“According to a recent poll, 66 percent of Americans believe that ‘”‘there is no such thing as absolute truth’ Among young adults, the percentage is even higher: 72 percent of those between eighteen and twenty-five do not believe absolutes exist.”

– from George Barna, The Barna Report: What Americans Believe (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1991), pp 83-85.

If such a statistic was true in 1991 when George Barna published this report, how much worse off is our society today? As a 19 year old in 1992, I would have been in the minority, but a large number of my now 50 year friends of today apparently have disowned the concept of absolute truth for 3 decades now.

Look around and consider what that has bought us in society today. As Richard Weaver said, “ideas have consequences”. While the disbelief in truth is not the only factor leading to the degradation of society, we are hard pressed to find much else with such an impact as this deception. When a group of people have lost sight of truth’s existence, they naturally return to life as in the time of Judges, when everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

We live is a sad world when we must begin evangelism with an establishment that truth exists. Overcoming this barrier is difficult when others have lived within this false worldview for their entire lives. We must teach them a new language of truth. This chasm over which their minds and spirits must travel can only be overcome by the work of the Spirit. I pray we can reach more with truth itself and Himself.

“Modern man destroys himself, not only in war and crime and alcohol, but he destroys the family, that perfect unity of God’s creative goodness, and thus disrupts the whole of society, uprooting states and nations with the solvent of sin.” — Van, Henry R. The Calvinistic Concept of Culture. Pusan, Young Yoim Sa, 1972. p.63

Man, without the Holy Spirit influence within him, is not only already dead in sin, but further destroys himself and the reflections of God’s design in the world. Van Til correctly recognized that war and crime and alcohol were outworkings of unregenerate man’s inherent tendencies to destroy himself as an individual.

Van Til did not stop at the individual effects of sin upon the person, but recognized that sin also destroys the social aspects of man in relationship to others. Sin of one person within a family adversely impacts upon the life of others in that family. Bonds are broken, Trust is shattered. Physical, emotional, and spiritual harm sprout and spread like weeds.

Even the wider bonds of human society beyond the family are affected by sins of the individual. As more and more relationships are impacted by spreading sin, the fabric of the society degrades. A society of individuals degraded by unresisted sin will results in a degraded society. As the “solvent of sin” dissolves relationships, the society suffers.

Sin and its roots in the individuals of a society uproots the Godly foundations of a Christian society. Repentance and a turning from sin is necessary for societies to be restored.

“Whereas classical scholarship sought the true, the beautiful, and the good, the postmodernist academy seeks “what works.” – Veith, G. E., Jr. (1994b). Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture. Crossway, p. 58.

When scholarship still held to Christian values regarding the value of truth, beauty, and the good, they sought after these things in life, work, and their studies. As Christian values faded from the halls of academia, first modernism sought to replace Christian truth with scientific truth. Then post-modernism sought to throw out the concept of truth all together. Without truth and a transcendent point of reference, they also lost any recognition of beauty or good. The postmodernist falls to seeking what “works”, at least for the time and situation. The true and the good are what gets them what they want, but beauty is lost from this equation.

“The simplistic way of not conforming is to see what is in style in our culture and then do the opposite. If short hair is in vogue, the nonconformist wears long hair. If going to the movies is popular, then Christians avoid movies as “worldly.” The extreme case of this may be seen in groups that refuse to wear buttons or use electricity because such things, too, are worldly.

A superficial style of nonconformity is the classical pharisaical trap. The kingdom of God is not about buttons, movies, or dancing. The concern of God is not focused on what we eat or what we drink. The call of nonconformity is a call to a deeper level of righteousness, that goes beyond externals. When piety is defined exclusively in terms of externals, the whole point of the apostle’s teaching has been lost. Somehow we have failed to hear Jesus’ words that it is not what goes into a person’s mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of that mouth. We still want to make the kingdom a matter of eating and drinking.” — R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

None of us really knows what it means to live in non-conformity to the world. We swim in the fish bowl of a degraded AND degrading culture. Our culture is moving at such a speed away from Christianity that we must take drastic measures to follow Christ. We must swim upstream. It will be uncomfortable, but we were never promised ease and luxury in following Christ. We must stop choosing the easy route of non-conformity in regards to externals and live out internal non-conformity.

“For man, in the deepest reaches of his being, is religious; he is determined by his relationship to God. Religion, to paraphrase the poet’s expressive phrase, is not of life a thing apart, it is man’s whole existence. Hutchison, indeed, comes to the same conclusion when he says, “For religion is not one aspect or department of life beside the others, as modern secular thought likes to believe; it consists rather in the orientation of all human life to the absolute” (Ibid., p. 211) — Henry Van Til …… p. 37 also quoting John A Hutchison, Faith, Reason, and Existence (New York, 1956), p. 210.

Regardless of how man attempts to deny religion in his life on any given day of the week, man must face the reality that all of life is lived in relationship to God. Our whole existence is lived before our Maker. How we orient our lives to the one Absolute, He whom we call God, must be lived out every single day of our lives. No strength nor repetition of denying this reality will allow us to escape that. By accepting that and responding to it, we can have a hope for a right religion.

