Focal Point

Dave Drewie: Today on Focal Point, we're clearing out our schedule and setting aside time to answer a question from a listener. It's time for another edition of Ask Pastor Mike right here on Focal Point.

Welcome to Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Drewie. You've heard people say, "That's your truth, this is my truth." But is there such a thing as the truth? Today, Pastor Mike tackles a two-part question from a listener about absolute truth. Is there such a thing as absolute truth? And if so, how do you know it's true? I'm turning the microphone over now to Jay Wurten, executive director of Focal Point, coming to you from inside the pastor's study. Jay?

Jay Wurten: We're back with another edition of Ask Pastor Mike. Pastor Mike, I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about an age-old question: what is truth? We struggle with that today in our age of relativism. Even Pontius Pilate asked it of Jesus in John 18, "What is truth?" I feel like it's a question many people are asking. How do we discern truth, or is it really all just relative?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Even the idea of truth certainly hasn't changed. I like the basic definition you're going to find in any dictionary or even any course on philosophy if you start with just the base traditional historic question of truth. We're talking about things that correspond with reality or assertions, statements that correspond with reality.

Did I have a burrito for lunch today? The truthful answer is yes or no. I did or I didn't. Those are the easy things. You go to a court, you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That even starts to show it gets a little complicated because I could say some things that are partially true. I could tell you things that have some truth in them but will mislead you.

But even that old courtroom line—the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth—what I want is statements of fact, things that correspond with reality to take me to the whole complete understanding of something. When Christ is standing before Pilate, "Are you the Son of God?" You've got to understand the question, but when it comes to the reality of what was going on at that trial in front of Pontius Pilate, we need to know whether Christ is the one the Old Testament speaks of.

Anything regarding truth—the truth of origins, the truth of the triunity of God, the truth of the presence of the Spirit in someone's life—whatever it might be, what we need is data that's going to help me understand properly, get a good handle on whatever it is that corresponds with reality.

Jay Wurten: That seems to get more difficult as time goes on. So how do we ascertain truth when things like the Bible are being attacked? How do we gather that information so that we can then say we've got a good understanding that this is what occurred?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Because what we've done with religious truth—this is nothing new, Francis Schaeffer was the best at back in his day articulating this—is we've taken in the modern era things that relate to religious truth, facts about God or Christ or whatever it might be that the Bible would assert, and we've put that into the category of values or preferences.

What's the truth about the best ice cream flavor? You may say it's chocolate and I say it's mint chocolate chip. Well, what is the truth? The truth is I prefer one and you prefer another. There is no truth about which one is the best, not objectively, because those are questions of appetite or value. When people start talking about God, they start thinking that's a question of value and appetite and preference.

But it's not. It's like saying, is my wife brown-haired, is my wife so tall, was my wife born in Texas or in California? Those questions about my wife, even though you haven't met her, those are things that can be ascertained because there's a truth to that. It can be understood, it can be researched, there's data that can give us the right perspective that corresponds with reality. I can go after that.

It's the same thing with God. If there is a God, he exists and he has revealed himself. There's a way to ascertain data about him. Then what you think God is is not a preference. You can't say, "Well, you're right just like you think chocolate ice cream is the best, that's right for you, but for me, it's mint chocolate chip, that's right for me."

That's like saying, "Well, for you, my wife being born in Texas, that's what you think, and I think she was born in California, that's what's right for me. So God's born in Texas and California," in this illustration. The idea, though, is there is truth about God that is available to us in the Bible.

The Bible—and we've spent so many hours lecturing on this topic—is a reliable source of information from God. It has all the characteristics that it's not a human literary product. It is something that God has revealed from beyond. That's why we call it revelation. It's been revealed to us from not this world, but from God himself through the pen of the apostles and prophets.

He has given us information about who he is, about what he requires, about what he's like, about what he values, about what he thinks is right and wrong. So I can ascertain these things in a category of objective realities, not preferences. Today, you want to talk about religion, people throw up their hands and say, "Well, that's your opinion and it's right for you, and this is my opinion and my preference and it's right for me."

