Category: Truth

If a sick person can explain how to be healthy, you do not necessarily eat what he eats. If fool can explain something true, you do not necessarily think what he thinks.

If someone can build a perfect car engine, but puts the wrong kind of fuel in it, we can admire his wisdom on the one hand, and be amazed at his error on the other,

There are things in life that are like that. For example, the engine or system of being healthy is to eat well and exercise. But if you think eating well means eating only sugar (or to be on some diet that may or may not be healthy), then you know how the engine works in theory, but you are using the wrong fuel.

Similarly, many people are wise in explaining certain systems or engines in terms of how the world works, but they are unwise in how they use those systems.

For example, there are many scientists and philosophers who know or can explain the way the world works in a way I could never do. They know the engine/system of the physical world very well. However, these same scientists start from the belief that there is no God.

There is no room in their worldview to consider the option of God even as a possible variable in the equation. This means that they are putting the wrong fuel in the system – that of the idea of autonomous human reasoning without an ultimate standard to back it up.

They deny Divine Revelation in the Bible in favor of their own mind before they even start. They have a great engine with the wrong fuel.

Simply knowing how something works does not mean you are automatically using it correctly. This distinction helps us as we listen to unbelievers explain reality, because it allows us to absorb the true things they say, while recognizing the error they are constantly making by their rejection of God. It keeps us safe from making the mistake of trusting everything someone says, simply because they are right about the way some things work.

Truth is an interesting thing to think about. What is it? By ‘truth’ do we mean facts, reality, relative truth, some combination of everything?

We know it is a real thing. We instruct children to ‘tell the truth’ and not to lie. When we say this to them I think we mean for them to tell what really happened. We want their words to match their actions, the actions of others, describe the sequence of events in the correct order, and leave nothing out.

That is a lot of meaning to bundle up into one single word – truth.

Then we can complicate it further by throwing in relative truth. For example, it is true for me that it is 9:04am. But for someone else on the East Coast it is 12:04pm. One fun thing about this is that the big, upper-level, non-relative truth is still the same for both of us. It is true that Michael Wine’s clock says 9:04am while person x’s clock says 12:04pm.

The relative truths fit together, in other words. They are consisent with each other, and fit inside of a larger truth.

I think perhaps some confusion with the idea of truth today is that people think they can have their own relative truths, even while those seperate truths do not fit together with the truths of another person. They think everyone can believe what they want, and each person can have their own ‘truth’ and not be wrong.

Unfortunately, truth doesn’t work like that. There has to be some larger framework that allows each different relative truth to come together and fit inside of the whole – like pieces of a puzzle coming together.

What happens, then, when one person’s so called relative truth conflicts and contradicts that of another? What if someone who is a man says that he is a woman? His truth is contradicting mine. There is no way both of our truths can fit together inside of a larger truth system. So who gets to be “right?”

Well, normally, we would say that whichever claim departs from the large, upper-level truth (the entire picture of the puzzle if you wil) is the one that is wrong. So in this case, the man would be wrong that he is a woman, because his claim departs from the reality of the situation.

But, today, it seems like people give priority to relative truth, to individuals, in deciding which puzzle pieces are correct. Each person can decide which relative truths they want for themselves, and everyone else is expected to honor that and affirm that, even if those relative truths have no way of fitting together with everyone else’s relative truths in a consistent way.

In other words, we’ve thrown away the whole idea of an upper level truth. Because you can’t have one if everyone gets their own truth, even if those truths condradict everyone else’s.

Is it any wonder we see so many struggling today to find a bigger meaning in life beyond one’s own passing pleasures? Is it any wonder why people are depressed, lonely, and afraid?

We have promoted ourselves as individuals to the rank of gods, capable of deciding what is true. But in so doing, we have lost our ability to exist together in the world as it really is. We have lost our humanity.