“If the existence of truth or the ability to discover it is doubted, then little more can be gained from our senses or our reasoning.  In contrast, knowledge and wisdom begin with an acknowledgement that truth exists.  Biblically, it begins with a fear of God, or a recognition of His being as well as Jesus’ self-affirmation that He is the truth.  Fighting against acceptance of reality’s existence and against truth leads to irrational beliefs if not a denial of one’s own existence.  But if both truth and the ability to know truth are accepted, truth’s details can be worked out over time.  We will approach truth and the whole of this series assuming that truth exists, and we can know it at least in part as doing otherwise leads to irrationality.”

Read the Original Article at Truth, What Is It?

“Our lives say much more about how we think than our books do. The theories we preach are not always the ones we actually believe. The theories we live are the ones we really believe.”― R.C. Sproul, Lifeviews: Make a Christian Impact on Culture and Society

              With this quote, R.C. tells us that the proof is in the pudding and our daily lives are the pudding which truly reveals what we think and what we believe. Others would point to the books which our society produces and which we read, or at least place on our shelves for future reading. Much fervor is exerted by many in proclaiming grand humanistic themes for life with some actions to support such professions. In reality we know that much hypocrisy hides behind these attempts at portraying oneself as noble.

              One of the books which we can most violate while boldly claiming to follow its tenets is obviously the Bible. While the influence of Christianity is waning, a great number of our nation would still tell their neighbor that the Bible on their shelf is important to them. If so many claim to be guided by the Bible, why is Christianity’s influence waning? From another angle, why do we hear so many versions of what the Bible says if we are all reading the same book?

              For the Word of God contained in the Old and New Testament to influence the society around us, it must first solidly influence the heart and mind within the individual of that society. Though God will reign over all creation despite no one believing His Word, a society’s reflection of God’s revealed truth depends on individuals taking His Word at face value.

              The second question challenges many as those proclaiming conflicting interpretations of the Bible can all claim to hold to the truths of the Bible. At times, there are simple misunderstandings due to our fallen nature affecting our reasoning and our frequent lack of effort expended to refine Biblical truth beyond the superficial reading of a verse or passage. At other times, the distortions are much deeper and broader indicating that someone has inflicted eisegesis out of their own bias rather than seeking to extract truth through exegesis.

              The proper approach of exegesis, by which one studies Scripture effectively to bring out the true meaning of the text is frequently forsaken when one wants to find their own beliefs and biases in a text. Eisegesis begins with someone wanting to prove their own beliefs by manipulating a real text to support such beliefs without shame in having distorted that text. That eisegesis allows them to proclaim adherence to the Bible without actually adhering to the real Bible.

              In the end, one looks down at their own pudding and must eat what their lives produced whether or not one’s proclamations matched their daily life. The books we read and produce, even the Bible cannot save us from ingesting this pudding. If we want to find our spoonfuls of pudding appetizing, we must begin with faith in the Christ of the Bible rather than the Christ of our imaginations. With the renewing power of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone, we must then shape our beliefs and our values according to His Word rather than what we wish His Word says. How we think and feel about everything should be shaped by these beliefs and values. From there, our practices of life individually and collectively will reflect these truths such that we can hope for the face of God to shine upon us with blessing.

“…those who do not believe in truth are more likely, I believe to lie.” – Veith, G. E., Jr. (1994b). Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture. Crossway, p. 51.

              We live in an age in which fewer people trust that which is labeled as truth, even to the point that one might despair of being able to know the truth, even if it exists. With the existence of truth in doubt or at least a loss in confidence that one can find the truth, the reality of a lie can be doubted as well. With a lie defined as that which is not true, a denial of truth suggests that lies do not exist.

              If one believes that there is no real truth to which one should hold, they may ask themselves why not just create one’s own reality. To claim that one is describing reality past or present without the restraints of truth’s existence means one can make up what pleases them. As Veith states in his book, lying becomes easier and thus more likely to happen.

              The participant of this mind game can simultaneously believe they are not lying as lying cannot exist if there is no truth in the first place, and yet still be lying due to the fact that their underlying premise of truth’s non-existence is erroneous. Our denial of the reality that this universe operates within the reality that truth exists does not change such reality. Truth still rules and a lie is still a lie.

              Yet, such a rationalization whether conscious or unconscious absolves the conscience of many of potential guilt. They play freely with their statements believing there are no boundary lines which when crossed lead to ditches. Their statements and claims wander to and fro between corresponding with reality and contradicting it with lies. They see no reason to worry about lying.

              As this denial of truth and its greater propensity to lie grows in our society, rather than freeing members of that society from truth’s bonds, it begins to limit them in different ways. They cannot be as productive in carrying out life when constantly contradicting reality, effectively trying to swim against the current. Relationally, participants in this rationalization begin to realize as Veith notes that they cannot trust what someone else tells them, when that person is comfortable with lies. When trust diminishes, knowledge begins to lose its foundations.

              In order to avoid the consequences of a society which is losing its belief in the existence of truth with the preponderance of relativistic thought, we must return to a foundation of believing that God has given us truth by which to live. When we believe in truth’s existence and God’s desire for us to know it, we can pursue it. We can strive to pattern our thoughts and feelings in line with the truth we discover. We can live daily as individuals pursuing truth and gather more productively when sharing truth and its pursuits with less need to distrust one another. Only in this approach to life can we hope to lead ourselves and other to whole life.