Truth And Not Truthiness

Well, tonight I’m going to speak to you on the topic of “Truth and not Truthiness,” there was a college student who remarked “Truth can be anything as long as enough people believe it.” He was echoing what is popular today, namely that truth does not have a fixed reference point. Truth is something that is fluid and it depends upon you to determine what is truth for you. Miriam Webster oftentimes has a word for the year. In 2006, the word for the year with Webster’s dictionary, the word was truthiness. Truthiness means it might be true. It’s sort of true. Sometimes it’s true. It could be false, but it could have truth in this.

The word for 2022 was gaslighting. As you know, gaslighting has to do with the distortion of reality in such a way that you actually begin to think you are insane. That you’re not making any sense because gaslighting— And those of you who live with a narcissist know that a narcissist can so twist reality that he makes you question your own sanity. That’s, of course, what our society is doing today.

I want you to remember the words of George Orwell who said “The farther a society drifts from the truth, the more likely it is to hate those who proclaim it.” Orwell in his novel, 1984, goes on to tell the story of a man by the name of Winston. Winston is actually taken into a room, and he is told two plus two is equal to five. Sometimes it’s equal to three and sometimes it is equal to both. Winston has a difficulty. Winston has difficulty believing that as well we might expect, and so he is taken into a room called the Ministry of Love. There he is indoctrinated and if you know how Orwell’s novel ends, scary, the last line is “Winston ended up loving big brother.” He had convinced himself two plus two is malleable. It can be five, it can be three, it can be both.

I don’t need to tell you we are living today in a day of irrationality. I want to give you some examples. For example, if you say children who grow up in a family where you have a mother and a father with stability do better in life, you’ll be told you are guilty of family supremacy. Saying that makes others who don’t have that kind of a family feel bad. If you believe in strong borders like I do and that we should not allow people in the United States whom we do not know and that we should have legal immigration, you’re told you actually hate brown people. That’s your problem.

If you’re pro-life, it’s not because the fetus actually is a baby, which everyone has to admit that it is. You are actually somebody who hates women. In Princeton, they’re beginning to teach math does not have simply one answer. There was an article that was written by a professor there who’s expected to teach that. It is an article against that silly idea, and it’s entitled, “There’s no such thing as white math,” because he was being told if you believe mathematics has only one answer, you must be a white supremacist. You’re a racist.

Now, I want you to imagine some Princeton graduates, they have a bank that’s close to you and they decide they are going to have their bank in your community. You say, “Well, I put in a thousand dollars.” They say, “Well, that’s your truth Our truth is very different. It’s only 500.” Can you imagine the confusion?

No wonder this professor who came from Romania said he feared this idea of social justice even more than he did communism because he says at least the communists believed two plus two is equal to four. So that’s where we have come. If you say the European enlightenment and Europe’s culture is better or more advanced than other countries, you’ll be told you are indeed a white supremacist. Or if you stand for the flag and put your hand over the heart, you’re probably going to be branded a nationalist. But there’s one other thing I want to comment on and that is transgenderism. If you are opposed to transgenderism, you are a transphobe. In other words, you fear transgender people.

Today I was at the prayer tower, and if you’ve never visited the prayer tower in the morning, that would be a wonderful thing to do. While I was there, there was a grandmother who was talking about her grandson who’s about 21 years old and he now wants to transition and become a girl. I want to try to help you as parents and grandparents navigate this kind of a challenge. Just think for a moment, let’s suppose this boy is born Bert and now he wants to be called Betty. Now, if you are working for an organization and you’re supposed to call people by their preferred name, I think it’s okay if you call Bert Betty because names are not gendered. But what you can’t do as a Christian is to call Bert a “she” when in point of fact he is a “he.”

In order to help us think through this, I’m going to spend a moment here. Let’s suppose your grandson comes home or your child comes home from school and says, “Mom and dad, I think I’m trans.” The first thing you have to do is to listen to them. Oftentimes young people object to us being too quick to judge them without having heard their story. So, you listen. But then what you have to do is you have to help this child to see that self-perception is not always an accurate gauge as to who you are. You can go to a psych ward, and you can find people there who believe they are Napoleon. As a matter of fact, I heard one story about a man who said, “I’m Napoleon.” The guy next to him said, “Who told you you were Napoleon?” He said, “God told me I was Napoleon.” The other guy said, “No, I didn’t.” [Laughter]

Self-perception sometimes is wrong. Let me give you an even better illustration. Let’s suppose a young woman has anorexia. She looks in the mirror and believes she is overweight when on point of fact she’s starving herself to death. Her self-perception is incorrect. I read one writer who said, if she wants to perceive herself as being overweight and eating too much, we shouldn’t interfere with that because only she knows who she really is.

