Leader's Insight: Truth? Absolutely!

Dear Son,

As your graduation from high school approaches, I’ve been thinking about the question, “What is the most important foundational truth I could share with my legacy before he leaves home?” That’s how I came up with …

My Dying Words (hypothetically)

Don’t be alarmed. I’m not dying … not that I know of. But if I were, if I was suddenly hit by a car and you saw the accident and ran over to me and asked, “Dad, what’s the most important thing for me to remember as I carry your legacy into the world?” here’s what I’d say: There is absolute truth and that truth is spelled J-E-S-U-S.

The world and its philosophies will try to sell you on the idea that all truth is relative. They’ll say, “What’s true for you may not be true for me.” Logic defies this notion, though. In fact, the statement, “I know there is no absolute truth” is flawed.

In response to that statement, you could ask, “Are you saying that you know it is absolutely and always true that there is no absolute truth?” And the person who made the statement will either storm off, or, if they are intellectually honest, begin to see the flaw in their argument.

The only basis for them to be able to claim that they know something absolutely is that absolute truth exists. And the most important reason it exists is because someone with great intelligence invented it. Someone actually wove into all of creation, and into our logical minds, that there must be things we can trust absolutely.

Will apples always fall down when you drop them? Will the earth always turn in the same direction as it rotates? Will water always freeze at 32 degrees? Will 7 times 7 always be 49?

The answer to all those questions becomes obvious when you look with intellectual honesty at creation. “YES!” the universe screams, “There IS absolute truth. The One who created all of this created absolute truth.”

I’ve seen college students get really messed up when they study philosophy, because they start getting all these weird notions that come not from observing the created universe, but from watching too many sci-fi movies. They get these ideas that we may not even be sure if we really exist or not, or the notion that all truth is relative and that each society just has to work out its own morality.

Follow that relativistic thinking to its ultimate conclusion, though, and you get to a group of people who firmly believe that it’s okay to do anything to anybody, without any consequence. That’s a kind of people I wouldn’t want to get very close to.

One of our greatest enemies is relativism. Once we start eroding the foundation of the fact that absolute truth comes from an absolutely truthful God, we will slide right off the man-made muddy hill into the abyss of man-made philosophies, and we’ll sink.

Relativism grabs the one thread that is loose inside our brains, and it starts pulling. Start with relativism and you begin to unravel everything you ever trusted.

Pretty soon you think, “Well, maybe the stuff in Scripture really isn’t true. After all, mere men wrote that stuff. How can that be trusted?”

And then you think, “Maybe Jesus really was only a good teacher and maybe he was married. And maybe he was just conceived from a human father and human mother, like the rest of us. And maybe He was merely someone we can imitate.”

And then you think, “And maybe all the other religions in the world aren’t so bad.” Then, “So if a radical group says that their religion includes killing everybody who doesn’t believe exactly the way they do, that’s their right.”

I’ve had these discussions before and when I get to that point in my reasoning, that’s usually when someone says, “Wait. That doesn’t sound right.” And I ask, “Of course it’s right, if all truth is relative. There’s no unchangeable standard of right and wrong in the world.”

We do have a standard of right and wrong, and this moral code was given to us by God Himself. And the morality grows out of God’s character. When you logically trace everything to its beginning, you get back to the creation of the world. And when you stack up the evidence, you can’t help but arrive at the conclusion that a perfect God created the universe.

Those who fail to see this “suppress the truth,” and invent other ways to keep from having to see it. They invent elaborate philosophies in an effort to make sense of the world, and yet they invent philosophies that will allow them to behave in ways they know God would not want them to behave. They blind themselves to God’s truth because they know if they see it they’ll have to answer to the One who has some absolute moral expectations.

The greatest embodiment of that truth is Jesus. He is the one who claimed, “I AM the truth.” That’s a claim no other human on earth ever made. No other religion on earth points to Jesus as the one and only person capable of covering our sins and getting us to God.

Without the basis of absolute truth, you have no basis to follow the evidence, stack the facts against untruth, and decide for yourself if Jesus really lived, was crucified, was buried, rose again and appeared to many people. But if there IS absolute truth, then we can see the evidence for ourselves and determine whether or not Jesus did all the things he claimed.

Following the arguments I’ve just outlined, and seeing the evidence for myself, the one thing I will go to my grave proclaiming is this truth: Jesus IS truth. Absolutely.

So, my dear son, as you graduate—as you go forth into the world to discover what is out there—please remember this caution: Don’t buy the lie that all truth is relative.

Clark Cothern is the senior pastor of Living Water Community Church, Ypsilanti, Michigan.

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