This post is about 6 months in the making, because in large part because of its content. I keep thinking about “truth”. I especially think about truth in the context of our culture, one often referred to as being “post-truth”. Unfortunately, this post-truth culture is increasingly problematic for Christians, though not necessary for the reasons we Christians might think.
What is truth?
Between the abundance of biased and misleading reporting, politicians whose relationship with facts are tenuous at best, and that one relative on Facebook who re-posts whatever crosses their page; it seems like finding what is “true” holds less and less value to the average person. It’s not about what facts back up a statement or if there is any objective basis behind whatever someone says. Even finding an accurate portrayal of what’s happening seems harder than ever. Instead, social media compels us to do whatever is necessary to benefit our “group” and hurt the other groups. Everything is about scoring “rightness” points, even if it takes out-of-context statements, misrepresenting a person’s position, telling only the portion of a story that helps us and hurts them, or outright lies.
Whether something is factual or objectively true is no longer as important is its subjective truth. If it’s true for me, that’s good enough — even if it isn’t true anywhere else. This leads to a very casual relationship with the truth. (Somewhat ironically, the same people who often have this kind of relationship with truth rail against the Post-Modernism with this very fear: that relative truth is the only truth.)
As truth itself becomes relative, both nothing and everything is true. The novel Alamut by Vladimir Bartol contains a proverb, popularized in the Assassin’s Creed series of video games, which summarizes this concept: “Nothing is true; everything is permitted.”
It only takes moments watching or reading the news and social media to find out how well-embraced this idea is. Media bias makes it incredibly difficult to discern facts from fictions. So, when nothing is true, whose opinion is most valid? If nothing is true, how do you tell who is right? Why, when nothing is true, anything goes!
Truth and Fiction
This brings us to the problem at hand for Christianity — we too, fall victim to being “Post-Truth”. My own experience on social media is of Christians often being more susceptible to relative truth, especially when it agrees with things we already believe. Confirmation bias is a dangerous aspect to our psychology, and is especially more dangerous in our post-truth world. We are quick to believe things that fit our worldview, and quicker to mistrust things that don’t.
And yet, the Christian faith holds, at its core, a significant factual claim: Jesus of Nazareth died on a cross, was buried, and rose again. The Bible asserts that, if Jesus didn’t rise from the grave, then our faith is for nothing (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). The actual fact of Jesus’ resurrection is a necessary component of the Christian faith, and I’d almost argue it is the necessary component.
If Jesus didn’t rise, everything Christians have done for the past 2,000 or so years is a lie. Everything Christians have ever done is based in a profound untruth and we are to be pitied. Our faith is based on an actual event, and without the resurrection, the rest is utterly useless.
Because our faith is centered around a factual claim, this circles us back around to our key problem. The more we Christians embrace relative truth, the less trustworthy we are to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This Is a Trustworthy Saying
We’ve all heard the story of the boy who cried wolf. A very bored boy announces numerous false alarms about a wolf attacking a town’s sheep to keep himself entertained. When a wolf actually comes, no one in the town believes the boy because he has proven himself untrustworthy. He lied about the wolf before; there was no reason to believe him — even if there actually was a wolf!
The more often Christians embrace a post-truth worldview (by sharing verifiably false memes on Facebook, embracing misinformation, refusing to change our viewpoints when confronted with new information, accepting whatever inaccurate statements we come across, and so on) the more damage we do to our Christian witness. If no one can trust Christians to discern truth correctly in our modern world, how could anyone possibly trust us to correctly state the truth about something that happened 2,000 years ago? By sharing a meme that can be proved false with 30 seconds on Google, we bring our credibility into question. In doing so, we also undermine Jesus’ gospel message.
A Promise Is a Promise and a Fact’s a Fact
In 1994, Christian Music superstar Stephen Curtis Chapman released the Heaven In the Real World album. One of the songs, “Facts are Facts”, has this chorus:
I know there’s a God who knows my name
And a Son who died to take the blame
I believe that Jesus is coming back
’cause promises are promises and facts are facts
Cheesy song (and artist) aside, Christianity is a faith based in facts. Jesus, son of Mary, lived in Judea in the early half of the 1st Century. He died by crucifixion and rose again. The facts of Christianity support the promises we have through faith. Jesus is God in the flesh. His death ransomed humanity from sin. His resurrection means a life forever. We use the things of God we can prove — like Jesus’ existence and the work of the early Church
But when we play fast and loose with truth, we become inconsistent. If we can’t be trusted with things of temporal consequence, who would trust us with things of eternal consequence (Luke 16:10)?
Yes Means Yes and No Means No
In this world full of relative truth, it is more important than ever that we be consistent in what we say and do. If we have any hope of sharing the good news of Jesus, our truth must be True. Why would anyone believe us about the resurrection if we can’t be trusted about something anyone can easily search online?
To quote the words of Jesus, “Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.” (Matthew 5:37) If we want others to hear us when we talk about matters of faith, we must be honest and truthful when we talk about matters of the world. Anything else puts us in the way of the kingdom of God, instead of growing the kingdom by preaching God’s good news of truth.