I never intended to do a sixth part to this series on THE truth vs A truth but because of the crazy amazing responses I have been getting to the first five parts I have HAD to follow up.
I have been getting beat up by both sides of the issue. I have been getting emails from one side saying that there is no such thing as THE truth and my search for it is impossible because it is a moving target that can never be pinned down. This side tells me that A truth is also relative to the times. What is true now will not be true tomorrow so even truisms are fleeting. From the other side I have been getting emails telling me that I am making THE truth relative and that I am demoting and denigrating truth to a series of truisms at the expense of ultimate truth.
The truth is (pun intended) I am doing neither. It is my habit of teaching to let you struggle with issues all the while defining the terms so that the answers become clear to you. I am convinced that many of our problems and prejudices would be solved if we simple defined our words better. Once we know the definitions of the words we are fighting over we can then move onto a good debate. So here are my terms:
THE truth: is the complete picture, known only to God himself. You can legitimately say that God IS truth since only he knows it. For those who don't believe in God this is proof that there must be a God unless you live in an endless see of relativistic mush.
A truth: is a small part of the grand picture of THE truth. It is a truism or something that will reliably happen every time the same conditions occur.
Relative: is what things are when you can never rely on the outcome even when conditions are the same. If everything was relative then there would be no truth at all: no ULTIMATE truth nor truisms.
So let me quit beating around the bush. THE truth is only known or found in God himself. If you don't believe in God then you CANNOT believe in an Ultimate truth; it would be making a contradictory oxymoronic statement. There are many truisms out there all of which add up to a fuzzy picture of who or what God is; for after all "we see through a glass darkly." Truth is NOT relative it is just unknown, or not known well. THE truth being found in God is not true simply because Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life" that was not the context of Jesus' statement nor does the Greek support a definite article in front of the noun (it is NOT "I am THE way, THE truth, and THE light). I KNOW that God is but I am FAR from knowing WHO God is.
And that's A truth.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment