Sep 14, 2019 | Truth
I’ve taught my kids all their lives that truth isn’t personal. In other words, what is true has nothing to do with me! Whether something is true or not is not determined by what I think about it. Of course we live in a postmodern relativistic (secular) age where people actually believe something can be true for them, and at the same time not true for somebody else. I know, I am tempted to laugh too, but I’ve encountered people who sincerely believe this, and get mad when you challenge their lack of logic. They take it . . . . personally. The beauty of historic, orthodox Christianity is that it rests on events that either happened or didn’t, the evidence for which we either trust or we don’t. Critical scholars and skeptics of every sort have been trying very hard to discredit the Bible for several hundred years(!), and yet it stands stronger and more credible than ever. But if compelling evidence at some point does arise that the Bible is, as it’s critics insist, myths and fairy tales, so be it. I couldn’t get mad at those who uncovered that evidence because it has nothing to do with me. I might be sad, but I have no interest in believing lies.
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Aug 30, 2019 | Truth
I recently wrote about a wonderfully nostalgic (for me) documentary about John Lennon and the making of his album Imagine. For some reason ever since, I haven’t been able to get out of my mind his somewhat quirky song, “Gimmie Some Truth.” It’s typical hard-edged Lennon speaking “truth to power,” or something like that. It’s almost quaint looking back at it from our 21st century “post-truth” age. That term is politically loaded, so not as helpful as understanding the philosophical assumptions of postmodernism that got us here. In case you’re not familiar with it, the term came from a response to modernism, an Enlightenment concept that objective truth exists, and is accessible to reason. On the surface that doesn’t seem particularly controversial, but reason ended up becoming rationalism, the idea that reason was the only way to know truth. Every other means of knowing was discounted as invalid. But paraphrasing Jesus, man shall not live on reason alone.
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Apr 20, 2019 | Truth
Since it is Easter weekend I thought I might bring up an uncomfortable question for those who are not followers of Jesus Christ: what if it is true after all? I’ve been struck reading and writing my way through the gospels, and now in John, that Jesus confronts people with unequivocally exclusive claims. There is zero beating around the bush with Jesus. When you carefully examine the claims he makes, they are stark, and mutually exclusive. With Jesus it’s pretty much either/or, my way or the highway. Yet every religion, even those who espouse no religion at all, wants a piece of Jesus. You will notice that those who do this, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, secularists, all pick and choose what Jesus says or does to server their own ends. None of them takes the texts of the gospels in their entirety because if they did, that Jesus would blow their cover! Why does what Jesus says or does have historical authenticity or authority when it fits their purposes, and not when it doesn’t? Good rhetorical question!
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Aug 20, 2018 | Truth
When I read the title of this post at WhatfingerNews, I thought for sure it had to be an Onion article. It’s gotta be satire, right? Wrong. A couple, postmodern relativist liberals through and through, who thought human beings are fundamentally decent and good, were killed by terrorists. How sad, but instructive: reality will not be mocked. This is an object lesson for the futility of a certain 21st century secularist mindset that says what we think about reality, as opposed to what we discover in it, is what ultimately counts.
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Nov 17, 2017 | Truth
I’ve been meaning to read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for some time now, but it’s a tough slog (unlike Plato which I found much easier to understand), so like the typical human being I am, I’ve just put it off. The reason I’ve been so non-eagerly eager to read it is because I’ve heard one of my favorite people in the world, Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, say too many times to count how it’s his favorite book and that he reads it every year. One of the reasons Dr. Arnn is so highly esteemed by me is that when he talks I hear wisdom. It’s odd because he doesn’t sound terribly intellectual or sophisticated, and in fact maybe the opposite (Tim Keller has this affect on me as well), but his insights about life and people and the nature of reality ring truer and deeper to me than most other people. Part of the reason for this, I am convinced, is his passion for an education that is classical focused. Thus his constant promotion of Aristotle’s Ethics.
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Aug 30, 2017 | Truth
By now most Americans are familiar with “Charlottesville.” I understand there was a protest in that city that had something to do with race. A group of people called “white nationalists,” which I gather is not a good thing, and some Nazis, never a good thing, we’re protesting something. It’s not important. There was a ruckus, people were hurt, and one young woman was killed by a car driven by one of those “white nationalist” people. Ugliness all around. That another group of people was there who were not “white nationalists” doesn’t seem to have been an important part of the equation, so we were told.
As usually happens around events like these, the secular, liberal media always uses the occasion to affirm what a rotten racist country America is. We’re never allowed to put behind us that slavery was part of our history; white people will bear the guilt of America’s original sin forever. Those of the left are also consistent in their affirmation that America still suffers a race problem, and that white people need to admit it, and . . . . well, I’m not quite sure what comes after the guilt and shame of admitting I’m a racist, even if I don’t know it or think I am. Something about dialogue, and caring and . . . like I said, I’m not quite sure.
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