What Is Truth Part 1

What Is Truth?

John 18; ³⁷ Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?”
Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
³⁸ Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?”…

truth

1. the true  or actual state of a matter: He tried to find out the truth.

2. conformity with fact or reality; verity: the truth of a statement.

3. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like: mathematical truths.

4. the state or character of being true.

5. actuality or actual existence.

Pontius Pilate asked the most important question ever asked. More important than even, “will you marry me?” And he asked it of the only person in all of human history who could’ve given the most accurate answer possible. For the person he asked this question of was none other than Jesus Christ.

Never mind that Pilate wasn’t earnestly seeking the truth as he was just throwing out a response to Jesus’ statement that Jesus was here to bear witness of the truth and that whoever is of the truth hears His voice. Pilate wasn’t a man interested in truth as much as he was interested in political correctness and people pleasing in order to keep his position and his head. Pilate was nothing more than a puppet in this whole passion play but a puppet nonetheless who was given a minor role of supposed “authority” over these proceedings. God had put this particular man in this role in order to carry out His plan of salvation. So the fact that Pilate’s most important question wasn’t asked with sincere and noble purposes means nothing to the fact that this question really is the question of all questions.

What is truth?

Today the truth is up for grabs. And is a sense it always has been. Man has been the sole definer of all that he surveys since man could survey. Throughout the ages man has looked around and within him and has come up with a vast multitude of answers to this most important of questions. According to definition truth is basically what is real; what is actual; what is reality. A verifiable or indisputable fact, proposition or principle.

Why is this question the most important of all questions? Well ask someone who has been accused of murder but who is actually innocent. Their very life depends upon the findings of truth. If in fact it is true that the accused is innocent than most people would agree that a horrible injustice and crime was committed if the accused was found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison or even death. Most human beings would agree that this is not only wrong but would be a tragedy. And that’s because we value life and we value truth. Even those who reject The Truth throw themselves into dramatic spasms when they are accused of a wrongdoing that they actually didn’t commit. No one likes or accepts being falsely accused. It is a horrible offense to the person and to those who know the truth.

If someone in your own home stole something from someone else in that home wouldn’t it be a major problem? Wouldn’t the victim demand the truth about who took whatever it was they took? Why would this be important? Well we also value justice. Particularly when we have been victimized. And without truth justice is impossible because there would be no way to right the wrong unless the truth about the event was made known.

Truth is inherently important to all of our affairs in this life. A standard barometer of good mental health is whether or not a person has a good understanding of reality. If I were to tell you that I was in actuality the Queen of England and if I were actually convinced of that then you would accurately assess that I have lost my mind. If I were to tell you that I was typing these words while riding a magic carpet across the Ganges River in Iowa while eating raw pigeon then you would certainly doubt the veracity of this information. This in turn would jeopardize my reputation in being an honest person. If I talked badly about you behind your back and then played nice nice with you in person then my integrity would be badly compromised. You wouldn’t be able to trust me. Without trust a good relationship is pretty much impossible. When there is no trust it is because truth was somehow compromised in the relationship.

In this day and age, truth is most certainly up for grabs. Truth is considered by many, if not by most people anymore to be relative and subjective instead of absolute and objective. In other words, you and I get to make up our own separate interpretations of what we see as being the truth. Coming to a definition of truth via relative and subjective methods means that a personal bias forms the definition. In some situations in life this is understandable and one of the only methods available in order to determine truth. This happens frequently in relationship interactions. We all see and interpret events in life differently. That’s been one of the greatest problems I have seen in marriage counseling because both parties see things very differently from one another and both think that they are right. When allowance isn’t made for the other person’s perspective then you run into a dead end. I find it important to at least consider that my perspective on a given situation could be flawed because upon further examination it frequently is. This is a way of coming to the truth through relative/subjective means and it has its place and can be very useful.

But when trying to come to a proper and fitting definition of truth in many other areas of life the relative/subjective method is greatly flawed. For instance, the chair I am sitting in is made primarily of wood. As far as I can tell it is also made of glue, stain and varnish. Although these components can be used to make a multitude of other items in this case they were specifically designed and manufactured to be a chair. I don’t need someone else’s perspective on what they think the chair is. The vast majority of human beings would correctly agree that it is indeed a chair. But If I were in the minority and sincerely and genuinely believe it was something else, let’s say an aardvark then once again the integrity of my mental stability would be in question. No matter how sincere and genuine my belief would be, this chair would remain a chair. It could be altered to become something else but at this moment in time, it is a chair. This is absolute/objective reasoning about the truth of an object. It is what it is no matter what anyone thinks, feels or believes.

There are probably as many views about whom and what God is as there are people in the world. We are certainly living in a time when the number of the world’s religions has increased dramatically. Combined with the vast array of spiritual belief systems you have a cornucopia of differing beliefs about God and about spirituality to choose from. And then there is of course spiritual and even religious belief systems where God is not part of the equation.

So let’s at least consider the possibility that there is a God. If I approach this idea from a relative/subjective deduction then this idea of God would be fully based on my thoughts, feelings and bias. And with those I agree with. In other words I can make God out to be whatever I want to make God out to be. If I don’t like the idea of God found in religion I can choose other attributes to this God. I can view God as a warm, fuzzy friend who doesn’t care one iota about how I treat others or about my morality. In this view, God is never judgmental or punishing. Or I can view God as some distant, impersonal force that guides the universe in some either random or karma type of way.

 In 1990 I began to attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings because I needed help to stop using drugs. It was in N.A. that I first encountered the idea that you could create a God of your own understanding. This had tremendous appeal to me at first because I did believe in the idea of a higher power but I wanted nothing to do with the God of any religious belief. I was told by recovering addicts that it was important to believe in something, pretty much anything greater than myself or else I was going to fail at staying clean. Some even told me I could make a higher power out of anything I wished, like a doorknob or a light bulb. Praying to doorknobs and light bulbs made no sense to me even then but I did believe in a God who was kind, loving and non-judgmental. Eventually I was confronted by the 3^rd step of the 12 step program which states, “made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.”

I guess the fog of the many years of drug use had begun to lift as I was able to begin to think rationally about things. I didn’t know it at the time but I was beginning to move from thinking about God in relative/subjective terms to absolute/objective terms. I really began thinking about this God of our understanding business and how there are so many differing beliefs and views on who and what this God is and that I really had no clue whatsoever. This was the starting point. I had to admit to the truth that I didn’t know. I began to look and think about this God as I did when I described the chair I am sitting in. The chair is what it is no matter what personal bias I bring to it. I thought about people in the same way. We all have different opinions of a person but none of us can absolutely define a person because our personal bias comes into play. A person is who a person is regardless of what any of us think about that person. I began to apply this same logic to the idea of God. No matter how many different beliefs and views there are of God at some point God must simply be who God is. It made no sense to me that God could be this multi-faceted being that everyone was making God out to be. It made no sense. It still makes no sense.

The chair is a chair. It was designed and its function was for a human to sit upon.

God is who God is. And just as we can’t define another person based on our perspectives, prejudices, bias, thoughts and emotions we are incapable of defining God based on those same methods. If there is a God, then He is the only one capable of describing Himself to us.

I believed there was a God. At times I felt that I could sense His presence and His care for me. And for some reason knowing who and what I could about Him became more important than anything else.  I desperately wanted to know the truth about who this God is.

So I did what a good friend told me to do.

Ask God in prayer to reveal Himself to me.

I had no idea what I was in for.