The Fight for Truth

I was recently leading a group of about 20-30 college students in discussion about apologetics when I posed the question: “How do we define truth? What tells us what is right and what is wrong?”

To set context, this is a small group that is a part of a large campus ministry in which students sign up for the group of their choosing (usually a book of the Bible or Christian book). So all of these students (all of them Christians) have signed up for my group called “Apologetics 101”, meaning the topic is both familiar and interesting to them.

We had already touched on subjects such as the cosmological argument and “God vs. science” and overall the group had done an excellent job comprehending the arguments and would do well to defend them.

But the question of defining truth churned out some interesting answers in our group. Almost overwhelmingly, the group agreed that truth (as well as morals and values) are defined by culture and are relative. This has become the reality of the world we live in—truth, and therefore what is right and wrong, is simply relative. What is right for you is not necessarily right for me.

However, it doesn’t take long to expose the logical flaw in such a statement.

By saying that any truth claim (i.e. a claim made that you assert to be true) is relative (i.e. not really true for anyone but yourself and should therefore be given no actual weight or be trusted to considered “true”), one has actually dismissed his or her own claim. Calling all truth claims relative is, in itself, a truth claim. And if it is relative, it doesn’t have to be true for anyone else.

In one breath you make a statement and in another, call all statements relative. It doesn’t take a professor of philosophy to point out the failed logic there.

Almost everyone on earth believes in some sort of objective truth, whether they realize or not. I think we can all agree that, despite culture or circumstances, murder (defined as the taking of an innocent person’s life) is wrong. And although some societies might define “person” differently, most any culture in history has agreed that murder is wrong and reserves some sort of punishment for it.

By believing that this moral truth is objective (meaning unchanging or absolute or “non-relative”), we believe there is a value that transcends humanity. So that if tomorrow, a poll was released that showed that the world population overwhelmingly believes that raping and killing children should be deemed “morally acceptable”, it is in fact still very much not. To put into a question form: Had Hitler taken over the world and exterminated every one that disagreed with him so that 100% of humanity agreed that Nazi’s are good, do you still believe they are evil?

Undoubtedly, a high percentage of people would say that the Nazi’s were still evil. By this admission, they are in effect saying that there is a moral truth or moral law, if you will, that transcends humanity and transcends the natural order. While I believe that this logically leads to God, whether or not you believe in God--it certainly leads to an objective truth.

In some ways, our culture has poisoned this idea. We have seen through Hollywood’s empty, gratuitous portrayal of sex and relationships, but have allowed our world to dilute that moral compass that tells us that the such portrayals are in fact wrong. We have missed the subtle, but yet substantial, attack on truth.

The (absolute) truth is: we live in a culture where relativism and tolerance is the norm. Luckily, we Christians are called to shine like stars in the universe and be aliens in this world—to stand for what we know to be true despite a world that tells us that truth is relative.

One thing is for sure—we need to begin to fight for truth in a world in which truth is ever diminishing and, if our current trend means anything, will one day no exist. If not, on where will we base our opposition to the next Hitler or Stalin or Hussein?

If history has taught us anything, it should be that truth is worth fighting for.