That's taking the category of preference and applying it wrongly into the category of facts. There are facts about God, who he is, what he requires. Those are the things that we need to get from whatever reliable source of information we have. All I'm saying is the Bible, as Christians have been teaching for centuries, is the verifiable expression of God's revelation to mankind. Once you determine that, as Francis Schaeffer used to say, "There is a God and he has revealed himself," then I'm on my way to being a biblical, Bible-believing New Testament Christian because that's what the data will lead you to do.

Jay Wurten: What do you think it is that when someone is presented with a preponderance of evidence that would seem to make this true is causing them to reject it?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I think the answer to that is because your statement about God, the evidence is there, I can trace it back to the fact that it is God's word and not your opinion. I don't want to receive it because it conflicts with what I want to do in my life. In other words, your truth has implications on how I live.

If God has really said those things and that is the God I have to give an account to, and he's the real God, the God who is, then I don't like that, so I don't receive it. That's the human way to describe this. When the truth of God is presented and it's clearly presented and it's even reasonably presented with evidence that shows you yes, this is true beyond a reasonable doubt, I can still say I don't want it.

It's not because of a matter of my mind and my intellect. It may be reasonable and rational, it's just that I don't like it because it's a matter of my will, my preference. I'm now saying your factual information is in conflict with what I want to do. When it is, a lot of people will say, "I'm not willing to submit my life and the way I live it for my pleasures and what I want, I'm not willing to submit all that to your facts."

That's the human way to describe it. The Bible says there's a lot going on, that Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4). Like that parable of the soils, Jesus throws the word of God out there, and there are people there that are like the path, and before they even have a chance to process it, Satan comes and snatches that seed away.

The point is there's a spiritual battle going on, and we have a problem of our own fallenness that makes this a real complicated thing to answer. Why don't people, if it's reasonable and rational and presented very clearly, why don't they just accept it? Well, because there's a lot of implications that make it not desirable for me to accept it.

Jay Wurten: Thanks, Pastor Mike. We're going to listen to a message today that you did back when The Da Vinci Code came out on how to decipher truth.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: This comes from a New York Times article that came out not long after September 11, November 27, 2001. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times says World War II was a battle against secular totalitarianism. You know what that means: one guy's in charge, do it my way, I'm in control. Hitler was going to conquer the world, do it my way, everybody's going to do it like me, and I'm going to control everything. Political totalitarianism.

But he says the current war that we're in is a war against religious totalitarianism. Now note how he defines that. He says all faiths that come out of the biblical tradition—and he's including in that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—the biblical tradition has a tendency to believe that they have the exclusive truth. If they do, they're totalitarianists. They believe that I'm right and you're wrong.

The opposite of religious totalitarianism, he says, is an ideology of pluralism. America is a pluralistic nation. Here's how he's defining that. It's an ideology that embraces religious diversity. Now, there's a tricky sentence right there because for us we would say there's diversity of religion, but in our minds, we would separate the fact that that doesn't mean all the religions are true.

They're saying pluralism is an acceptance that these faiths are legitimate. Look how he says it next. The idea—and this is the key—that my faith can be nurtured without claiming exclusive truth. Now you've just blurred the line. I'm saying that I now can embrace my faith, and as I embrace my faith, I can embrace it, but I can't say it's true over and against yours.

Pluralism, particularly after September 11, is defined as we all have our religious truths, and my truth is as valid as your truth. That's been around for a while, but it's never been so vogue as it is right now. You cannot say that your religious truth is more true than my religious truth because if you're saying that, you're now a totalitarian. You now want to impose your beliefs on me.

Pluralism has been in its proper form, at least in some circles that have a right understanding of truth, they say pluralism means I don't chop your head off if you're wrong. That's pluralism in a good sense. They're saying in pluralism, no, it's not that, it's understanding that my religion is not exclusively true. That's a different statement. Pluralism is now being defined in modern culture as we're all equally true when it comes to our religious truth.

Example: You can believe your religious truth. Just don't try to claim it's really true. There are two kinds of truths here. Your religious truth can be embraced, it can be nurtured, just don't try and say it's true in the classic sense of what we mean when we say something is true. That we call traditionally relativism. We call that a sense that my truth is as good as your truth even if our truths oppose one another.

