“Jesus answered…..for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” “What is truth?” Pilate asked. John 18:37-38
Last week, I attended a fund raiser for a ministry in our community. The keynote speaker was Abdu Murray, an associate of Ravi Zacharias. His topic was, “Living in a Post-Truth World.” As I sat and listened to his lecture, I thought how far the world had gone in the wrong direction in the years I’ve lived on planet Earth. Whoever would have believed it would be preferable to believe a lie than the truth? How out of touch I have become!
Abdu has written a book called, “Saving Truth,” and in it he lays out the post-truth “Culture of Confusion.” Our culture has elevated preferences and feeling over facts and truth. He goes on to say that Post-truth has two modes. The first is a soft mode, we acknowledge that truth exists or certain things are true, but we don’t care about the truth if it gets in the way of our personal preferences. The second mode is the hard sell. We are willing to repeat falsehoods, knowing they’re false because doing so serves a higher political or social agenda. Both are dangerous, but for the Christian, the soft sell might be the most insidious. How did truth become passe?
In 2016, the Oxford dictionary selected “post-truth” as its word of the year. They felt it accurately described the culture we live in. The definition: relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. Wikipedia explains it as, “a philosophical and political concept that refers to “the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth and the circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth.”
In the 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ, there is a fictional dialogue between Pilate and his wife Claudia. Pilate asks, “What is truth, Claudia? Do you hear it, recognize it when it is spoken?” “Yes, I do. Don’t you”? she replied. “How? Can you tell me?” Claudia answered, “If you will not hear the truth, no one can tell you.” Too bad Pilate didn’t heed his wife’s words! He was a cynic, not a skeptic. A skeptic won’t believe a truth until there is sufficient evidence. A cynic won’t believe even if there is! It reminds me of the old adage, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
Yet, the gospel is a message of HOPE! Just as the early church proclaimed truth in a compromised culture, so we need a generation of troubled Christians willing to engage a difficult world view. The apostle Paul had a “provoked” spirit at Athens then he saw the city given over to idols. He chose to engage the philosophers of the day and set out the full wonder of the Christian faith. “(God) has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising Him from the dead,” Acts 17:31.
Abdu tells of a Russian couple who lived under the atheism of Russia during the 1980’s. As they conversed about their families and the names of their children, Abdu was surprised to hear the most popular names for Russian girls during this period were Vera, which means “faith,” Nadiajda, which means “hope,” and Lubov, which means “love.” A generation who lived under Stalin and the hardships of communism, bear the names Faith, Hope and Love! “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13.
Your friend, Jean
A book report on Saving Truth by Abdu Murray.