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culture, faith, objective, opinion, perceptions, subjective, truth
Does anyone ever get caught up in the murky quagmire called, truth is wutever I say it is and all truths are equally valid? I’ve written about this quite a bit, the interplay between subjective truth and objective reality.
I grew up in that quagmire, trying to find the truth, a bit like peeling the layers off an onion or perhaps like being one of those Russian dolls you open and there’s just another one inside and another and another…….
I did not realize at the time that these struggles were really preparing me for the culture we now live in, for such a time as this. A time where the social fabric of our world says things like, “That guy self identifies as a sea lion, IB. You need to respect his choices. Everybody’s truth is valid.” True story, I once met sea lion boy. I did not think the people praising him and encouraging him to have more body modification were being loving.
So, I get it. In a culture where news is whatever we say it is, where people are whatever they self identify as, a culture that is a chaotic mess of, “all truths are equal and valid,” there’s this real urge to flee back to the safety of objective truth. Absolute truth. We need some agreed upon boundaries in our world or else we start to feel like we’re just free falling through space. Like Alice, plunging down a rabbit hole.
Where has my solid ground gone? It’s a little scary. Also, worrisome, because if you go walk face first into a wall, you’re going to hurt yourself. Objective reality is going to slam you in the head. I’m not trying to be disrespectful of your little truths, I’m just saying that the wall is real enough and rather unforgiving.
I’ve really struggled to raise kids in this wutever world. Someday you can find a nice man and have a family. Actually mom, these days family is wutever we say it is. It could be 3 moms or two dads with a paid surrogate, or a single parent, or polyandrous goddess cult. At which point about all you can do is say, yes I suppose it “could” be true, but is it wise?
Are all truths equal and valid or are some truths simply better than others? They are not all equal. People don’t like to hear that these days. They want to believe all choices are valid and nothing in the world can be superior to anything else. If some choices are bad, it makes the bad choice people feel bad. Well shoot, we all make bad choices sometimes. I’d actually call that “normal.” What isn’t normal is expecting the whole world to accept all your choices as “good.”
So, in response to all this chaos there can be this real urge to flee back to the safety of objective truth, absolute truth, to stamp our feet on the ground and claim something solid as our territory, as the ground beneath our feet. I have to speak out against that reactionary stance, especially in faith. We need to respond rather than to react.
This pastor I’m kind of fond of calls responsibility, respond-ability. Our ability to respond. When we have to ability to respond, we aren’t reacting to our circumstances. The problem with reacting is that it’s usually tinged with anxiety, fear, and wants a backlash, it wants to yell, all truth is totally objective and reality based.
But is that really true? Is it factual? Bit of a word salad here, but is it true that all truth is totally objective, logical, reality based, and existing outside of us? I say no, and I think in faith we need to be very careful of reacting in this way. There is a ditch on that side of the road too. I am concerned about us over correcting, reacting and winding up in the other ditch. That other ditch is no better than the one we are already heading for, because it too is filled with falsehoods.
It’s a bit weird to be a Christian trying to speak-up in favor of subjective truth in a wutever world. I have to however, and I believe this is actually biblical. We are called to embrace the paradox. Also, if the world of wutever makes you want to tear your hair out, you can take comfort in the fact that the bible is already on it, that God’s got this thing.
Henry Ford once said, “Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right.” That is two contradictory truths existing at the same time. Your reality, your truth is going to be shaped by which belief you decide to embrace, which choice you make.
The same is true with our faith. Accept Jesus as Lord, as Savior, and you will have a Savior and all the joy He brings. Or refuse to believe, reject Him and you will not have a Savior. That simple. Two subjective truths true at the same time. They both will be the parameter that is going to define your reality.
There is plenty of well-reasoned, objective, factual truth that supports the existence of God, that supports the decision to give your life to Christ. However, all that objective truth and factual evidence becomes completely irrelevant to your life, if you don’t make a subjective choice to believe.
