“That is your truth,” replied a young man in a debate on Facebook. The very phrase “your truth” implies that there is more than one truth, thus negating its veracity. If I have a truth and you have a truth, but they are irreconcilable, then one, if not both “truths” are false. This belief that we all have our own truths is from the father of lies, the devil, and he has done a superb job at selling this falsehood.
Apologist Francis Schaeffer stated, “We are fundamentally affected by a new way of looking at truth. This change in the concept of the way we come to knowledge and truth is the most crucial problem facing America today” (The God Who Is There, 6). A paradigm shift occurred around 1935 when the American attitude toward truth changed. Prior to this time, Americans were devoted to thinking about presuppositions, namely, the existence of absolutes, particularly in the areas of morals (ethics) and knowledge (epistemology). But the average American took it for granted that if a certain idea was true, it’s opposite was false. In other words, “absolutes imply antithesis.” The working antithesis is that God exists objectively (in antithesis) to his not existing.
If you look up the word truth, in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, you find that there was a time in America where truth meant something definitively and interestingly it was linked to the Word of God. Take a quick look at the meanings and related Scripture.
TRUTH, noun
- Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be. The truth of history constitutes its whole value. We rely on the truth of the scriptural prophecies. My mouth shall speak truth Proverbs 8:7. Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth John 17:17.
- True state of facts or things. The duty of a court of justice is to discover the truth Witnesses are sworn to declare the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
- Conformity of words to thoughts, which is called moral truth. Shall truth fail to keep her word?
- Veracity; purity from falsehood; practice of speaking truth; habitual disposition to speak truth; as when we say, a man is a man of truth
- Correct opinion.
- Fidelity; constancy. The thoughts of past pleasure and truth
- Honesty; virtue. It must appear That malice bears down truth
- Exactness; conformity to rule. Plows, to go true, depend much on the truth of the iron work. [Not in use.]
- Real fact of just principle; real state of things. There are innumerable truths with which we are not acquainted.
- Sincerity. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth John 4:23.
- The truth of God, is his veracity and faithfulness. Psalms 71:22. Or his revealed will. I have walked in thy truth Psalms 26:3
- Jesus Christ is called the truth John 14. It is sometimes used by way of concession. She said, truth Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crums– Matthew 15:27. That is, it is a truth; what you have said, I admit to be true. In truth in reality; in fact. Of a truth in reality; certainly. To do truth is to practice what God commands. John 3.
Truth used to mean something, yet today there are no absolutes when it comes to truth. If Pilate were to ask, “What is truth?” today, he would find a generation who had no better answer than that of the crowds who yelled, “Crucify Him!” For that generation, killing Jesus was “their truth”, yet nothing has changed in our generation when faced with the Jesus.
Truth is eternal and absolute. Jesus stated, “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice”, to which Pilate replied, “What is truth?” (John 18:36-38).
We either are of the truth and hear His voice or believe the lie from the devil that there is no Truth.
Jesus is the Way ( ὁδός – hodos: way, road, journey, path), the Truth ( ἀλήθεια – alétheia: truth: truth but not merely truth as spoken; truth of idea, reality, sincerity, truth in the moral sphere, divine truth revealed to man, straightforwardness), and the Life ( ζωή – zóé: life : life, both of physical (present) and of spiritual (particularly future) existence), and no one comes to the Father, but by Him (sic). John 14:6.
What will you do with the Truth? Do you join the voices of this postmodern generation, along with Pilate and the crowds of people who yell “Crucify Him!”, or do you choose, as Dr. Os Guinness wrote, “to stand for truth and to be people of truth where telling the truth is becoming a revolutionary act”?