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Can We Handle the Truth?
âMen stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.â
âWINSTON CHURCHILL
IN THE MOVIE A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise plays a Navy lawyer who questions a Marine colonel, played by Jack Nicholson, about the murder of one of Nicholsonâs men. The dramatic courtroom scene turns into a shouting match as Cruise accuses Nicholson of being complicit in the murder:
Cruise: âColonel, did you order the Code Red!â
Judge: âYou donât have to answer that question!â
Nicholson: âIâll answer the question . . . you want answers?â
Cruise: âI think Iâm entitled to them.â
Nicholson: âYou want answers!â
Cruise: âI want the truth!â
Nicholson: âYou canât handle the truth!â
Nicholson might as well have been yelling at all of America rather than Cruise because it seems that many in our country canât handle the truth. On one hand, we demand truth in virtually every area of our lives.
For example; we demand the truth from:
loved ones (no one wants lies from a spouse or a child)
doctors (we want the right medicine prescribed and the right operations performed)
stock brokers (we demand that they tell us the truth about companies they recommend)
courts (we want them to convict only the truly guilty)
employers (we want them to tell us the truth and pay us fairly)
airlines (we demand truly safe planes and truly sober pilots)
We also expect to be told the truth when we pick up a reference book, read an article, or watch a news story; we want the truth from advertisers, teachers, and politicians; we assume road signs, medicine bottles, and food labels reveal the truth. In fact, we demand the truth for almost every facet of life that affects our money, relationships, safety, or health.
On the other hand, despite our unwavering demands for truth in those areas, many of us say we arenât interested in truth when it comes to morality or religion. In fact, many downright reject the idea that any religion can be true.
As weâre sure youâve noticed, thereâs a huge contradiction here. Why do we demand truth in everything but morality and religion? Why do we say, âThatâs true for you but not for me,â when weâre talking about morality or religion, but we never even think of such nonsense when weâre talking to a stock broker about our money or a doctor about our health?
Although few would admit it, our rejection of religious and moral truth is often on volitional rather than intellectual groundsâwe just donât want to be held accountable to any moral standards or religious doctrine. So we blindly accept the self-defeating truth claims of politically correct intellectuals who tell us that truth does not exist; everything is relative; there are no absolutes; itâs all a matter of opinion; you ought not judge; religion is about faith, not facts! Perhaps Augustine was right when he said that we love the truth when it enlightens us, but we hate it when it convicts us. Maybe we canât handle the truth.
In order to resolve our cultural schizophrenia, we need to address four questions concerning truth:
1. What is truth?
2. Can truth be known?
3. Can truths about God be known?
4. So what? Who cares about truth?
Weâll cover these questions in this chapter and the next.
WHAT IS TRUTH? THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUTH
What is truth? Very simply, truth is âtelling it like it is.â When the Roman governor Pilate asked Jesus âWhat is truth?â nearly 2,000 years ago, he didnât wait for Jesus to respond. Instead, Pilate immediately acted as if he knew at least some truth. Concerning Jesus, he declared, âI find no fault in this manâ (see John 18:38). By exonerating Jesus, Pilate was âtelling it like it is.â
Truth can also be defined as âthat which corresponds to its objectâ or âthat which describes an actual state of affairs.â Pilateâs judgment was true because it matched its object; it described an accurate state of affairs. Jesus really was innocent.
Contrary to what is being taught in many public schools, truth is not relative but absolute. If something is true, itâs true for all people, at all times, in all places. All truth claims are absolute, narrow, and exclusive. Just think about the claim âeverything is true.â Thatâs an absolute, narrow, and exclusive claim. It excludes its opposite (i.e., it claims that the statement âeverything is not trueâ is wrong). In fact, all truths exclude their opposites. Even religious truths.
This became comically clear when a number of years ago I (Norm) debated religious humanist Michael Constantine Kolenda. Of the many atheists I debated, he was one of the few who actually read my book Christian Apologetics prior to the debate.
