Ankerberg Show

Guest (Male): Folks, when you leave your home each day, do you realize how much our radical secular culture has influenced how you live and think? You may be surprised that it has influenced you more than you realize. For example, our secular culture is trying to redefine or rid us of even believing in God.

My guest today, Dr. Irwin Lutzer, former pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, writes in his new book, The Eclipse of God, just as the moon obscures the sun's light during an eclipse, radical secularism has obscured the light of God. Yet God is still God, even when we no longer see or acknowledge him.

Today, we live in a world where radical secularism has redefined God's moral standard, and we are watching the unraveling and destruction of our culture. We have seen an increase in violence, treachery, the abuse of the law, sexual perversity, drug use, and suicide.

Radical secularism continues to make more changes in our morals, laws, and education, and this darkness is being protected and normalized while light is being vilified and criminalized. This is not just the clash of worldviews, but the clash of spiritual forces that affects us all. The God of the Bible is watching and weighing us on his scales of justice. To learn how our secular culture affects us, but won't ever redefine or change God, join us for this edition of the John Ankerberg Show.

John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg. Thanks for joining us today. As you've heard, my guest is Dr. Irwin Lutzer. We're talking about truth today, and how has truth moved from objective truth to feelings as the basis of truth?

You know what I'm talking about. There are people that if you say 2 + 2 = 4, they might say it's five because they feel it's five. That's not objective truth. We want to talk about how has that changed, and why is it wrong, and how can we compassionately tell these folks that we've got to go back to objective truth? Irwin, let's start with the fact that we have something that's called truthiness today. What is truthiness?

Dr. Irwin Lutzer: The Webster's Dictionary frequently has a word of the year, and truthiness was the word that was used already back in 2006. Truthiness is this: that it may not be exactly true, it may be partially true, maybe it's false, but I want it to be true. So that's what truthiness is.

Let's figure out how we got there. There was a time in America when it was believed that truth was objective. We might argue as to whether or not we found it. We might argue regarding the path that we should take to find it, but we all agreed that it existed outside of us.

So now that you've made the shift, which you already alluded to, where now truth is found within me, now suddenly we have multiple truths, no matter how contradictory. As a result of that, we find many people are living in self-directed confusion, if I might put it that way, because now suddenly truth is something that I have to find out by looking within me.

That's why you have so many multiple truths. And I know that many people might wonder, is it really true that there are some people who want to say that 2 + 2 is equal to five? Of course, George Orwell referred to that in his book 1984. But oftentimes we're told today that mathematics, with all of its objectivity, is racist. That, of course, is insanity.

I'm going to take time, John. We have the word truthiness, but I also want to read what Merriam-Webster says about the word gaslighting. It is psychological manipulation of a person, usually over an extended period of time, that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perceptions of reality, or memories. Typically it leads to confusion, loss of confidence, self-esteem, and dependency on the perpetrator. Tragically, there are many people who are listening who around them have people who are gaslighting them. They are misleading them.

John Ankerberg: Let me tie two things together. Webster says that truthiness is claimed for something not because of supporting facts of evidence, but because of feelings that it is true or a desire for it to be true. I want to say, okay, if you're going to history class, as you and I both have done in university and graduate school, how has this affected historical studies?

Dr. Irwin Lutzer: We have to realize that now a word that is often used is deconstruction. Deconstruction says don't take a text at face value. Get behind it because there's probably an oppressor who is trying to protect his or her power, and what you have to do is to get to that.

In my book that we're talking about, The Eclipse of God, I actually have references that say very clearly that there are as many meanings in the text as there are people reading the text because you come up with your own meaning. I even quote a teacher's manual that says that no student should ever be told that they are wrong.

It gives a list of ways that you can respond to a student even if his answer is really wrong. Things like, "I hadn't thought of that before. Well, that's an idea. Hang on to it." Because nobody should be told that they are wrong.

Now, here's where it eventually goes. There's a man who was asked, "What would you say to God if you were to stand before him and God were to say, 'I want to judge you'?" And he said, "I would tell him he has no authority over me because I didn't acknowledge him." In other words, I am the source of truth. I am the one who decides what is right or wrong for me, and no one is supposed to intrude on that.

