2010-11-09

I Believe... in Truth

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
I understand that some people find Jesus/Christianity to be exclusive by claiming to be the only way to heaven. But each religion believes that it is right and by default makes nonbelievers wrong.  For this reason, I think that saying 'all paths lead to God' is being intellectually dishonest/ignorant.  That being said, at the opposite end of the spectrum we have people going around saying "Believe or die", which is just plain wrong.

The argument most people make is that it's a matter of perspective.  That heaven/salvation/paradise is at the top of a hill and each religion is approaching the hill from a different angle.  But when you compare the primary tenants of most religions you will see that we are really talking about different hills.

The problem is that truth has been hijacked.  It's been hijacked by this concept of ME.  It's definition has been twisted and perverted so that one can make ANYTHING true.  The idea is that what I believe about God is true and what a Muslim believes about God is true and what a Jew believes about God is true... and so on and so on for all religions.  But how can they all be true if they don't agree?

The answer is that we make truth relative.  If truth is simply based upon your own perspective then we can all be right!  We can all be true.  But that's a LIE!  Sure, truth looks different based upon your persepctive.  But that doesn't mean truth IS different depending on your perspective.  It means your perspective makes truth APPEAR to be different.

Have you ever gone back to a house or school from your childhood?  Everything seems so much smaller than you remember it.  The house or school didn't shrink from old age.  You grew so your perspective changed.

Truth is true absolutely.  We try to define and mould it with our own biased persepctives.  If we want to try to have a clearer view of what is true then we need to do a couple things.  The first thing we need to do is recognize our biases and let go of them.  Like getting a new pair of glasses, we need to change the way we see the world as a whole.

Next we need to compare.  We each have two eyes.  Our brain takes the image from both eyes and blends them together to get a more focused view.  When evaluating the truth we need to get as many different points of view about a single issue and compare them for similarities.  That's why in court we take into account the testimony of 2 or 3 witnesses before accepting something as fact.

So truth is real and can be known, but it may not always be discernable.  Because if God created all things (including time), then God exists outside of time.  So how could my limited human brain living a linear life possibly fathom some of the truths known by God, who isn't limited by time or mind?