A man who’s fifty-two years old, and this is a true story, identifies as a six-year-old girl. So, he plays with dolls. Now let’s think about that for a moment. Does he have a body problem, or does he have a mind problem? Of course, he has a mind problem. He doesn’t have a body problem. It’s his mind that is reordered. It is his mind that is confused. So, you have to help young people understand that.

Then the other thing is you have to back up and ask yourself this question. Help them to understand the long-term consequences of what they’re contemplating. Let’s suppose that Bert becomes a girl and is Betty. Normally girls are attracted to young men and young men are attracted to girls. That’s the way God made it. Now, when you become Betty, is a boy going to fall in love with you because you are after all a girl? I don’t think so. The confusion of genders means there would just be a same sex relationship. What you have to do is to help them to understand your decision has some long-term consequences that are very, very serious. As a matter of fact, if you have surgery, you’ll never be a biological parent.

We’re talking about a nation that has lost its way. You take young people today, they are shown pornography in school and so forth as they understand it and as happens in our school system. They become guilty and they’re told you shouldn’t be guilty because after all, this is normal. I could go into detail as to what’s happening in Illinois. They feel that sense of guilt and they think the answer to my depression and guilt is I must be trans. We must warn this generation that they are headed in a very disastrous direction and what it is a mind problem and not a body problem.

Now, what I’d like to do is to spend the next few moments and time is slipping away all too quickly. I want to spend the next few moments about talking the way in which truth is viewed in our society and especially in our colleges and universities. There are those who say there’s no such thing as absolute truth. Well, of course they contradict themselves when they say that. I have to tell you this story.

When I was a pastor many years ago, there was a young woman in church who said, “I’m sitting next to a boy in class who has written a one-page paper on why there is no truth.” I said, “Show me the paper.” I read the paper, and I wrote a two-sentence response. I said, “Number one, if there’s no such thing as truth, you have certainly written one page full of lies.” That’s for openers. But furthermore, I said, “Every time you speak, we will know in advance that you are not speaking truth.” She gave him the answer. He never said a word to her for the whole semester and thank God for his consistency because there are tons of people out there who would believe there’s no such thing as truth and then go on talking as if they have the truth.

Now, what happens in our society today regarding truth, regarding history. What we must understand that Karl Marx believed truth was actually a tool for interest groups to hang on to power. When it comes to such things as the study of history, what you have today is people studying history and trying to find out— And you’ve heard the word deconstruction. They are deconstructing the text to try to find out what hidden messages of power and a grab for power the writer might’ve had. So, the question is not what does the text say? And in saying that, what does the text say isn’t really the issue. The issue is what does it mean for me? What hidden meanings do I see in this document which cannot be taken at face value? Because after all, history is a tool to increase yourself esteem. It is not a tool to try to find out.

We used to in America have arguments as to what the facts are regarding history. That isn’t the issue anymore. The issue is what does it mean for me? There is no real objective reference point or facts that can be uncovered. So that’s where we are today, and it really becomes a means of self-esteem. You’re not supposed to tell students they are wrong. I’m quoting here from a handbook that says, “Don’t tell a student he’s wrong because you’re going to do him psychological harm.” He can’t handle it. So here are some alternatives. Why don’t you say, “Oh, wait, that’s a thought. That’s one possibility. That’s one idea. That’s another way to look at it or I hear you.” Then there are twelve other possible suggestions you should use, but don’t tell him he’s wrong. Because if he’s told that he might have to find a safe place where he can go and lick the wounds of his unappreciated victimhood. What you have to do is you have to see history is really a psychological experience for him to elevate his self-esteem and find out who has oppressed him and what groups are the oppressors and what ones are the oppressed. That’s where things have happened in history.

Now, what about speech codes? The University of Michigan, or more specifically let me say Michigan State University has a speech code. They discourage words such as tribe, minorities, America. Yeah, don’t use America because you give the impression of supremacy. So don’t use the word America. Religious imagery during Christmas and Easter must be decoded. So don’t say Merry Christmas or something like that. Say, have a good spring break, et cetera. It goes on and gives details.