John Ankerberg: I remember some of the top scholars coming to our graduate school. If you use the definition that the intent of the author becomes irrelevant, and you as a student are free to create your own meaning and the reader, not the text, is in charge of its meaning, think about doing that on a test. That's just ridiculous.

Dr. Irwin Lutzer: And of course, that's why there are people who try to criticize our Constitution, people who go into the Bible and of course they don't accept anything on face value. What they're trying to do is to get behind the text and say, "What does it really mean for me?"

One of the things that we have to understand is that we cannot live really with a contradiction. Now you know that in 1984, the novel written by George Orwell, Winston goes into a room and he is told that 2 + 2 is equal to five, and he finds it difficult to accept it. Eventually he is so brainwashed that if you remember how the novel ends, it says, "And Winston loved Big Brother." In other words, he had come around to truthiness or doublethink where you can live with a contradiction, but really you can't.

Let me give you a personal example. When I was a pastor, there was a young woman who was attending college and she said, "Right across the aisle from me is a boy who wrote a paper showing that there is no such thing as truth." So she gave me the paper. It was about a page or a page and a half. I read it and then I put a note on it and said, "If what you have written is true, don't ever open your mouth again because the minute you speak, we will all already know that you're lying." And she gave it to him and he never said a word for the rest of the semester.

Now, isn't that ever consistent? Because even he realized that of course everyone believes in the laws of logic. You can't get around it. In fact, the reason that we can communicate, we can communicate right now, John, with many different countries, many different languages, because God created all of us with the laws of logic and what is called the law of non-contradiction.

Now we don't want to get too deeply into this except to say this: that if we came up through the animal world, if Darwinism was true, the universe would be so haphazard there could be no communication. And while I'm at it, it's so important for us to realize that God is incapable of contradiction. If he were able to contradict himself, we couldn't trust his promises because those promises could change.

John Ankerberg: You cannot both exist and not exist in the same way at the same time. You can't say the world is round, and it cannot also be flat at the same time. You can't bring yourself to actually say 2 + 2 = 5 or that a triangle has four sides. That's what the law of non-contradiction tells us. We don't think that way. In fact, God, when he speaks, cannot lie.

Dr. Irwin Lutzer: Exactly, because the Bible says that God is a God of truth. So what we must recognize is first of all truth is not inclusive. It is always exclusive. Let's go back to 2 + 2 = 4. That is very exclusive. It is not inclusive. That shuts out almost an infinite number of other answers that are wrong. So we must understand that and therefore we also have to realize that truth is objective. It doesn't depend on whether or not I believe it. It exists outside of us.

Now, when Jesus said in John chapter 14 verse 6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me," he was excluding other options. That's why this idea of trying to bring all religions together actually ends in some kind of mysticism. It does not end in rational truth.

Jesus before Pilate, this is a fascinating part of Scripture. Jesus is brought before Pilate and Pilate asks him, "Are you a king?" And then Jesus says this, "For this cause I was born, for this cause I came into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth."

Now let's think about that. Jesus didn't say, "I came into the world to make the world feel better," though he does. Jesus said that he came to bear witness to the truth. And Pilate asked an excellent question. He said, "What is truth?" Pilate discovered something that day. Pilate discovered that it's possible to crucify a man, but you can't crucify truth. Truth is truth. And even as we were talking a few moments ago, it is so important for us to recognize that feelings are important, but feelings are unreliable.

John Ankerberg: Now I want to say a word here about love because today we hear love is love. Let's make sure that we understand that when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they didn't stop loving. They just started to love the wrong things. Lovers of pleasure, lovers of money, lovers of self.

And so what we must do is to understand that not all love is valid. Herein is love, that you keep my commandments. Again, we have to keep going back to truth. We have to keep going back to Scripture, which is truth, which shows us the way out of the darkness.

But I find that so fascinating that Pilate is standing here before the man who is indeed truth, the truth, and Pilate leaves him and goes to talk to the mob and gives in to a lie. The reason we're doing this program, folks, is that some of you have accepted gaslighting. You have accepted truthiness. You have accepted the idea that there is no truth for me, it's only truth for you, or your truth can be different from my truth and we can both be equal even though we contradict each other. And it's led you into confusion. And it's led you into a path that you don't like where you're at.

