Pontius Pilate famously asked the Lord Jesus Christ: “What is truth?” Jn 18:38.

Jesus had just told Pilate that He came into the world to bear witness to the truth Jn 18:37 but Pilate dismissed the topic in this cursory manner with this infamous question, but he did not wait for the answer, although he was speaking to the one Person most capable of answering his question. 

Do you do the same?  Gossippers rarely ask the most suitable person to correct their gossip.  It would spoil their gossip to have their prejudices corrected.  They prefer to spread their gossip to whoever will listen, and to receive gossip in return.  Such people convince themselves that they are seeking the truth, but they are not.  They do not know how to find truth and love to live with their prejudices.  If they were truth-seekers they would have learned by now that gossip has only a kernel of truth in it and they would move beyond gossipers to research the truth personally, instead of relying on second-hand or third-hand information, which we call hearsay. Indeed, the gossipper caps the list of seven abominations that the Lord hates Pro 6:16-19. Why? because he speaks lies and sows discord among brethren Pro 6:19. This is far removed from Christian fellowship. Truth and speaking the truth are very high in God’s opinion, and people will eventually discover this. So what is truth?

Truth is important but we now live in a society where people do not know whom they can trust.  They used to trust the main stream media, but this is not only biased towards the views of its proprietors, but its researching ability is now so poor that the former North American editor of the BBC laments that he can no longer trust the BBC.

Reflective people will discover the difficulty in determining the truth, especially if it is social or religious truth.  What is the truth about climate change, evolution, evolutionary times scales, international affairs, medical matters, food nutrition or whatever? The reason is that schools do not teach children how to determine the truth, and adults are having a hard time also, especially if their time is taken up with trying to make ends meet.

When Christianity was taught in schools, at least children received some instruction in the truth, but the secular world called it indoctrination, and there were not enough strong Christians to counter-act this campaign where and when it mattered.  Now it is even more difficult.

It reminds me of the teaching profession in Nazi Germany who were among the first to capitulate to the new narrative.  One year a professor was a left-wing Communist, the next year he was a Nazi.  The same has happened in the UK with the secular and now the political correctness agenda. 

However, what is truth?

Wikipedia defines it as: “Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.” In other words, truth is a characteristic of “being in accord with” fact or reality.  Really? Does this help you? Are you any wiser?

How does one determine if it is “in accord with” fact or reality?

This definition is inadequate as it tries to cover too much.  There is objective truth and subjective truth and these need to be distinguished, but does the Wikipedia definition cover both of them?

Objective truth is truth that is established outside oneself, agreed collectively between a number of people.  Yet there are a variety of groups, so that one man’s orthodoxy is another man’s heresy.

Subjective truth is the truth as we have judged it, upon the evidence available to us.

Subjective truth is fundamentally a judgment, either personal or collective.  This is why people say, “That is your truth, but it is not mine”.  We judge something or someone to be true.

If we do not think it is true, it is impossible for us to believe it.  This is the fundamental relationship between truth and faith, and you will go a long way to find this explained. The Hebrew word ̕emeth “truth” is a feminine noun derived from the Hebrew verb ̕aman “to believe”.

It is because we have judged something to be true that we believe it.  Faith is a personal judgment and we think or believe something to be true because we have personally judged it to be true.

This is the fundamental connection between truth and trust, and between truth and belief.  Trust is a particular form of belief, and each of them are personal judgments.

The question now is how closely these personal judgments align with “objective truth”, truth outside ourselves, which is ascertained by criteria other than our personal judgment.

Judging the truth

So how do we make judgements about the truth?  In a variety of ways.

Often we have to rely on the judgment of others, such as the judgment of the airline company that their planes are safe for transport. We trust them to have told us the truth.

We believe the truth of their statement that their planes are safe. Yet again, this shows you the connection between belief and truth.  This is another personal judgment.   We cannot believe something that we do not think is true. 

For an airplane, we believe the collective judgment of engineers who have designed and tested the components and trialled the resulting aircraft.

We trust their judgment.  We have outsourced the detailed analysis to others whom we have judged (correctly or not) to be trustworthy.  So our judgement is still there, not judging the aircraft but people, the airline and its engineers.

So subjective truth and belief are personal judgments.

This is why people talk about “your truth” and “my truth”.

Such is the confusion about the subject that the concepts of post-truth and fake truth have entered our vocabulary.

One person’s truth is another person’s heresy.

How do we ascertain truth?

We need evidence and we need to assess that evidence.

There are different types of evidence.

Scientific evidence is gathered by examination and testing, using the scientific method. This is used for testing an aircraft.

This is not adequate for everything.  How do you use scientific evidence to judge the trustworthiness of people, in this case the people running the airline? This will depend upon your own experience of these people. Slowly, the political world is learning that ‘the scientific evidence’ is insufficient for real life; for example, the 2020-2021 coronavirus pandemic demonstrated that there is no such thing as “the scientific consensus”. The new mantra is “Lived experience”, that is, listening to the evidence from those who have “lived experience” of the matter in hand, such as abuse of various kinds. Must we wait for ‘scientific evidence’ before we act, such as the firemen who would not rescue a woman trapped in a pit because their equipment had not been tested for this type of situation?

Even the scientific method is failing because of vested interests, either financial, business, reputational, academic, etc.

Where do we begin?

Jesus said: I am the Truth.  He did not mean that He was the only truth but He said so in the context of His being the Way to the Father’s house in heaven.  This is an important Truth.

Each person will have their own opinions, demonstrating that we form our own judgment what is truth.

This makes us responsible for our beliefs.  They are our own.  When people complain that God judges us “simply for not believing in Him”, they have failed to understand that their beliefs are personal judgments and that are effectively sitting in judgment upon God. Put like this, it is a different ballgame. It is not “just” belief. It is your judgment, and God has His judgment.

These different judgments help you to see how this has given rise to post-modernism, that everyone ‘forms’ their own truth; in other words, they have their own judgments.

Post-truth society

Having identified these different opinions, it is generally said that we live in a post-truth society. By this, people mean that the former ideas of absolute truth have given way to relative truth, but too often this is misunderstood as meaning that there is no longer absolute truth

What is the source of truth?

The ultimate source of truth is God but there are intermediate sources. It is because of God’s oversight of the Universe that there is scientific truth, historical truth, moral truth, etc.

We can be deceived by lies, and we often are. Jesus said that the devil is the father of lies. It is easy for liars to manipulate human beings. This is done by persuading you that the lie is actually the truth. Once you have mistakenly judged that the lie is true, you are hooked. Why are we so easily duped?

The Bible tells us that this is because we have lost touch with God the source of truth, and we are relying upon our own limited resources. So different people have different opinions. Jesus Christ has come to reconnect us with God and His truth.

Some people object to Jesus saying, “I am the Truth”, but we might expect someone claiming to be the Son of God to say so. If He did not say so, His claim to be the Son of God would be suspect.

People like to think that they are seeking after the Truth but, in truth, not everyone is actually doing so.

The children of truth
The godly are the children of truth, born again by the Spirit of Truth using the Word of Truth revealing Jesus Christ to them as the Truth Jn 14:6.

The godly learn about Christ’s Person and character in a unique way Jn 10:5. They have personal experience of the spiritual renewal of their mind Eph 4:23 and they have become truth-seekers and truth-speakers Eph 4:25.

Will you be among them?

Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Links:

20 May 2023: Professor John Lennox on Truth, of which he says: “That was one of the best interviews I’ve ever done.”