What is Truth?

Does the question ever cross your mind: what is truth? It seems like a pointless and intrusive question, right? This question and many more have crawled across my mind many times the last few months as I attempt to put the very disarranged pieces of life’s puzzle together in my heart, mind, and soul. Relative truth seems like a luxury I can no longer afford to invest in. I will claim, overall, that ignorance is superb bliss, whereas real growth comes through the deconstruction of our relative truth and enrichment through enlightenment due to the shattering of ignorance.

It’s my belief we all grow up with our own personal, relative version of truth; socialization, life experience, family raising and background, questions and struggles, religion, and education all play an important role in determining our idea of absolute truth. We all seem to be disabled by our biases and preconceived notions when coming to any table for discussion or debate over what truth actually is. One example is how we all enter the Bible (if, in fact, you do read the Bible): we all stare earnestly into the same text and somehow interpret and understand passages in immensely different ways, often standing boldly on our understanding of certain passages or teachings, and often maintaining our personal accuracy or correctness. Why do we claim to know the truth; the truth that is the absolute truth; the truth that is not the truth someone else claims while belonging to some other god, some other religion, but our version of the truth?

I guarantee I’m not the first person to wonder what truth really is (actually, Socrates from 477-399 BCE loved to struggle through similar questions. He was known to ask abstract questions like, “What is beauty?” “What is Goodness?” and so on), and if I can know what it is, how do I know that what I call ‘real truth’ is truth at all? Frankly, what I vociferate as truth someone else will dispute; what one calls truth another calls fiction. Each view is respectfully relative to the particular person or group claiming said truth. In many cases, we develop truth based on our desire, gathered from various places or teachings and morally relative to what we believe truth should be. We will not agree on truth; we will never agree because we do not concur with one another; we are right, and they are wrong.

When asked the very question ‘what is truth’, Paul Copan, PH.D. stated, “I think people instinctively understand that truth is a belief, story, ideal, or statement that matches up with reality or corresponds to the way things really are.” Copan continues with this example: “If I say the moon is made of cheese, that’s false because there isn’t a correspondence, or a match-up, with the way things really are… Something is true – or corresponds to reality – even if people don’t believe it” (The Case for the Real Jesus, 2007, p.453). Coplan’s argument includes the idea of antiquity that if one were to travel far enough s/he would reach the end of the earth and could possible fall off- a true belief at one point. Does this mean that at that time the earth was flat because people believed it was? Was absolute truth at that time, with minimal cartography, and no real perspective on the earth correct? Apparently not! It’s always been round, whether this was known and believed as truth or not. Simply because we don’t have perspective and understanding on a particular topic or issue does not imply we are seeing truth.

Believe it or not, truth is truth whether people acknowledge it or not. It doesn’t lack to be truth because it’s not accepted. Truth is truth even in situations when no one knows it’s truth- whether they want to believe it or not. Unfortunately, all around us truth has become a whatever-works-for-you mentality leaving no room for authentic truth but subjective personal truth; this specific following has been deemed by scholars as moral relativism, or more closely individualist ethical subjectivism.

Circling back to the point: what is truth? The Bible unmistakably states in John 14.6 that Jesus is the truth. Written throughout the synoptic Gospel and John we see the running theme that Jesus - the Son of God - is the truth. His way is the way. What does that say for Buddhists, Muslims, Mormons and other religions claiming to know the truth; are Christians’ right and all other religions wrong? Are Christians wrong and Mormons right? Are…. Someone is right; consequently, the remaining few are wrong.

Thus far I have claimed that it is improbable, moreover, impossible for all religions to be right; therefore, if we stand fixed on the idea there is a God- a Creator, there can only be one truth. There cannot be numerous truths.

Who’s right? We all claim absolute certainty we stand firmly on the one belief that is truth? What must we do when we do realize what absolute truth is? Or, what if someone we love doesn’t agree with our version of truth?

You tell me.