Category: objective truth

What Is Truth?

Gary Pollard

Introductory Explanation:

[This is an excerpt from some research I’m doing on first principles. A dangerous, neatly-organized method of destroying faith has developed in recent years, and I’m trying to wrap my tiny brain around it. The conclusion I’ve come to is that addressing each and every issue would take years, but that each one could be satisfied with a return to first principles. This section addresses the notion that truth is fluid and subject to the influence of time, language, and culture, and that no reliable, universal constants exist.] 

In Platonic thought, there is a concept known as Forms. These are things that exist outside of our physical perception but are universally accepted as Real. For example, no one has ever seen a “perfect” circle or a perfectly straight line. But we all recognize a circle or a straight line when we see one. 

There are universal constants. These are easily observed in the growth spirals of a Nautilus shell, which expresses mathematical constants like Fibonacci Numbers or Φ. We use these (and countless other reliable constants) every day to properly orient ourselves in our environment. Everything must have some kind of reference point to give it definition and meaning. Every zero has a one as its counterpart. Night has day. Life has death. Love has hate. Violence has peace. Happiness has grief. Sickness has health. 

If meaning were not fixed in language and narrative, how could civilization flourish? How would we, on an individual level, communicate with each other? How would such a thing as definable culture — which is in part the natural outgrowth of a collection of common narratives expressed as stories — even exist? What would be the purpose of linguistics? How is it that we are able to communicate with people who speak another language if the words of their language do not correspond in an adequately analogous fashion to the words of our own language? It would not be possible if meaning could not be fixed in language. 

So, some kind of objective, universal standard must exist, because order exists. This order keeps chaos at bay, as much as we are able to in this world. Chaos — like warfare, crime, civil unrest, disease — certainly exists, but we use objective standards to bring order from this chaos. These standards place boundaries around chaos, defines the undefined, and creates a narrative of propriety that allows billions of people with differing immediate contexts to somewhat peacefully coexist on the same planet. There is war and there always has been — but we are still here. Every functional civilization has laws that keep chaos at bay, which are nearly universally followed, and the breach of which introduces a chaos that is usually self-corrected by its culture or legal system. 

This is the primary first principle issue which we should adopt — there are universal constants that remain unchanged by time, language, or culture. The question every human must answer for themselves is, “Which system is most effective at keeping chaos in check?”

“Speak Your Truth”?

Monday’s Column: Neal At The Cross

pollard

Neal Pollard

“Speaking your truth means that you stay true to who you are, whether it’s your feelings, opinions, or morals. Don’t hide what you feel for the sake of someone else’s approval of you, it shouldn’t work that way (sic). Rather, you should stay true to your own opinion and voices, no matter what anyone else may think. While it’s easier said than done, you won’t ever regret speaking your truth” (source). Look at website after blog post, philosopher after supposed pundit, and you get further definitions of what people mean to convey by the phrase, “Speak your truth.” How did the phrase originate? 

Huffington Post credits Oprah Winfrey in a speech at The Golden Globes in 2018. She advocated creating positive change by “speaking your truth.” The article’s writer, Claire Fallon, seemed shocked and aghast at backlash to the phrase. Like Byron Tau of The Wall Street Journal, who tweeted, “Oprah employed a phrase that I’ve noticed a lot of other celebrity (sic) using these days: ‘your truth’ instead of ‘the truth.’ Why that phrasing? ‘Your truth’ undermines the idea of a shared set of common facts'” (1/8/18). She quoted Joseph A. Wulfsohn, who objected, “When we rely on ‘our truths,’ we get to choose what to believe.” Fallon defended the phrase as an exhortation for the less powerful to find their own voices and credited a 1927 poem as the genesis of the phrase, in a Max Ehrmann poem entitled “Desiderata” (source). 

So while there can be great merit and value to one respecting the feelings and opinions of others or advocating for those without power, there is inherent danger in the very idea of individual, subjective truth. In her excellent book, Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey quotes Udo Middelmann, who said we learn about objective truth from the time we are born. She then writes, “When a baby crawls to the edge of the crib and bumps his head against the wooden bars, he learns in a painful way that reality is objective. When a toddler tilts his high chair back until it falls to the floor, he learns that there is an objective structure to the universe. Reality does not bend itself to our subjective desires–a lesson that can be painful to learn even for adults. Thus we can confidently reject any philosophical position that leads to subjectivism. Why? Because it fails to account for what ordinary experience teaches us day by day. It is in tension with the data of experience” (395). 

Our calling is much higher than being true to self, following our own feelings, opinions, and morals. So much can distort and deform these things–selfishness, fleshly desires, improper and immoral guides and guidance, etc. (cf. Eph. 2:1-3; 4:17-19). Truth is transcendent (existing apart from and not subject to the material universe) and immutable (unchanging over time or unable to be changed). 

  • It can be practiced (John 3:21)
  • It can be known and it emancipates (John 8:32)
  • It is exclusive (John 14:6)
  • It is something we can be guided into, and it is exhaustive (John 16:13)

Men try to suppress it (Rom. 1:18), exchange it for a lie (Rom. 1:25), and disobey it (Rom. 2:8). But, philosophy defeats the idea of subjective truth (“your truth” and “my truth”) and Scripture makes clear that there is only one truth. You don’t have your truth and neither do I. God reveals the truth to us, and He holds us accountable to follow it.