Culture vs. Truth

Truth has to remain our firm foundation, the challenge is seeing through the lie and allowing the Gospel of Christ to do the complete work through scripture.

John 1:17- For the Law was given through Moses, but grace (the unearned, undeserved favor of God) and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 8:32- And you will know the truth (regarding salvation), and the truth will set you free [from the penalty of sin].”

The Oxford Dictionaries appropriately selected “post-truth” as 2016’s Word of the Year. We now live in a time when many believe that truth exists objectively, but our subjective feelings and opinions matter more. In other words, truth is often subordinated to preference in this post-truth age, meaning feelings take precedence over evidence, sound arguments, and even logic. No one is immune to this way of thinking.

Such thinking is actually quite ancient, dating back to the dawn of humanity. Adam and Eve bought Satan’s lie and allowed their feelings and desire for autonomy to usurp the truth of God’s single command. Centuries later, Pontius Pilate made a similar mistake when he dismissed Jesus—Truth Incarnate—with a cynical flourish (John 18:38), all

because of the difficult political realities, he faced as Judea’s governor. 

As Thomas Constable said, the knowledge of who Jesus really is, is the key to the knowledge of who God really is.

John wrote His Gospel to reveal Jesus as the light Who came into the world and conquers the darkness.

John 14:6- Jesus said to him, “I am the (only) Way (to God) and the (real) Truth and the (real) Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Note: Having taken hold, the post-truth mindset has now bloomed into a Culture of Confusion in which confusion is embraced as a virtue and clarity is shunned as a sin. Why? Because confusion allows us to play with the boundaries of truth, make them fuzzy, so that we can call ourselves whatever we want.

Hebrews: 1:12- Like a mantle (thrown about oneself) You will roll them up, and they will be changed and replaced by others. But You remain the same, and Your years will never end nor come to failure.

Clarity, on the other hand, entails boundaries because truth itself has boundaries that keep out falsehood. Demands for truth are now often selective, desired only when the truth is convenient or supports one’s point of view. The result is that the answers to life’s major questions, such as what it means to be human and whether there is a transcendent meaning and purpose to human existence, no longer need to correspond to fixed points of reference. They can flow haphazardly along the river of feelings.

Experience has shown—and will show again—that such an abandonment of truth is unlivable. As G. K. Chesterton observes, “Free thought has exhausted its own freedom. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers.” In this post-truth age devoid of fixed reference points, the answers will only come if we regain our bearings once more.

Thankfully, there is One who stepped into the river of human history to provide an

immovable fixed point of reference, even against the strongest of cultural currents: Jesus Christ, who “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). As the Incarnate Word (John 1:1), Jesus eternally “stands firm” (Ps.119:89) even in the midst of a culture as confused as ours.

John says in Jesus is life and He is the Light of the world. John is establishing a chain of logic as he moves through

his opening. Logically, if Jesus is the Creator and God, then He is also the source of all Life since God is the Life-giver. Christ is the Creator, in Him is life for men. Today’s culture of confusion would rather we not acknowledge Christ and instead accept our feelings as knowledge and life.