Doubting The Concept Of Truth

Pilate said to Jesus at His trial:  "What is truth?"  Of course, he didn't wait around for an answer! Jesus had said He came to bear witness of the truth and those of the truth would hear Him.  In those days, might was right and Rome deemed no truth as absolute or universal--it was an idea ahead of its time.  Today's skeptics mimic Pilate and scoff at the very idea that something could be true for everyone all the time everywhere (universally true)!  In today's postmodern culture "truth is a short-term project" and New Age adherents just say whatever feels like the truth to you is the truth.  Gandhi said truth is God, and God is truth on the other end of the spectrum.  Without God, no truth can be established and everything is conjecture and speculation.

William James, the founder of pragmatism, believed you couldn't judge the truth of an idea, only its results.  Today people are just interested in what's practical or what works for them--or what's true for them ("That may be true for you, but not me!").  There is danger in this philosophy because many false ideas do seem to work and are deceptively practical:  TM and yoga seem to work for some and they believe they're true because they work.  Christianity is different:  It works because it's true; it's not true because it works.  Christ claimed to be the incarnation of the truth and the way itself and the problem is that it goes untried and not trusted because people are to results-oriented and look at stats or benefits versus risks or pros versus cons.  The point is that the truth does indeed work, the fault is that it goes untried due to so many false philosophies that are more alluring and enticing to the popular mindset and way of thinking.  As they say nowadays:  "It works for me!"

Truth is absolute and not relative as they teach nowadays because Jesus is the personification of it and said, "I am the truth...."  Therefore, we can know Him and also what is true.  Augustine said that all truth is God's truth or you may say, "All truth meets at the top." His motto was Credo ut intelligam or "I believe in order to understand."  He was saying that all knowledge begins in a step of faith. Faith is the essential ingredient to learning truth.  In order to know anything, you must assume something you cannot prove--everyone must take this leap of faith and do as Augustine said.

In order to know anything you must know something for sure, and since the only way to know something for sure is by divine revelation and what God tells us, only God knows anything for sure, but He has revealed it to us so we can.  The reason only God can know anything for sure is that He knows everything.  Skeptic philosophers say you must know everything to know anything!  Well, we do know something, and the reason we do is that God has told us.  If there was no God, all things would be up for grabs and you could know nothing for sure because everything would be relevant in a world without absolutes. Truth would then be irrelevant and unknowable, having nothing to start from.

Many statements can be true and the relationship between them is either valid or invalid, not true or false--conclusions are dependent upon the hypothesis.  But Scripture is unique in that Jesus called it truth:  "Thy Word is truth" (John 17:17).  The reason we have an explosion of knowledge today is that we know something (essentially the scientific method) and a way to find what is true.  In the last days, Daniel said that knowledge would increase.  What they say is that nature forms you, sin deforms you, school informs you, prison reforms you, but truth (Jesus) transforms you!  Jesus is in the business of changing lives and He said that we are sanctified by the truth in John 17:17. Believers are those who have a "love of the truth" according to 2 Thessalonians 2:10 while unbelievers are those who "reject the truth" (Rom. 2:8).

Jesus said that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free:  These famous words are often misquoted to think that education sets you free, but it is in reference to knowing the embodiment of truth itself, Jesus.  There were skeptics in antiquity as well as today who deny that you can know anything for certain:  One prof told his class on the first day:  "You can know nothing for certain."  One bright student quipped:  "Are you sure?"  He fell into the trap of logic and replied, "I'm certain!"  To say that truth is only relative is a statement without any truth value and only nonsensical as well as illogical.  What they really want to say is that only the truths regarding Christianity are relative and their secular humanistic philosophy is the only absolute truth.

When we say that all truth is God's truth it is because truth is what is consistent with God and His nature:  Truth is whatever God says it is! The whole cosmos is not chaos but like one vast mathematical equation (one astronomer asserts) run by intricate laws throughout according to nearly 50 constants such as gravity, the speed of light, the strong and weak nuclear forces, the charge of the electron, etc.  If there were no God there would be no governing authority by definition (God is the one sovereign or in control of all) and we most likely wouldn't see the uniformity of the universe to God's laws or the laws of nature as some call them.  What kind of God would be out of control, merely reigning but not ruling?