And what we're trying to do is to say there's a way out of where you're at. And Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," and nobody's going to come to the Father but by me. Someday, whatever condition you're in right now, you're going to die. And the fact is when you die, you're going to stand before a holy God that's never sinned once.

And if he asks you the question, "Why is it that I should let you into my heaven?" You're not going to be talking about truthiness. You're not going to be talking about, "Well, I feel like you ought to let me in." You're going to have to be following his rules because he's the one that gave the non-contradiction. He's the one that sent his son into the world to show us what the truth is. And he also did something while he was here.

Irwin, I want you to explain what Jesus did that takes care of all of our mistakes, takes care of all of the sins, all of the lies, all of the perversions, all of the things that we feel guilty about. Guilt is a big feeling in everybody. And the fact is maybe you have a lot of guilt right now. Would you like to get rid of that? Why did Jesus come into the world and how did he get rid of guilt, sin, and all of these things that we dread?

Dr. Irwin Lutzer: We're speaking to people around the world with different religions, different backgrounds and so forth. And we're living in a society where people say, "Well, I don't think I should ever hear anything that is offensive." We live in a society that doesn't want to be offended. Truth often offends.

The disciples for example come to him in one instance and say, "Don't you know that you offended the Pharisees?" Jesus didn't say, "Oh, I have to go back and straighten that out." Rather he made a statement about the fact that every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted.

And then we get to the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. Amazingly, Jesus is saying some very hard things and the disciples, they walk away. Many people walk away. And then Peter says this, "To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that you are the Christ that should come into the world."

The question is, where are you going to put your faith? In various ideas that have come to us where truth now is so subjective, or are you going to put your faith in somebody who spoke objectively? I'm thinking for example also of the words of Jesus where he said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

What truth do you need to know? First of all you have to be very much aware that you are a sinner. That you are someone who needs salvation, you need forgiveness. You are perhaps filled with fear and you look forward to the future and you say to yourself, "I don't know how I'm going to manage because as John has already mentioned, we are all going to die."

God is a God who brings about judgment to be sure, but he's also a God of mercy and love. And that's why he sent Jesus Christ into this world that he might redeem us. But here's what you need to understand: other religions do not have a redeemer. Nobody else has a redeemer who is able to cleanse us, to prepare us for heaven. Jesus alone has that authority.

Remember he is the truth. And if your heart is restless, and if you are full of guilt, I want you to know it is Jesus that you are looking for. And today if he has spoken to you, if you're aware of the fact that you need to be reconciled to God, and you're heavy-hearted, you're in a good position because now you are hearing where you can go.

Who else would you go to for eternal life? I can tell you this: there's nobody else out there like Jesus. Now here's what I urge you to do. Pray to God through Jesus Christ. Acknowledge your sin, and then thank Jesus that he died for sinners just like us and like you. And then you receive him as your Savior, and you recognize that you're in touch with the Almighty because Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you've actually seen the Father." Amazing statements, amazing statements that can help us even as we're dealing with our sin. We come to him alone.

I'm going to pray briefly. I hope that you do too. Father, I ask that there might be many people, different languages, different cultures, different countries at this moment. Help them to see that Jesus is the truth. That we cannot destroy truth. Truth is truth. And so we come to him who has the credentials of being true. May you enable people to believe on him, to call on him, and be saved. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

John Ankerberg: Amen. I hope you listened to what Irwin said, and I hope you prayed that prayer and invited Christ to come into your life and forgive you of your sins. If you believed in him, he'll do that, he's done that, and he'll make himself known to you.

Now next week, I hope that you'll join us again because we're going to talk about returning to the God of creation. Who is the one that created everything that we see around us? Creation. We're going to say that it's God, and we're going to give you reasons why we believe that, and I hope that you'll join us then.

Thank you for listening to the John Ankerberg Show. We're a listener-supported ministry, and your gifts help us continue to share the gospel with millions of people worldwide. To learn more about our resources or to support our mission, visit JAshow.org or please call us at 1-800-805-3030. If you're in Canada, please visit JAshow.ca or call us at 1-866-746-5803. Or you can subscribe to us on YouTube. Your support makes a difference in spreading God's word.