Let's think this through. Is religious truth true? Or we could ask it differently, can religious truth be true? Let's start with the definition. I figured we'd check in with some really smart guys. Let's go to the tallest ivory tower on the planet, Oxford. This is from the Oxford Department of Continuing Education in Philosophy. I want to ask the question, Professor, what is truth?

Give me a definition of truth. This is from their notes from graduate philosophy continuing education Oxford. Here's what they say in writing. To say something is true, if a proposition is stated to be true, what I'm saying by that is I'm asserting a correspondence to reality. I'm asserting a correspondence to—here's the keyword—reality.

If I say, "Let's go to the swap meet after church and buy some junk at the swap meet," and I'm going to tell you today's a big day for the swap meet, it's going to be really fun, and I heard it's a great day and there are lots of vendors at the swap meet. And we get there and it's a parking lot and nobody's there.

And if I said, "I know it's going to be a really great day at the swap meet, I've heard there are lots of vendors out today, it's going to be great," you're going to say what Mike told me did not correspond with reality. There's nobody here today. The swap meet is shut down. If I say it's raining outside, get your umbrellas, it's raining outside, don't get wet.

If I say it's raining and you get wet when you walk out because water is falling out of the clouds, you would say Mike said something that's true. If you walk out and get a sunburn, you'd say Mike said something that was false. A correspondence to reality. Let's apply it to some of the things we've dealt with so far.

The Da Vinci Code, apparently based on the Gnostics, said Jesus was married. Biblical Christianity and the canonical Gospels say no, he was single. When it comes down to the end of the movie, basically what we're told is truth is whatever you want it to be. If you want Jesus to be married, he's married. If you don't want Jesus to be married, he's not married.

If the question is what corresponds to reality, I want to know: did Jesus and Mary Magdalene walk hand in hand and go home? Did they have a suburban camel? Did they have a place they hung out? Did they do marital stuff together? Were they married? There is a reality and something that doesn't match reality.

The statement that he's married is true if indeed there was a reality of a marital relationship. If there wasn't a reality of a marital relationship, then that's not true. Therefore, I've got to be able to say, logically we would have to say either he was or he wasn't. Was he married or was he not?

The end of the book says it doesn't really matter. Your truth is as good as my truth. And I'm saying, now wait a minute, either he was married or he wasn't married. So someone—here comes the nasty word for modern culture—someone's right and someone's wrong. That's what we necessarily would say if we use a basic definition from the highest ivory tower professors. Truth corresponds with reality. Was he married or was he not?

Now it gets a little bit more costly when we start asking this question. Jesus rose from the dead. That is a statement of canonical scripture. That's what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John claim, and all the other books of the New Testament. The books of the Bible say he rose from the dead. That is a statement that is either true or false.

Because other religious systems say, "No, he's still dead. He's still dead." Jesus either rose from the dead or he's still dead. That, you may say, is a theological statement. But really, it's the theology based on reality. Either he's still dead or he's alive. Where are Jesus' bones? Are they rotting in a grave in some Palestinian countryside?

Are his fingernails now returned to the matter of dust? Or are they on the tips of fingers in this other bizarre place called heaven seated at the right hand of the Father? Where are the fingernails of Christ? There is a reality to that question. Either they're in dirt or there's a skull somewhere that housed Jesus' brain and it's buried somewhere, or it's not.

He's either alive or he's dead. Christianity claims he rose from the dead. Islam claims he didn't. Islam claims he wasn't even crucified on a cross. Now we say he was crucified on a cross, they say he wasn't. We say he was. Modern philosophers would say both of you are equally right.

Try to parent your kids that way. Can you imagine that? Kids come in with an argument, you're both right. That's what they're saying. And they're saying it with such arrogance they condescend and pat us on the head and go, "Oh, you're all right. Whatever, you're all right." And then they turn to one another and say, "Well, they're all wrong." This doesn't help.

That's bad enough. Was he married, was he single? Look at that as a test case. Someone's right, someone's wrong. He's either dead or he's alive. That has more implications. It even gets worse as you open the pages of the Bible because you'll turn to passages like John 14:6 and you'll read statements like this that John, who walked with him, taught with him, his disciple, wrote these words down that Jesus said.

