What is Truth?

Ecco Homo by Antonio Ciseri

The world is facing a crisis of confidence. Whenever a once-trusted institution is caught in a lie, two things happen. First, those betrayed begin to look elsewhere for reliability and truth. Second, the level of proof that they demand becomes higher than before.

That higher level of scrutiny can, in turn, expose other lies. The exposure of these lies shakes confidence in still more institutions and raises the level of scrutiny even higher. Before long, the spiral of increased scrutiny applied to ever more institutions becomes an uncontrollable chain reaction.

Like the chain reaction at Chernobyl, the exponential release of destructive energy will lead to a smoking hole in the ground. That is what we are experiencing on a global scale. Legacy media, the intelligence community, globalist corporations, and international NGOs are nearing a meltdown as more and more information becomes available about their blatant and complicit lies. 

Fukushima nuclear meltdown

Unless they quickly restore confidence by public repentance for past lies and absolute transparency, they will sink into irretrievable irrelevance. They may still speak just as loudly as before, but their betrayed constituents increasingly tune them out as part of the background noise. 

Soon they are viewed as the anti-truth. People listen to them only to learn what NOT to believe. There has always been a fringe who viewed legacy media and government officials in this way. But today, that group may well be a majority. And, polls indicate that it is growing larger by the day.

From the perspective of news consumers, this meltdown is disorienting—even tragic. But it doesn’t have to be. It can also be a catharsis, a cleaning out of the cobwebs. It gives us an opportunity to ask a more fundamental question, namely, what makes any source reliable or unreliable?

That question is at the heart of epistemology—the study of why we believe what we believe. “What is truth?” That’s the question Pontius Pilate asked Jesus on the day of His crucifixion. On this Good Friday it still hangs in the air.

“What is truth?” The very question presupposes that truth exists. That is the very first truth. Modern philosophies that deny truth’s existence contradict themselves by claiming that the statement “there is no truth,” is itself true. In so doing, they discredit themselves and the entire system they have built.

This is good news for many who have been led falsely into the desert of nihilism. This dead-end philosophy destroys lives with a fundamental lie. It strips life of meaning and purpose and leaves behind a wake of despair, suicide, and murder. The lie of nihilism is the world’s most deadly weapon.

This leads to the second rule of epistemology: Once any source is caught in a single lie, the entire source becomes unreliable. It may still speak some truth from time to time, but it must always be judged by something outside of itself. We experience this whenever we are lied to. We are no longer able to trust that source. This is not a choice, it’s a consequence.

When we recognize this reality, it is immensely helpful. It narrows the field of competing truth sources—drastically. What human being has never told you a falsehood? Which of you has never deceived yourself? Honest answers to these two questions turn our eyes away from every human teacher. As the Psalmist says, “all men are liars” (Psalm 116:11).

Stripped of any confidence in humanity, but armed with the knowledge that truth nevertheless exists, we must conclude that truth transcends humanity. This observation discredits Humanism and Secularism as lying philosophies. Both falsely claim that human beings can find—or create—truth for themselves. 

It is no coincidence that those philosophies that deny the transcendence of truth are the same ones that now deny plain biology, math, and logic. This is simply the logical outcome of denying plain truth. 

Truth is an integrated whole. It is impossible to deny one aspect of the truth without distorting all of it. This explains why Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice” (John 18:37). 

It was not very long ago that we all knew this. Universities openly acknowledged theology as “the queen of the sciences.” Bacon, Newton, and all scientists knew that denial of Jesus would lead down a rabbit hole of nonsense and madness. Like it, or not, current events have proved them right.

But our situation is not hopeless. While madness is contagious, there is an inoculation against it. Jesus has promised, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). This, of course, refers to freedom from hell in eternity. But its blessed side benefit is freedom from today’s madness.