I have another university where it says, don’t use the word “freshmen,” fresh man. No, that’s toxic. So don’t use the word freshmen. It goes on to say if there’s a barbershop in your area, don’t say “He takes in walk-ins,” because after all, you might offend those who can’t walk. There are people who are in wheelchairs. Now, parents, grandparents, adults in the room figure out what is happening. Is the intention to elevate the discussion? Of course not. The intention is to silence the discussion. You have no idea what is appropriate. Can you go into a restaurant and still ask for a “men”-u? Nobody knows. Maybe we should ask for a “woman”-u? Who knows, maybe by next week, that’s the new speech code.

Can women have a manicure? I don’t know. Sounds toxic to me. Folks, the intention is to silence speech so nobody knows what is appropriate and what is appropriate today may be wrong tomorrow. That’s the whole point. Then I could go on to talk about truth in the media. In my book, No Reason To Hide, I have a chapter on how language is used in the whole business of propaganda, which always has been an interest of mine. The purpose of propaganda is to so shape people’s view of reality that even when confronted with a mountain of evidence, they will not change their minds.

I don’t want to get into the controversy of the vaccine, so I will stay out of it except to answer it very briefly. [laughter] Probably most of you are vaxxed. Some of you are strongly unvaxxed, but I think we would all have to agree that the vaccine promises did not live up to expectations. I think we can agree to that. There are those who always say, well, it’s a conspiracy if you’re against it.

There’s such a thing as a fantasy conspiracy, but there’s also such things as a factual conspiracy and we must be aware of that. An economist in England said something very interesting for you to keep in the back of your mind in the future. He said, “Data, if tortured long enough will confess to anything.” Those of you who study data know numbers can be twisted, they can be made to say things that are not true. So be very, very careful. Get information from many different sources but move on.

Now, religion. In 1993, I attended the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. Five thousand delegates from all over the world come together to try to see if they can unify the religions of the world. The first night the man stood up and said, “I want you to think of a wheel, and the spokes represent the various religions, but we all agree on the hub. Which he defined as the clear blue of sky. And in that hub, we all agree.” This of course is nonsense. He also said, “Hang onto your chair. Pretend you are hanging on so tightly that if you didn’t hang on, you’d go through the roof.” And now he said, “Let go. Nothing happened, did it?” He said, “Take your most cherished doctrine and just give it up and you’ll find that nothing will happen.” So that’s where we are today. The whole idea that truth no longer has objectivity. Truth is something that is malleable and you can have many different truths even though they are contradictory.

What I’d like to do now is to give you a biblical view of truth, and we’re going to have to hurry through this quite quickly. Number one, biblically God is the source of all truth. It says in the book of Exodus “God is gracious long suffering, abounding in loving kindness and truth.” God is the standard. The Bible says in the book of Deuteronomy, “He is the God of truth.” And in the Psalms, “Thou hest redeemed me, O God of truth.” So, we have truth to the extent that we understand God’s opinion. Sometimes we may not fully understand God’s opinion. God’s opinions of course, are very difficult to understand. Those that are revealed are of course for us to ponder and to think about, but God is truth. We also must understand that in order for the law of non-contradiction to exist, there has to be a God.

In fact, that leads me to number two. Truth is exclusive. America wants a God that is inclusive, that includes this and that and the other thing. There is no such God in existence because all truth is exclusive. Take for example, two plus two is equal to four. That’s very exclusive. I think most people actually do believe two plus two is equal to four, but that is very exclusive. What that means is you have almost an infinite number of wrong answers. I’m sure those wrong answers feel very badly when they are told that they are wrong. But truth is exclusive. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father, but by me.” He was excluding other religious options.

At the World Council of Religion Jesus was presented as someone who is the savior or the teacher of the West, and Buddha is one of the teachers of the East. Jesus was not universally the way, the truth and the life. But of course He is the way, the truth and the life, and if He is that all others are excluded.

You must teach your students and your young people and your grandchildren why Jesus had the authority to be able to make such a statement. He made that statement because He’s the only one who has the credentials to actually save people. All the other religions of the world are gurus. Follow this path, here’s this path, do this and it’ll go well with you. Meditate on this. That’s all the other religions of the world. But Jesus is one, the only one who actually can be a savior. Who can wipe away our sins, take us into the presence of God and present us to God as if we are perfect. Nobody else as those who credentials. What we might— Thank you for that amen. It was weak, but I certainly take everything up here. Jesus is the one that is exclusively the savior.

