What is truth? – Part 2
So there I sat, suspended at the Easter train station, wondering if I could answer Pilate’s rhetorical question to my own satisfaction. And can I share the answer with my family and friends? (After all, answering the question would not be out of arrogance. I wouldn’t own the truth, I would only be sharing a truth that owns us all.)
It occurred to me if Jesus couldn’t testify of the truth, that is if He were not true, all of this discussion and faith-history would be in vain.
From The Message translation of the Bible (I Cor 15:13-15):
If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it: if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God. All these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ are sheer fabrications if there’s no resurrection.
So, my journey was weighty. I have had a faith relationship with Jesus for about twenty-two years, but every once in a while a question like this hits me like a brick. Some people call it doubt. Some call it being hyper-analytical. But it’s addressing these kind of questions to my own cerebral satisfaction that grows my faith. So I hope you will come along.
I determined that first I needed to define the word “truth” in the context of what Pilate believed, and then more importantly what Jesus actually meant. My trip quickly took a right turn into the neighborhood of philosophy. Your thinking, “Okay, great. I’ll exit the vehicle here and walk home.” Trust me, I didn’t like this any better than you. However, I did manage to skirt along the edge of this scholarly suburb to avoid getting lost or worse, never seen again. And, as it turned out, it wasn’t too bad.
I will, only for a moment, digress into a brief but necessary study, so hang in there with me. It’s worth it!
Today’s world view of truth is probably much like that of Pilate’s world: a society of cultural relativism or commonly labeled postmodernism. That is, “What you believe to be true is fine, just don’t dog mine.”
Terry Eagleton, professor of cultural theory at Manchester University (a self-proclaiming agnostic and controversial philosopher), defines postmodernism as,
… the contemporary movement of thought which rejects totalities, universal values, grand historical narratives, solid foundations to human existence and the possibility of objective knowledge. Postmodernism is skeptical of truth, unity and progress, opposes what it sees as elitism in culture, tends toward cultural relativism, and celebrates pluralism, discontinuity and heterogeneity.(1)
Cultural relativism leads us to shallow, polite and socially tolerant dialogue to otherwise tasty subjects like religion, the meaning of life, creationism versus evolution, and politics. Politeness and social tolerance are admirable, but truth in today’s postmodern culture, steered by political correctness, cultural differences, and sightless sincerity is not truth based on objective reality (for more, investigate the correspondence theory).(2)
And that kind of “truth” is not the kind Jesus was speaking. Jesus was speaking of strong, muscle-flexing, no-apologies absolute truth.
It is false piety to preserve peace at the expense of truth.
— Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher and mathematician of the 17th century
We conclude next time.
(1) After Theory, Terry Eagleton
(2) http://www.leaderu.com/theology/groothuis-truth.html, Douglas Groothuis