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Truth

by Fay Davidson
04/10/16
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Truth

 Truth is a cruel concept – cruel in the sense that it never changes whether you believe it or in it, or whether you don’t. Whether you accept it or reject it truth is inalterable. Whether it pleases or displeases, whether it causes pain or pleasure, truth stands firm. Our response to it has no effect on its substance.  That is what makes it truth. It is timeless. That is, truth is outside of time, external to time. No matter what age you live in, the truth that has existed millions of years ago is still truth or it was never truth but just a perception.

 I believe truth is different from fact or reality. Fact or reality is empirical, that which can be measured, tested or proved with the natural senses. But because we change by virtue of time passing with regards to our age, or physical position and our circumstance, so our realities change. As we change with time and our experiences broaden, our perceptions change and we reject the past and adopt new beliefs and philosophies.

 But truth is not determined by that which we choose to accept or reject in anyone's lifetime, as truth is outside the realm of the natural – of time - and that which is outside the realm of time remains constant.

 The philosopher Plato argued that reliance on the senses and perception produce vague and inconsistent opinions. He postulated that there is a world of invisible form or ideas about which it is possible to have certain and exact knowledge, and the things that we see and touch are imperfect copies of the pure forms studied in Mathematics and philosophy. Only the abstract reasoning of these disciplines yield genuine knowledge.  He concluded that the contemplation of the unseen world is the highest goal of human life. (Encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia)

 What these philosophers and mathematics seek to study are the unwritten unchangeable and unchanging laws of nature. One simple and commonplace example of such contemplation of truth is the law of gravity. Whether you believe it or not and whether you intend to commit murder or not, if you push someone from 50 floors up, that man or woman will fall – and die.

 For me the question about truth and the inalienable laws of nature is the source of these laws. If these laws emerged over time on their own without any intelligent being, then either time is a god or nature is a god and is to be worshipped for such awesome and precise reproductions

 But if, as the Bible claims, the God of Christianity is the creator of all life and nature, and if as the Jesus of Christianity claims, he is the embodiment of truth and life, and in believing in him alone can we know truth and be free from the bondage of evil and be able to please God and experience eternal life after death, what happens if we don’t believe.

 I know that many great philosophers have emerged since Plato, and the general consensus of the philosophy of the post modern world is that there is no absolute truth and that all belief is relative, based on experience. I also know that especially with the emergence and growth of the New Age movement, and the shrinking of the earth into a global village in which everyone knows about everyone’s religion, to claim there is an absolute truth, is considered heretic, backward and outrageous, as well as pretentious and bombastic.

 But, my question still is, what if the Jesus of the Bible is right about his claims. No other religion or its representative has ever made such a claim or anything close to it. History acknowledges that the man Jesus lived and generally speaking, all religions acknowledge him as a prophet or at least a good man. I do not believe any reputable religion would call a known deceiver or a preposterous liar a good man. And that is just what Jesus would be if his claims about himself were false. To me then, the only conclusion is that either he is who he says he is, the Son of God and the embodiment of truth, or he is a raving mad man.

 I began by saying that truth is cruel, and this is where the cruelty lies. If you reject Jesus and his assertions, and eventually he is proved to be truly who he claims to be, then you will die without knowing God and be doomed to eternal darkness and punishment.

 What if he really is the Son of the God who was from the beginning before time began, the God who says of himself that he does not change, but remains the same yesterday today and forever – the God who refers to himself as the  ‘I AM’. The God who defines himself as the one God who created time and the universe, and who has chosen one path for mankind to know him and to relate to him, and that one way is Jesus.

 Then even if it sounds ridiculous and preposterous, and even if that God comes across as arrogant because he does not listen to your reason and your argument, and won’t bend to your way, or act according to how you pre-determine in your own finite thoughts that a god should behave, it will not change the truth.  He, who is the truth, cannot change because he operates outside of time and is not subject to the vicissitudes of the laws of nature which he wrote.

 It is perhaps the frustration that often results from our inability to change God and make him see thing our way and act according to our own wishes, which perhaps was the origin of the phrase ‘the truth hurts’.