So you wanna know about “truth”?
[Art Connection]
Raising Hope, “Para-Natesville Activity”
Several of you have expressed concerns about the following sentence from my first post: “…I don’t care what Fox News says, there’s no objective truth…” I did just drop the statement in without much context, so thank you for proving to me that I have an attentive readership! I can tell you right now that my explanation for this thought may not satisfy you (but I find that necessarily obvious given the implications of my statement if it’s accurate). Also, words seem to be a terribly lacking medium with which to dribble out what I fully understand truth to be, but I will try to get it out in the most orderly way possible.
Before I jump in, please remember my singular request that you have as much grace with me as I have with you. And have grace with yourself if you find something new and challenging to your own presuppositions after reading my thoughts. I want you to understand the line I’m drawing in the sand for myself as I think through political and social issues. But I also want to eliminate fear, and create a better community of grace for humans (particularly Christians) to have with those who believe things in opposition with your own faith system.
A few months ago, I was walking down the sidewalk on the Lower East Side of Manhattan arguing with someone about his statement that he didn’t believe in any moral absolutes. I told him that as a “believer,” he couldn’t possibly have this philosophy. After all, Christians are supposed to believe the Bible declares absolute truth.
We’ve since lost our friendship (for other reasons), but I haven’t lost the element of “truth” in his statement that caused me to change my own convictions. I believe truth exists, but I don’t think I can prove it (or possibly even declare it) to anyone.
Christians have this lovely little phrase (along with a plethora of others that may be the reason many evangelicals don’t critically think about their faith…but I digress) that goes something like, “The Bible holds all truth.” This quote goes along with other ideas that the Bible is a Christian’s map–his or her guide to deciding what’s right and wrong in a culture trying to lead us astray (another harmful philosophy).
But what does it mean to apply this thought?
Most Christians would spout off something about obeying all the directions of the Bible. But when thinking about it, I know that’s not entirely true. In fact, I have to defend my faith against some of the more violent directions of the Old Testament (stoning disobedient children), and sexist directions of the New Testament (women being silent in church), by giving credence to other textual factors like historical context.
Without going on a full tangent about Biblical Interpretation, just note that there are college degrees that don’t even fully address all the factors and methods that go into a simple reading of a single verse in the Bible. Just to name a few: language, authorial intent, cultural context, legal framework of the time vs. now, individual revelation from the Holy Spirit, etc.
Does that make the text false? No.
Does it make it impossible to learn from? Absolutely not.
The key to my thought on objective truth is this: People do believe in certain truths. In fact, it’s unavoidable that a person’s social conditioning would lead them to not believe in something. But it’s an individual’s responsibility to admit that this is a belief based on faith in some revered text or person or experience. Therefore, one can’t prove the absolute-ness of his or her belief to others without those people also having faith in the same source.
Marketers know this because they know that there’s no magic slogan or commercial they can use to convert people from Nike to Adidas. How then can I act like there’s some absolute proof for converting people from Atheism to Christianity?
It all boils down to faith. Some have faith in science, some in reason, and some in personal experience. Anyone’s journey to having faith in something is legitimate in the sense that it’s as real for them as my journey to faith in Christianity is for me. It’s ignorant of me to presume that my faith is obviously more right than theirs is to them because we were shaped by different things. However, it wouldn’t be true faith if I didn’t believe my source of truth to be more accurate than other people’s. I again emphasize that that isn’t grounds to delegitimize others’ foundations of faith. An understanding of all this should give me greater patience (as opposed to the common defensiveness Christians have).
My point in saying all this is to rid myself (and other Christians) of the terrible habit of fear. I once feared the consequences of admitting that my faith was irrational and illogical. I thought this meant that my beliefs couldn’t be true since most Western culture identifies truth as that which is subject to scientific “proof” and logic (which is somewhat ironic given that scientific “laws” are still only things with a significantly higher likelihood of being true than other things).
Rather, I want to encourage Christians to see the liberation in saying that their beliefs are founded in faith and not obvious truth. Again, it’s not real faith if you don’t actually believe it’s founded on absolute truth, but you don’t have to justify that to other people. Christians do not need to act like faith in the scientific method is greater than faith God’s revelation. We can receive peace about things that don’t seem explainable with human rationality. That doesn’t mean we should be entirely unreasonable about our beliefs and not filter them through these human mechanisms of science and logic. It simply means that we can humble ourselves before fellow humans and embrace discussions rather than arguments.
As for how this applies to government…I’ll get there, folks! To put it simply, this understanding of what truth is (and how people come to it) has opened up a place for me respect others’ perspectives and strive for a peace-making middle-ground. Until next time, try reading this fabulous book: Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? James K. A. Smith does a much better job of explaining all this than I can in one post.
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vérité et de grâce
truth and grace