When it was his turn to speak, Kolenda held up my book and declared, âThese Christians are very narrow-minded people. I read Dr. Geislerâs book. Do you know what he believes? He believes that Christianity is true and everything opposed to it is false! These Christians are very narrow-minded people!â
Well, Kolenda had also written a book which I had read beforehand. It was titled Religion Without God (which is sort of like romance without a spouse!). When it was my turn to speak, I held up Kolendaâs book and declared, âThese humanists are very narrow-minded people. I read Dr. Kolendaâs book. Do you know what he believes? He believes that humanism is true and everything opposed to it is false! These humanists are very narrow-minded people!â
The audience chuckled because they could see the point. Humanist truth claims are just as narrow as Christian truth claims. For if H (humanism) is true, then anything opposed to H is false. Likewise, if C (Christianity) is true, then anything opposed to C is false.
There are many other truths about truth. Here are some of them:
Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyoneâs knowledge of it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.)
Truth is transcultural; if something is true, it is true for all people, in all places, at all times (2+2=4 for everyone, everywhere, at every time).
Truth is unchanging even though our
beliefs about truth change. (When we began to believe the earth was round instead of flat, the
truth about the earth didnât change, only our
belief about the earth changed.)
Beliefs cannot change a fact, no matter how sincerely they are held. (Someone can sincerely believe the world is flat, but that only makes that person sincerely mistaken.)
Truth is not affected by the attitude of the one professing it. (An arrogant person does not make the truth he professes false. A humble person does not make the error he professes true.)
All truths are absolute truths. Even truths that appear to be relative are really absolute. (For example, âI, Frank Turek, feel warm on November 20, 2003â may appear to be a relative truth, but it is actually absolutely true for everyone, everywhere that Frank Turek had the sensation of warmth on that day.)
In short, contrary beliefs are possible, but contrary truths are not possible. We can believe everything is true, but we cannot make everything true.
This seems obvious enough. But how do we deal with the modern assertion that there is no truth? A couple of cartoon characters can help us.
The Road Runner Tactic
If someone said to you, âI have one insight for you that absolutely will revolutionize your ability to quickly and clearly identify the false statements and false philosophies that permeate our culture,â would you be interested? Thatâs what weâre about to do here. In fact, if we had to pick just one thinking ability as the most valuable weâve learned in our many years of seminary and postgraduate education, it would be this: how to identify and refute self-defeating statements. An incident from a recent talk-radio program will demonstrate what we mean by self-defeating statements.
The programâs liberal host, Jerry, was taking calls on the subject of morality. After hearing numerous callers boldly claim that a certain moral position was true, one caller blurted out, âJerry! Jerry! Thereâs no such thing as truth!â
I (Frank) scrambled for the phone and began to dial furiously. Busy. Busy. Busy. I wanted to get on and say, âJerry! To the guy who said, âthere is no such thing as truthââis that true?â
I never did get through. And Jerry, of course, agreed with the caller, never realizing that his claim could not possibly be trueâbecause it was self-defeating.
A self-defeating statement is one that fails to meet its own standard. As weâre sure you realize, the callerâs statement âthere is no truthâ claims to be true and thus defeats itself. Itâs like saying, âI canât speak a word in English.â If someone ever said that, you obviously would respond, âWait a minute! Your statement must be false because you just uttered it in English!â
Self-defeating statements are made routinely in our postmodern culture, and once you sharpen your ability to detect them, youâll become an absolutely fearless defender of truth. No doubt youâve heard people say things like, âAll truth is relative!â and âThere are no absolutes!â Now youâll be armed to refute such silly statements by simply revealing that they donât meet their own criteria. In other words, by turning a self-defeating statement on itself, you can expose it for the nonsense it is.
We call this process of turning a self-defeating statement on itself the âRoad Runnerâ tactic because it reminds us of the cartoon characters Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. As you may remember from Saturday morning cartoons, the Coyoteâs one and only quest is to chase down the speedy Road Runner and make him his evening meal. But the Road Runner is simply too fast and too smart. Just when the Coyote is gaining ground, the Road Runner stops sh...