In the bible Jesus says, “who do you say I am?” He also says, “believe.” He does not say rationalize, seek objective truth, use your own reason, he simply says “believe.” In fact, believe as a child believes. Children are not well-known for their own ability to reason. Pilate also says, “what is truth?” Well, when you are a dictator with a lot of power, even objective truth can become whatever you say it is going to be. Jesus was unfairly tortured and put death, that is objectively true. That however, is not the whole truth.
One reason why I always stress this point is because objective truth can fail you. You can have the rug pulled out from under you. Anyone who has ever had their world come crashing down around them, knows this. Everything you thought was true, turns out to have been a lie. It’s a very disconcerting place to be.
Objective truth can fail you. It’s not that it isn’t a valid form of truth, it’s that our faith is way bigger than that, far more powerful, and totally steadfast. Our God is far more powerful than our own understanding of objective reality or absolute truth. He is the Rock that anchors our soul. He is the Truth that we can place our trust in. When subjective reality fails you, when objective reality fails you, when reality itself fails you, there is the Rock, the Cornerstone who anchors our soul. We are actually firmly tethered to Him. Everything else can fall away, including our own ability to reason, our own ability to identify objective truth, and yet He still stands.
The bible tells us God is love, not that God is objective truth. Although you could make a good argument for, “objective truth is whatever God says it is.” Just the same, the bible tells us God is love. Love conquered all is now seated in victory at the right hand of the Father.
Love never fails. Our own understanding can fail, our own perceptions of objective reality can fail, but love never does. Love will come chasing after you even in a quagmire of heroin addiction, even in the confusion of dementia, or in the throes of mental illness. Our own grasp of objective reality can slip away, but we still do not slip out of our Father’s hands.
Love never fails, but the distress some of us old guard experience looking at sea lion boy is also love, love tinged with wisdom and desire to protect people from face planting up against that hard wall of objective reality. One problem with a culture that is busy rejecting all forms of authority, is that it often also plugs its ears to all wisdom, and so those of us who have been around the block a few times, dread the day we’re going to have to scrape you off that wall.
On the bright side, I do know this Great Physician. He’s really good at healing face plants….
I just read this morning in Saving Truth, a book by Abdu Murray (of the Ravi Zacharias apologetics team), about how the culture of confusion we’re in, can take a fairly normal adolescent questioning regarding sexual and/or gender identity and prolong the confusion because we label the admission of confusion as heroic.
In the atheist/theist FB group I’m in, there’s a clear message that anyone who has certainty is suspect. After all, who can be certain? Don’t you have doubts, don’t you have questions? they say. Well, yes, at times in my life I have had doubts, and I have questions every day. But why do you look at that as better than someone who has certainty, I want to ask. How am I supposed to “un-know” God? If I know Him, I have a lifetime to learn about Him, but I’m not able to stop knowing Him, not if I actually ever knew Him.
So I guess the rock, the anchor, the solid ground is perhaps something we can know absolutely. The rest, we are still learning. But isn’t that what the Bible says: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, of knowledge.
Becky
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Good point Becky,about perfectly normal adolescent confusion being prolonged, perhaps even exploited. I’ve watched that happen on facebook, kids get a whole lot of attention for their alleged bravery in stepping out of the box. Worse, your social status declines if you don’t. It should come as no surprise that now almost none of the young people I know in real life are willing to claim their actual gender, nor their sexuality. Everybody who wants to admit they are a cis-gendered heteronormative oppressor, please raise your hand so we can kick you out of the social club.
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“What isn’t normal is expecting the whole world to accept all your choices as “good.” – I.B. a real danger is that most people with this philosophy also demand others accept their “good” choices. That is where I get in trouble. I try to “live and let live” as relates to others (obviously barring those things that are dangerous), but I do not want rules made for me on someone’s subjective truth. Love your ending statement regarding our Great Physician.
