What is the most important issue in the world? Think about it. Take a guess. What do we all need in order to make decisions and live our lives in this world and the next? Truth. Apologist Frank Turek says, “If you live by truth, then your eternity is secure. But if you don’t, then disaster awaits you if not in this life, then in the next.”
I just finished reading Abdu Murray’s latest book, Saving Truth. In it, Abdu admits that as a former Muslim, it took him nine years to surrender to Christ. Not because it took him that long to find the truth of Christianity. But because it took him that long to embrace it. Why? What he wanted was comfort. Not the truth. This is the human condition. We often don’t want the truth. We want comfort. C.S. Lewis said, “If you look for truth you may find comfort in the end. But if you look for comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth…and, in the end, despair.”
At the end of the 2016 election cycle, the Oxford English Dictionary revealed its word of the year, post-truth. Why that word? Because it captured the mood of the culture. The term was coined back in 1992 but in 2016, the usage of the word had increased by 2000 percent. I have heard the word postmodern plenty of times. But what is the difference between post-modern and post-truth?
The mindset in postmodernism is that objective truth does not exist. But in post-truth, the person believes that objective truth exists, but they subordinate truth to their preferences, or their comfort. In other words, one doesn’t care that truth exists or what the truth is if it doesn’t line up with one’s preferences. This makes post-truth even more dangerous. I’ll explain why.
As soon as one is shown that postmodernism doesn’t work because its claims such as, “there is no such thing as objective truth,” or “There’s no truth in anything but science,” are self-refuting, then postmodernism can be refuted and shown to be unlivable. However, it becomes a little harder to refute post-truth when one claims to know the truth but doesn’t care. As Murray claims,
“Logic and evidence don’t have the same influence over the post-truth mindset that they had over a postmodern. In a post-truth age, if the evidence fits our preferences and opinions, then all is well and good. If it doesn’t, then the evidence is deemed inadmissible or offensive…where truth and logic could combat postmodern bacteria, they seem powerless to arrest post-truth’s infectiousness.”
Sound familiar? This accurately describes our culture of confusion today.
We see the post-truth mindset in science where scientists are more concerned in getting published than in finding breakthrough results. We see post-truth in politics when a blind eye is turned away from the facts and politicians get away with wrong-doing. We see post-truth in the media when stories are not run and facts are sacrificed on the altar of preferences because the network is politically biased. Or when TV shows are cancelled because someone said something politically offensive about one member of a particular political party but when another does the same thing to the other party, their show isn’t cancelled. We see post-truth in matters of the law, when a man is convicted and there is evidence to support the conviction, but the public still protests because of the color of the defendant’s skin. Most commonly, we see post-truth on college campuses, where free speech is now limited because if one speaks the facts, and it doesn’t line up with another’s preferences, it is considered offensive and the speaker is silenced and penalized.
How do we get people to care about the truth? How do we respond to those who care more about their preferences than the truth? First, we need to understand that everyone cares deeply about something. If you can find out what that is, you will know one’s preferences. It could be saving the whales, it could be social justice, or gender issues. Murray contends that we should be good listeners to find out what one cares about, then apply the gospel to it. He says we should answer the person, and not the issue. Second, we need to know that in today’s culture, there is a lot of talk about freedom. But that term is sometimes used wrongly. What people are really after is autonomy—self-government. When one is autonomous, one can do whatever they want, whenever they want, in whatever way they want. So what we have to do, is explain to people that limits have to be put on autonomy for true freedom.
Murray offers three ways we can do that:
- Explain that autonomy doesn’t really work because reason is sacrificed in order to have it. When we live like everyone should be able to do whatever we want, whenever we want in any way we want, we lose our ability to reason. This reminds me of the YouTube video I saw last year that went viral. It was about a five-foot-six-inch Caucasian man who went to the university of Washington and interviewed the students on campus to see what they would say if he told them he was a six-foot-five-inch, seven-year-old Chinese girl. He would change descriptions with each student, but each description was an inaccurate picture of who he really is. Not one of them had the courage to come out and tell him he was wrong. They all looked a little uncomfortable, but they all said something similar to, “If that’s how you identify, then fine. I’m not going to tell you how you should identify.” Reason was sacrificed on the altar of preference.
- Explain that when preferences are more important than facts, we lose our sense of moral accountability. If we don’t have to be accountable to God, then why would we have to be accountable to a person? Free speech is violated in this scenario, resulting in my next point.
- Post-truth results in a lack of human value. People are attacked when they exercise free speech that does not line up with someone else’s preferences. Babies don’t have value unless the parent’s give it value. That is a slippery slope. Now a person’s value is determined by another person, instead of God.
The most important thing a post-truth advocate needs to know is that the Bible isn’t prohibiting behavior. It’s protecting us. The Bible says we are made in God’s image. This means we are inherently sacred, and to be valued. That which is sacred, must have boundaries for protection. Real freedom has boundaries, and operates best within the framework of the truth. Autonomy in a post-truth culture has no boundaries and will become chaotic, and chaos leads to bondage. Because when two people disagree about a matter, without truth being the arbiter of a matter, the one with the loudest microphone or the most power wins, leaving the other in bondage. Laws are made to accommodate the ones with the loudest microphone while ignoring the truth being claimed by the other side. That is pre-fascim.
Truth matters. There can be no freedom without truth. That is why Jesus said in John 8:32 “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Jesus is the truth—John 14:6.
When we have our identity in Christ, then we are really free. Free to be the sacred beings in God’s image who we were intended to be all along.