The nature of truth is crucial to the Christian faith.
The nature of truth is crucial to the Christian faith. Not only does Christianity claim there is absolute truth (truth for everyone, everywhere, at all times), but it insists that truth about the world (reality) is that which corresponds to the way things really are. For example, the statement “God exists” means that there really is a God outside the
Truth is “telling it like it is.” This correspondence applies to abstract realities as well as actual ones. There are mathematical truths. There are also truths about ideas. In each case there is a reality, and truth accurately expresses it.
Do All Religions Worship the Same God?
Often the analogy is used of people taking different paths up the same mountain, but all arriving at the same summit. This is the viewpoint known as religious pluralism.
Religious pluralism suggests that there are only superficial differences among the religions
Let us examine the differences between Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, with regard to their teaching concerning salvation.
- Buddhism, the problem facing humanity is the suffering caused by desire. the way to peace of mind and ultimate “salvation” is through the elimination of all desire
- Islam, man’s problem is his failure to live by the law of God which was revealed through His prophet. The solution is to obey God’s laws hoping that our good deeds will outweigh the bad
- In Christianity, the problem is similar, our rebellion against the will of God. But the solution is much different. It is through your faith in the sacrifice of our Lord and following His Commandment
These religious claims are contradictory to one another
According to the Law of Non Contradiction, Opposite ideas cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. Aristotle said: “mutually exclusive or contradictory statements cannot be true at the same time”. All logic depends on this simple principle. Rational thought and meaningful discourse demand it.
Is Truth Relative?
Let’s see what the majority of Americans believe?
According to Chuck Colson, “Why Christians Are Losing the Culture War, 72% of Americans believe in this statement: “There is no such thing as absolute truth; two people could define truth in totally conflicting ways, but both could still be correct.”
The assumption that truth is relative has infiltrated almost every facet of our society:
Truth is reduced to personal preference; what’s true is what works for you. This may be “true for you but not for me” Moral Relativists condemn those who seek to impose their morality on others. Yet they, themselves, seek to impose their relativistic morality on others. Why should the moral relativist, then, complain if someone took a hammer to his car? No reality is contingent upon our view of it
The bottom line is that Truth cannot be relative, if it is then it is not truth! If truth actually is relative, then so is the statement that truth is relative, and therefore it need not be believed by anyone.
There are multiple arrays of definitions of the “Truth”, to share a few;
Truth by definition is the way things really are, the true or actual state of a matter. It is conformity with fact or reality. For example, the sky is blue. While people may argue what shade of blue the sky is, the statement remains true. For our statements, in order to be true, must conform to a reality that lies outside each of us
Truth is also consistent; not contradictory. For example, if we asked three people what 2 + 2 is and they come up with three different answers, what we may know is that at the most one is correct and the other two are wrong. Maybe even all three are wrong, but no more than one is right. Error is broad (2+2=5, 2+2=6, etc.), but the truth is narrow.
Consequences of the Truth
Truth will have consequences in our lives whether we believe it or not. God’s existence will have consequences for us–or His non-existence, for that matter, will have consequences for us–no matter what we believe, just as the existence of some deadly gas in this room would have consequences for us regardless of what we believed about it.
In the second part in this series, we will consider what is Pluralism & Relativism.
By: George Bassilios | Deacon at St Antonius Coptic Orthodox Church ~ San Francisco, California USA – #timelesstruth
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