands-to-reason that we cannot just up and kill another person or have another person just up and kill us. However, it also stands-to-reason that in cases of self-defense and/or national defense, defending a life with a life may be necessary, be an exception. We can use reason to infer that we should honor our parents, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness and not covet. These are all sins that will destroy civilization. It was from truth that we set slaves; women and ex-slaves got the right to vote and be equal with men in all rights. It is from truth that we are working to have a more equitable society.
Truth is important. What you believe to be true determines how you see life and thus how you live your life. The Word of God, the Ten Commandments, the laws of Moses and the ethical principles that the Bible teaches, contains the truths by which we should live; the moral foundations that hold nations together.
Truth is not merely a social construct. There is a law that is above human law. It is God's law. Paul wrote in Romans 2:13-15 says, “For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”
We come equipped with a conscience, reasoning, that enables us to respond to the moral law of God and the natural laws of the universe. We can squelch our conscience or listen to it. However, to squelch the conscience is to invite disaster because we go against the very laws of the universe that God built into us.
Colossians 1:13-17 tells us that truth is the center of our faith. “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For he created all things: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
We have heard people say, “Well, that’s your truth, I have my truth." This scripture tells us that there is no such thing as “your truth” and “my truth”; there is only God’s truth. Truth is transcendent. There is an objective standard of truth outside of us and above us. There is a moral order to the universe, just as there is a material/physical order. To be in touch with truth is to be in touch with reality. In his book How Now Shall We Live? Charles Colson writes, “All citizens live better in a world that more closely conforms to reality, to the order God created." In John 14:6a, Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life."
You may have heard the fable about the six blind men who came upon an elephant. One took a hold of the elephant’s tail and declared with certainty that the elephant was like a rope. Another blind man felt the elephant’s great side and said it was like a wall. Another felt the ear and said the elephant was like a fan. Another felt the tusk and said it was like a spear. On it goes; you get the idea. The story is supposed to demonstrates the idea of pluralism, that people have different opinions about what truth is. It is suppose to show that no one really understands reality or has a corner on the truth, and that we should therefore be open and tolerant of all ideas.
There are two problems with this conclusion. The first is that all the men in this fable are blind, and the assumption is that we are all blind. Yet, the truth is that God has opened our eyes as he has revealed his truth to us in Jesus Christ. The second problem with the story is that all of the men were wrong, and that the elephant really existed and was truly an elephant. We might say that God is the elephant that many people in today’s world have agreed not to see or talk about him with certainty.
We live in a culture where it is more wrong to judge evil than to do evil. Tolerance is the great virtue of the day, and judgmentalism is the great sin. The problem with this idea is that there is One Final Judge and His Name is God. Hear Romans 1:18-20, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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 men are without excuse.”
Truth may be distorted. Adam and Eve heard God speak and believed the truth that God spoke — that is, until the serpent told them they could be like God. The serpent pasted that as fact, as truth. Romans 1:25 speaks of this when it says, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”
In many regards, the world today is not different than it was when Jesus stood before Pilate. Jesus said to Pilate, John 18:37, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Pilate’s lazy response was, “What is truth?" The world is still asking that today, and it still believes there is no real answer. Truth was standing directly in front of Pilate but he could not see it. Truth is standing before many today who cannot see it.
President John Adams reminded us that, “Our Constitution was made `only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Many Americans now celebrate the very sins for which God destroyed Sodom and Gomorra. Isaiah (3:9) spoke of this, people “proclaim their sin like Sodom” and “they do not hide it.” No. Today, they are proud of their sin and proclaim it boldly.
Jeremiah (23:14) said, like the prophets of Sodom, our leaders “walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.” Jude (7) warns that many “indulge in sexual immorality and pursue unnatural lust.”
Judges (3:7), “The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD; they forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.” The sin of the Baals and the Asherahs: they sacrificed their children to these gods. In 1994, Mother Teresa spoke before the National Prayer Breakfast. She stood before national leaders, including President Clinton. Mister Clinton had just vetoed the ban on partial-birth abortions. Mother Teresa, with her small twisted body that was less than five feet tall, spoke to the large gathering of elegantly dressed dignitaries and said, “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child — a direct killing of the innocent child — murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" Many of those present could not handle the truth.
Are these the kinds of things of which that President Adams warned? Have we sewed the sins of our destruction? It seems to me we Americans have discovered the almost rightness of much that is wrong and the almost wrongness of much that is right. A new paganism has arisen. It has dethroned God. It derides all moral inhibitions and declares instinct and inclination to be the true guides to human happiness. It regards repression of instinct to be a danger to personality, and it regards as natural the unbridled gratification of impulses which civilized humankind has always taught must be controlled. A new ethic has arisen that bids each man, woman or child to do that that is right in his or her own eyes. It teaches that all moral laws are manmade, and, therefore, can be unmade. God must be our North Star or the great nation God guided America to become will fail. We must again embrace the truth of God's Word.
