Truth Claims

Our society holds as one of its core beliefs that there is no such thing as objective truth. Many people also hold tightly to the idea that there isn’t any grand overarching purpose and meaning of life.  They believe, rather that life is merely a long string of vignettes that you perceive and align to your own individual perspective in order to create meaning. So, the idea that something is true for you, but not for me, is woven into the fabric of secular culture. So much so, that a person holding this worldview will tend to instantly block out any other person’s alternate ideas or perspectives without even beginning to consider its validity.

The posture held is that any grand truth claim is nothing more than an attempt to grab power in order to control or manipulate the masses, which seems ironic from the perspective of tolerance. Because tolerance is another core belief to the post-modernist. The reality is that there is only a selective tolerance that fits the individual’s taste buds.

Christianity is a grand overarching metanarrative truth-claim. The very thing that many will reject as simply a power play with no sense of any objective truth associated with it. It is tragic that they are intolerant about this, while claiming that we need to be tolerant about everything else. D.A. Carson describes this as the “intolerance of tolerance. “Alister McGrath states that “Postmodernism has endemic aversion to the questions of truth.” Ironically, even the statement that there are no objective truth claims, is actually an attempt to make an objective truth claim.

The reality is that at some point, we need to draw a line in the sand to be able to make the distinction of what is really objectively true. Was Hitler just as righteous and benevolent as Mother Teresa? Was his idea of truth disparate from hers, but also holding equal validity? Was it OK for him to say about her, that it is true for you, but not for me? Or furthermore for her to say about him, that it is true for you, but not for me?

When Jesus was arrested and was to be crucified, he was brought to the Roman authority Pontius Pilate. Here is the dialogue between them which is found in John Chapter 18. Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”  Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”. How paradoxical is this question, particularly when he is standing with and looking at the person who embodies the truth. Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John Chapter 14:6.

This is the most important truth claim found in the entire history of humanity. Much more important than being tolerant to everything except Christianity.