What is Truth?

On October 17, 2005, Stephen Colbert invented a new word, “truthiness” in efforts to define and articulate the growing ideological movement known as relativism. He stated, “It used to be everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore, facts matter not at all. Perception is everything…truth is “what I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.” It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true." To think that "truthiness" was simply a laughable segment on his show, turned out to be a household word! Both the American Dialect Society and Merriam-Webster Dictionary chose “truthiness” as a 2005 & 2006 Word of the Year!

In his insightful book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Teens, Christian Smith provided extensive research from today’s teens to find out where they really stand on life, truth and religious beliefs. When asked about truth and religion only fewer than one third of teens believed that one religion is true.
• 60 percent were convinced that many religions were true
• 46 percent of Christian teens claimed that one religion is true

George Barna’s Real Teens, revealed that the majority of our youth (81%) have personally adopted the view that “all truth is relative” to the individual and determined within their personal circumstances. Yet, the ironic thing is that unless truth is real, such statements like:
“Who am I to judge?” “Each person decides for themselves.” are (in themselves), absolute statements that are viewed as absolute truth!!!

Paul Copan makes this point in his book, Is Everything Really Relative? He writes “After all, if we attempt to reject it, we’ll do so on the basis of reasons we take to be true, and not false. But if objective truth, reality, and morality exist, then this has certain implications for me. It means living in accordance with these truths rather than pretending they don’t exist (p. 49)

So, what is TRUTH? Here is a great acrostic that Dr. Norman Geisler and I provided to high school students at a Defending Truth seminar at our church.

•Transcendental—Truth is discovered not determined by humans. (gravity)
•Real—Truth corresponds to reality. (Accurately expresses an actual state of affairs.)
•Unchanging—Truth is absolute and exclusive. It never changes even though our beliefs of about truth change. (Flat earth vs. Round earth)
•Transcultural—Truth is for all people, at all times and in all locations. (2+2=4)
•Honest—Truth is telling it like it is.

In summary, people do not determine truth based upon knowledge and perception of what we believe truth to be. Instead, it is the truth about truth that truly changes our understanding of what truth really is. Therefore, it is not humans who change truth, but truth that changes us! A good example of this is science. Science is neither absolutely true nor is our knowledge of the truth in this world absolutely certain. Therefore, truth may be absolute, but our knowledge and grasp of truth is not absolute because we are finite creatures who are in the process of growing and learning the absolute nature of truth!

This is what teens need to hear about truth in order to know and live by the truth!