Weekly Blog: The Gospel in a Post-Truth World
May 1, 2017 2045
In recent times, I’ve been told that we are living in a “post-truth” world. The term arises out of politics, and the Oxford Dictionary defines “post truth” as “relating to… circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping… opinion than emotion and personal belief.” In short, it is a term that legitimizes the disregard for truth that has become so prolific as to deserve a new term. It’s just another term for “lying” (Rom 1:25 is a good description of God’s view of the idea of “post-truth.)
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia said recently that… “This idea that we’re in some kind of post truth, post-fact world is really not correct…There are just facts… and there are lies, which means saying things that aren’t consistent with the facts.”
Christians believe that God is the source of all truth and that no truth exists apart from him.
In Jesus’ day, people lived in a world in which there were a plurality of beliefs and debate about life and existence. Many people were also skeptical, in some way or another, of what they had traditionally been taught. They questioned the nature of truth, and they were tired and weary of the traditional wisdom, which seemed to offer no hope for the troubles of the world. They weren’t so much different to our society in some ways. That’s why Pilate asked Jesus, “What is the truth?” (John 18:38).
It was in that environment that one man stood up, claimed to be God himself, and said (in effect), “Truth is not a philosophy, a doctrine, a concept, or an idea. Truth is a person. I am the truth” (John 14:6; 1:14). Since that time, Jesus’ radical claim has challenged the very nature of truth itself. But if Jesus is who he claimed to be, God himself, then his statement makes complete sense.
If you’ve found Jesus, you’ve found the truth.
If truth were an abstract idea, then it would be something that people could create according to their own paradigms – something like the concept of “post-truth.” But if truth is a person, then truth is something that is entirely objective and factual. Jesus entirely redefined “truth” when he defined it as himself, saying, “I am the truth.”
Because Jesus himself is the truth, and because of the sort of person that Jesus is, truth is never static, but dynamic; not independent, but relational; not impassive, but expressive. This was a shockingly radical teaching for Jesus’ contemporaries, and it is radical for us today.
If you’ve found Jesus, you’ve found the truth. If you accepted Jesus’ words, then you know that they are the truth (John 17:17; John 12:49), merely because they come from him. We are given insights into the truth in a book, the Bible, and the Bible tells the truth because it’s Author is the truth himself.
Today, the world that we live in needs the truth of the Gospel more than ever. We are not living in a “post-truth” world, because while Jesus lives, we will never be in a “post-truth” time, and the bottom line is that Jesus lives forever more.
There’s no one who will save us from the lies that we weave for ourselves except Jesus Christ. Sin is a thing. It’s real. God is real. The way he has made to rescue us from sin is real. The Kingdom of Heaven and the privileges that Jesus announced are real.
Everyone who knows Jesus, knows that’s the truth.
– Eliezer Gonzalez
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