Wednesday, January 18, 2017

What is Truth?


“'What is truth?' retorted Pilate."

John 18:38 records the statement of Pilate to Jesus Christ.  Think about it.  Pilate asks this snippy question to the only person in all of history who claimed to be, "the truth and the life..."

NPR reported on December 2nd that the Oxford Dictionary chose “post-truth” as the 2016 word of the year.  In a year where “post-truth” is the word of the year, we sure seem to be hearing a lot of cries for the truth!

In recent years, we have seen the disintegration of truth.  “Truth is relative.”  Relative truth has been the cry of liberal thinking people for the last 20 years.  Everyone has their perspective.  All perspectives are valid.  Those who reject the concept of a God who is absolute would say, “there is no absolute truth.”

If one thing has emerged through our difficult election cycle this year, it is the necessity of truth.  Suddenly, we are furious about “Fake news.”  I am not writing to defend fake news.  We need a fair, unbiased, and free press to help inform the public.  While thinking about this saga of fake news and all the commentary following it, I am hearing some news outlets suddenly backing off of relative truth.

We cannot consider truth as relative one moment and then absolute the next.  We are crying for absolute truth when considering intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  We want absolute truth about Russia and our elections.  But, we want relative truth when we are faced with the proof that Jesus rose from the grave.  I guess we prefer relative truth when we don’t receive the truth standing right before us.

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