You cannot say that you know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth unless you are God--we see dimly only as God reveals to us and only know in part like Deut. 29:29 and 1 Cor. 13 say, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God...." And "For now we see in a mirror dimly...."  Men have a curious desire to delve into the unknown or what is called the occult but God has given us all we need to know in Scripture for every need we face.   Soli Deo Gloria!

The Self-improvement Craze

Prayer by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr:  "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  Used by AA and known as the "Serenity Prayer" (AA believes you must come to an end of yourself and realize you cannot help yourself before God can help you).

"Woe unto him who strives with his Maker"  (Is. 45:9). Remember, He is the Potter, we are the clay.

God raised Jesus from the dead and is still in the resurrection business; changing lives is His domain!

William Ernest Henley, the author of Invictus, claimed to be the master of his soul and captain of his fate, and thanked whatever gods may be for his unconquerable soul--what a humanistic outlook!


The twentieth century saw the self-improvement and positive thinking takeover of Christian thought as the pop culture.   It sold and people bought it; well, it worked and some most people believe that the test of an idea is whether it works (pragmatism), not whether it is true (for example, yoga works but is a dangerous undertaking for the Christian to dabble in).  Evil can work and even be efficient.  However, Christianity works, because it is true; it isn't true because it works. The cliches "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it," and "Try it, you'll like it," and "It works for me!" are invalid to believers--don't experiment! God even makes the wicked to prosper if they go by the rules and are wise, but that's not the gospel.  Things may work as applied from the Bible, but that's not the essence of Christianity--our commission is to preach the gospel message, and this is applicable to everyone.

If you can market your dogma to the unbeliever it is not the gospel, because only His sheep will hear His voice and not that of a stranger.  There are many false prophets out there telling people what they want to hear, and whitewashing the bad news that we are sinners in need of salvation, not that we are good enough to be saved.  The gospel has bad news too--we are lost in need of a Savior and we must get them lost first before we preach the good news of salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

We must "look to the rock from which we were hewn and the quarry from which we were dug" (Isa. 51:1).  We are simply clay in God's hands and He is our Potter.  Thinking that Christianity is a philosophy and just a matter of getting a good attitude is a recipe for disaster and failure.  We are setting ourselves up for calamity when we think that we are ultimately in control of our lives and what happens is that we give ourselves the glory and credit for our success.  Our future is in God's hands (cf. Psalm 31:15).  If you think about it, you can achieve it by faith.  What we should say is with William Carey: "Expect great things from God, but attempt even great things for God!"

What we have to come to realize is that Christianity is not a system of rules and regulations, a catalog of dos and don'ts or a standard of achievement to reach.  It isn't a matter of being "in the know" or "knowing the scoop," as it were, but of knowing a person and having a relationship with Him who can change your life.  "Victory in Jesus!"  This is the lowdown:  We give God control of our lives and He transforms us into new creatures, not just improves upon the old self.  Self-improvement is no improvement because we want God-improvement.  We don't just wake up every morning and resolve to be positive but to love Jesus more and walk closer with Him as He guides us in the way. The better we know Jesus, the more we will love Him and the closer we will follow.

Christianity is not a creed or doctrine, but a relationship and it is just like knowing your kin--it doesn't satisfy just to study them and know their rules--you have to take the challenge and get to know them personally and apply your knowledge.  We turn our creed into deeds and put it into practice (as we bear fruit in every good work, we increase in the knowledge of God, according to Colossians 1:10). We are commanded to "grow in the grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ" in 2 Pet. 3:18.

