What is Truth?

I’m going to give away my age with this post and I’m okay with that! In the 1990’s I was in my late 20’s, early 30’s. I’ve heard that a person’s world view is almost fully formed by the time they are a teenager, and that they spend their 20’s evangelizing their world view beliefs. One thing I remember “evangelizing” was the concept of relativism that was so big in the new age movement, with the biggest “relativism” being truth itself.

Funny thing, the idea that truth is relative and there are no absolutes, albeit absurd, is nothing new! Remember the bible character Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea (from the story of Jesus’ death) who gave the order for Jesus to be crucified? The Jewish chief priests and elders wanted Jesus crucified but didn’t have the power to do it under their own law, so they turned Jesus over to Pilate. Pilate was hesitant to carry out the wishes of the Pharisees on a whim. His wife had a nasty dream about it all and was begging Pilate not to have anything to do with him. When Pilate asked the chief priests what charges they were bringing against him, instead of answering directly, they flippantly replied that if Jesus wasn’t evil they wouldn’t have brought him to him.

Interestingly enough, Pilate took the time to interview Jesus and to hear His side of the story. As Jesus stood before this governor, Pilate asked “Are you the King of the Jews”? In the book of John, chapter 18 verse 37, Jesus answers Pilate “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate’s response? “What is truth?”

In case you missed it, that was code for saying that all truth is relative. But is it really? Are we really saying there are no absolute truths, not even one, and that everyone has the right to their own truth? Hmm… think about that one before you take what sounds good and jump to a half-baked conclusion. First of all, no one owns truth, so if you believe everyone owns their own truth then you are confusing truth with experience. Is what you’re really saying then is that your experience trumps everything and that nothing else matters?

And then there are the universal constants (constants that have the same value wherever they occur or appear). Scientists around the globe and over the ages have agreed there are universal constants that cannot be changed, irregardless of what we may say or do to the contrary. Examples of such include gravity or the speed of light. Things that, by their very nature, tell us that there is a God (who created it and set the limitation) and that we are not Him (because we have no power to change the limitation, irregardless of what we do or say or try).

You see, God is so much more than just sentience (or feeling) as new-age spiritualism would have us believe. For so long we have taken what is truth, twisted it, and then repackaged it in a way that is always palatable and yet never powerful. But people are getting fed up with eating regurgitated mush!

Okay so how do we know when we’re being fed a bunch of bologna (or regurgitated mush)? How do we know truth? For real, there are so many philosophers out there today that we are all encouraged to read and follow. We could follow each and every one down every rabbit hole there is only to find out in the end that what they are saying was not the truth and their philosophy actually ruins lives. All the evils are expressed in their ideas of truth and good because they are driven by satanic forces that lust to be like God Himself, when in fact they are not.

My friends, knowing and discerning truth is much more simple than that. The sixteenth chapter of the book of John in the bible, verse 13, tells us:

"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come."

Also in that same book, John 8:32, the bible tells us that we can know the truth, and that the truth will set us free. Who and what is truth? Jesus is truth. In John 14:6 He says” I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me“.

There is a second way we can tell whether or not the ideas and words of these people who are reported to be great thinkers or philosophers, the so-called elite, is truth, and that is to simply look at the fruit of their lives. Since the time their ideas were published, are their lives a living testimony that bears the fruit of the relative truth they are trying to sell us? If not, move on. No need to waste time going down that rabbit hole or any other.

John 14:16-17 also conveys the idea to us that to know truth, to understand God, we must love God. So in closing I will leave you with the two greatest commands of all:

29 Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; 30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”