If It’s True For Me, Is It True For You?

I recall a friend of mine who said, “If Christianity is true for you then that’s great, but it’s not true for me”. Here he was revealing what he really thought about my claims about God - that they don’t belong to the realm of “true truth”.

Very broadly speaking, there are two types of truth in the world:

1/ subjective (or relative or personal) truth

2/ objective (or absolute or universal) truth.

Let me illustrate the difference. Consider the statement: “Liverpool is the best football team in the world”. Now, as much as I may personally hold to this statement, it's pretty obvious that this is a matter of preference – a subjective “truth” or opinion that would differ from person to person. What may be true for me here may not be true for others.

But now consider this statement: “one molecule of water has two hydrogen atoms and a single oxygen atom”.  This statement is a matter of objective truth - true truth - which we can check out and verify to see if it corresponds to reality. Like the statements “2+2=4” or “2+2=5”, it is not a case of taste or preference; rather, it is an objective statement which is open to verification or falsification. In other words, it is either right or wrong.

So, on the one hand, we have universal, absolute truth claims which are binding on all and independent of our personal beliefs; and on the other hand, we have personal, relative truth claims which are particular to individuals or to a certain group.

This begs the question: what kind of category do statements such as “God exists”, “Jesus is the only way to God” or “there is life beyond death” belong to? Are these merely matters of subjective opinion - in which case whether you believe them or not doesn't ultimately matter? Or are they matters of objective truth, in which case the stakes can't get any higher?

Today there is a massive assault not only on Christian truth but on the very notion of truth itself. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary announced that ‘post-truth’ was their 2016 ‘Word of the Year’. Apparently we live in a post-truth society. It is said these days that truth is no longer objective or even knowable; consequently long-cherished Judeo-Christian values have been dispensed with. For the Church to minister to an increasingly secular, post-modern and post-Christian society, I believe we need to bring the claims we are making about God and the world back into the arena of truth. Unless we win this ideological battle - unless we contend for the very notion of truth - our gospel efforts will be severely hampered and the statements we make about God will simply ring hollow.

1 of 5: Click for Part 2

Dominic De Souza, 4th June 2020