We have the power of choice and do indeed make choices all the time and are responsible for them; the problem is that we make bad choices and cannot take control of our lives--we must let God take over and cease trying to save ourselves.  Ovid said, "I know the better ways and I approve them, but I follow the worst"  We are infected with sin as a virus and our old sin nature or old man is still much alive and active after our salvation--we must do less trying and more trusting.  God wants to approve and say, "Great is your faith," not "You sure try hard."  We can get an E for effort, and fail in God's perspective because we gave ourselves the credit.  We have the power to make choices, but that doesn't mean we have an absolute free will--we cannot be what we want to be like God who is what He is and can be what He wants to be.  We cannot say that we will henceforth never lie or never have a lustful thought if that is our easily besetting sin. "Who can say I have made my heart pure, I am pure from my sin?" (Proverbs 20:9).  We all have a sin that easily overcomes us and besets us according to Hebrews 12:1 and is exhorted to set it aside and walk in faith as we learn that God can set us free. We are not born free but must be set free in Christ.  We are no longer under sin and sin has no dominion over us as believers according to Romans 6:14.  Instead of turning over a new leaf every day and resolving to do better, learn to walk closer to Christ and let Him make you the person He wants you to be.  It is not about putting a new suit on the man, as they say, but putting a new man in the suit.

We are forgiven from the penalty of sin at salvation, but we learn to overcome the power of sin and it's influenced in our walk.  There is no overnight transformation into perfect people because we are all works in progress and God isn't finished with us yet.  He isn't finished until He sees Himself in us like a silversmith refining silver looks for his reflection to know the silver is pure.  However we should be are of this:  God says in Philippians 1:6:  "Being confident of the very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."  God never gives up on us--it is us who give up!   God can always use us for His glory because that's what He saved us for:  (cf. Isaiah. 43:7) and we are a blessing to others:  "So will I save you and ye shall be a blessing" (Zech. 8:13).  Our trials and tribulations are not only met to teach us but to be a light to others and give us the wisdom to encourage them.  There is no one philosophy that we can ascribe to our faith because it is more than a philosophy--it is a relationship (this has become a cliche but must be stressed). We all need the attitude check and change to grace-orientation because the best attitude is gratitude.

Christ didn't come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive.  He made us the way we are and has a purpose for doing it in His outreach.  You may develop a great personality and a wonderful disposition and still be a failure as a believer, hardly knowing your Lord. We can be a success in one domain and a failure in another--no one succeeds in everything.   Remember that Paul was choleric, Peter was impetuous but sanguine, and Jeremiah melancholic, but God used them the way they were.  John the Baptist was sure eccentric, but God never told him to go get some help! Christianity is about transformation, not an improvement! God meets us where we are and accepts us, but we will not stay that way after He works on us.

The problem is that we have an innate nature that God has to deal with and we are subject to that nature just like a dove eats seed and a vulture carrion by nature--we cannot change our nature, but God can change our character and still let us have personality and individuality.  Point in fact to heed: we act according to our nature, not contrary to it,  according to our depraved and fallen will (we all even fall short of our own ideas).  It is not about getting a balanced, well-adjusted, and respectable life, but one of touching others in their time of need. God loves us the way we are and we don't have to change to be more acceptable--and so we should accept one another too--we are not cookie-cutter Christians.  The way you are is the way God made you, believers shouldn't have a problem with that.
I've heard it well said:  "God doesn't make junk!"

In the final analysis, it is not a matter of willpower, but of faith--not trying, but trusting! "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit" (cf. Zechariah 4:6).  Religion is a do-it-yourself proposition and lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps--thank God there's hope for the weak and needy. The goal of our salvation is God-confidence, not self-confidence.  In the final audit of our lives at the Bema or Judgment Seat of Christ, we shall be asked whether we learned to love and trust Christ and apply what He taught us, not given a personality inventory checklist.  Progress is what God wants, not perfection.

There is rhyme and reason behind the madness:  All things work together for good for them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28).  The catch-22 is that we must see how bad we are to be good, and we don't know how bad we are until we've tried to be good!   We must come to Christ on the lowest possible credentials crying for mercy to us as sinners who cannot save ourselves and need Jesus--this means dying to self not becoming self-confident that we can be all we can be and do anything we put our mind to; the people furthest from God are those who are self-sufficient and don't see their need, loving their own sin too much to recognize it.  Soli Deo Gloria!