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So true, Oneta! I’m a live and let liver too, up to a point. Also, that line about “barring things that are dangerous” gets more blurry everyday. That sea lion kid was actually having a lot of surgery done on a perfectly healthy body. IMO, that’s unethical,that crosses a line past tolerance and into harmful territory.
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Well said and well balanced, IB. I personally go between being mildly amused and somewhat annoyed by the morrass of subjectivism in our confused culture today. Saying things like “all truths are equally valid” is absurdly nonsensicle and meaningless, just evacuating terms of their meaning.
I think people confuse truth with preference (I *prefer* to self identify as a sea lion). And I can be gracious and respectful with the “sea lion boy,” but I don’t have to think for a moment that he’s in possession of truth!
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Well said, Mel. All truths are not equally valid. That really is absurd. I like what you said about “prefer,” but I notice we don’t do that very often, which is interesting. One issue is that to claim something as a preference requires accountability, personal responsibility. You’re owning it.
I’m chuckling here, but I can think of a couple of evangelizing atheists who really need to just say,”I prefer to just irrationally reject God and misappropriate the rules of logic because I’m really mad at Him.” I could totally respect that kind of honesty and probably have a good conversation. After I completely fell out of my chair, of course. 🙂
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“Momma always told me, “Stupid is as stupid does.”” Truth is what happened and what’s gonna happen and we cannot avoid the truth. Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life.” So unless Jesus tells us otherwise, we have to accept what “is.” Born male-deal with it. Born female-deal with it. Born a sea lion-deal with it. But we don’t get to pick and choose. Born a liar?-Repent of it, because the “Truth” told us not to lie. Anything else leaves us with Forrest Gump’s Momma’s truth!
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Ha! I love that. Forrest Gump’s mama is awesome. You remind of another good point, trust. Liars tend to create a lot of distrust, it’s a betrayal. The more we accept lies as the norm, the more suspicious and skeptical we become. A lot of our faith is based on testimonies, on the word, and if you no longer know what to trust in, well, that just makes finding your way to faith a whole lot harder. We’ve certainly watched that happen in our culture already, our yes no longer means yes and our no is no longer no, and hardly anybody trusts one another anymore.
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that one line is it IB…my life, my quagmire of growing up “I did not realize at the time that these struggles were really preparing me for the culture we now live in, for such a time as this.”
That’s it…that’s what this is all about…we’ve been prepared…like warriors for battle…
oh and I’m still laughing about those “identifying as sea lions…” because that’s how absolutely crazy these times have become!!!!!
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Amen, Julie! I sense that preparation, too, like warriors to battle for sure.
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Truth is whatever you want to believe to get you there. If you get to where you don’t want to be, then find another truth.
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Well, that’s where things get complicated, Doug. In life we don’t always get to “like” where we are. You also can’t just pick another truth every time the truth starts to make you uncomfortable.
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My point with my quote relates to your first sentence. You don’t like where you are at then find another truth. I will agree that it’s not always easy to do that by any means… especially when you’re a victim of someone else’s “truth”.
In spite of saying what I said… it’s a fatalistic opinion. Apparently you CAN pick another truth… it’s where our current divisiveness rests.
I’m trying to avoid pointing a finger toward someone who thinks truth is a whimsical punchline at best.
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When Soren Kierkegaard wrote that truth is subjective, he did not intend to be understood as saying that truth is whatever you want it to be. He meant that the truth that matters is truth that deeply concerns you. What does not concern you might be factual, but it is not truth. Therefore, an academic proof of the existence of God is not really seeking truth; what Kierkegaard called the leap of faith is the real experience of truth. J.
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Dollars to donuts, IB, you’ve probably been asked- “How could you SEE that?! How did you KNOW that?!? You must be a prophet or something!”
But you well know, one never needs a crystal ball when you have a nice ledger of probabilities stored in your head.
There’s even a whole manual on predictive outcomes provided to humans, but it’s really hard not to play with the toy before reading the instructions well.
I mean, who has time for that???
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