He said Jesus said this, "I'm the way, I'm the truth, and I'm the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me." Either that is a true statement or that is a false statement. Either that statement corresponds with reality or it doesn't. And because it has future implications and we won't know until the future, we need to now figure out if religious truth can be true.

Because if it can be true, then I know one day I'll either stand before my Maker and need Christ to make it through judgment day, or I really don't need Christ and Buddha's okay or Muhammad's okay. One or the other. Either this is true or it's not true. Either this corresponds with reality, a reality I will eventually face, or I won't face, or it doesn't.

I need to know reality if I'm going to deal with any issues at all because religion is making truth claims and so we have to figure this out. Gospel of Thomas, the earliest Gnostic writing, second century, says truth is within. Gnostics love to be self-realized. They love to have all this internal—the truth and deity is within us. The spark of divinity is within us.

Here's a quote, for instance, from the Gospel of Thomas, verse 70: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you." Salvation is within. Truth is within. Know yourself. Explore the divinity within. That's what the Gnostic Gospels were into. It led to them looking at the canonical historical Christ and saying, "Whatever, we don't have to be bound by that."

Judas was a bad guy in those Gospels? Guess what, he's our good guy. Gospel of Thomas, he's our hero. We like Judas. He's the man. You don't like him? Doesn't matter. We create our own truth. It comes to a place where they unabashedly say truth for us is internal, it's personal, it's private, it's subjective. That's the mystique of having a private truth that's all within you. That's modern Gnosticism. Rewarmed, because it's ancient Gnosticism.

It comes down to this: all that really matters is what you believe. Ben Witherington, in an essay called Truth Decay in the 21st Century: "If there is no ultimate authority when it comes to truth like the Gnostics, just kind of it's our own thing, then people are free to make their own truth. We'll do it our way. This is, in the end, what the Gnostics did long ago, and history is repeating itself."

This is right where we're at today. We want to create our own truth. Therefore, if we're all going to affirm one another, we have to say your truth is not literally true because all of us are free in the arena of religion to create whatever truth we want, and my truth is as valid as your truth.

But as Francis Schaeffer said some 35 years ago, and he was ahead of his time in coining a phrase that I love that we as modern Christians, especially in the light of the September 11 and Da Vinci Code era, we need to get back into this little phrase. What he said is when it comes to truth, this is the only kind that matters: true truth.

And if that sounds like double talk, isn't that where we've ended up? We've got to be here. All that really matters is: did he rise from the dead or not? Is he the only way or not? Was he single, was he married? Did he come from God or not? We want to know true truth. This is from his book, Escape from Reason, and it's a helpful little term that he coined and used often.

We need to be into true truth. I don't care about religious truth if it's not true truth. All that matters is true truth. And isn't that what was going on in 1 Corinthians? Didn't Paul say the only good truth is true truth? When he deals with the issue of the resurrection, if Christ has not been raised—that is a commentary on reality.

If the dying, decaying body of Christ is laying in some tomb in an unmarked grave in Palestine, if he was not raised from the dead, if it doesn't match reality, then our preaching—that's religious truth, he says—is useless. And so is your faith, your trust in our religious truth.

If you trust our religious truth and it's based on something that doesn't correspond with reality, he says it's all useless. Moreover, he says, we are liars. We're found to be false witnesses of God. And according to the Apostle Paul, it mattered whether or not I'm telling you the truth or a lie. My religious truth must be rooted in reality. According to the Bible, the only good truth is true truth. That's the only truth. Stop with the religious truth dichotomy. Either it's true truth or it's not. It's all about truth.

Dave Drewie: You're listening to Focal Point and a message from Pastor Mike Fabarez called "How Do We Decipher Truth in an Age of Conspiracy, Distrust, and Relativism?" Hear the complete uncut message at focalpointradio.org.

As we just heard, truth must correspond to reality. And that's why Focal Point is dedicated to the accurate study of God's word. As it matches our experience, we can rely on it with confidence. And today I'm inviting you to become an active member of the Focal Point ministry by becoming a Focal Point partner. Sign up to give a monthly gift today and you'll receive exclusive partner benefits.

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