Now, let’s go back and talk about that wheel I mentioned at the Parliament of World Religions. That all the other religions, they are religions, and they represent the spokes. But at the hub we all agree. By the way, that is utter nonsense. We don’t even agree at the hub but let that stand for a moment. That’s a bad illustration. The spokes of a wheel can be taken and thrown into whatever configuration you would want the spokes to be thrown in. But if you are going to have it represent truth, those spokes would have to be like train tracks throughout all of eternity because in all of eternity, two plus two is going to be equal to four forever.

Christians believe that not even God is capable of contradiction because if God were capable of contradiction, we could not trust His promises. The promises could be true one day and they could be false the next day. So, we must understand that truth— We always say, well, your truth is exclusive. Yeah, because all truth is exclusive. If all the religions of the world were equally right, we would be living in a mad house. Here you have Christianity with one God, and you have Hinduism with 300,000 gods. And when the Parliament of World Religions wanted to come up with a document that everyone could agree on, they never even use the word God because Buddhists don’t believe in God.

So, we all agree that there is some truth that we can share? No, there is no religious truth we can share really. What we must do is to gladly affirm. I’m going to see if I can remember this, Jesus said He is “The way, the truth and the life.” Without that way, there is no going without that truth. There is no knowing and without the life, there is no living. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. And yes, that is very exclusive, but there’s a reason why it is exclusive. Let’s keep in mind that truth biblically is very exclusive and it is consistent. If you can believe that two plus two is equal to five, you have a Charlie horse between the ears.

Number three, truth exists independently of us. It exists independently of us. It is not a matter of saying “Now what is true to you?” There are certain things that are true to you, perhaps. Obviously, the life you live and the issues you face are unique to you. But if we’re talking about universal truth, if we’re talking about what Francis Schaeffer used to call “true truth,” then we are talking about transcendent truth. That of course exists independently of us. If there’s a certain star in the universe, it is there whether you believe it’s there or not. It does not depend upon your belief or your feeling.

This is so absolutely critical because there are people today, even in Bible schools though probably not Bible schools, but at least in some seminaries that look at the Bible and they say, “The Bible was written by people who had authority. It was written by people who were oppressors,” and on and on the argument goes. Therefore when we read the Bible, we have to ask the question, what does it really mean to me? It means one thing to me. It means another thing to you. And there is no stable meaning. But we come back to what we’ve learned about the study of history, that this is very destructive, and what we must do is to recognize the issue is the text itself. We may have disagreements, but the disagreement is not because I feel this way and you feel that way. We have disagreements as to what the text has to say, but the text has to control the conversation. Truth exists independently of us.

Booker T. Washington said it best, an awesome statement. He said, “Evil doesn’t become good and wrong, doesn’t become right just because the majority believe it to be so.” Now, all of you should have clapped after I said that. I’ll take it.

Number four, truth of course, and I’m assuming this in this discussion, in this part of the message, it comes through the Word of God. Thy word is truth. That’s why the Word of God can be a lamp onto our feet and a light onto our pathway because it is truth. Now, something else the Bible teaches and that is by nature there are some truths that we will not accept. Truths we fight against with all of our hearts. That’s why Jesus said, “Men prefer darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” In other words, what we find in scripture is this motif between light and darkness. Darkness has to do with the lies and of course light has to do with truth.

The Bible says in1 John, is just coming to mind while I’m up here speaking. It says “If any man says that he has no sin, he lies and deceives himself.” Obviously, he is walking in darkness. Now, where did this all happen? Well, as so many things happened, it happened in the Garden of Eden, of course. The liar came to Adam and Eve and he said, “Has God said that you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” And they said, “Well, we may eat of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, we shall not eat it. List we die.” He said, “You shall not surely die, but God knows that in the day that you eat thereof, then shall your eyes be opened, and you shall be like God knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1–7).

Adam and Eve, you know the rest of the story. They ate the forbidden fruit. Immediately what do they do? They begin to hide. They hate the light. They hate exposure because of shame. You and I are now all born that way. We do not delight in the truth about ourselves and the truth about God. Because in order for us to expose ourselves to the light so to speak, it’s painful because we hate to see who we really are. That’s what the Bible calls us to do in honesty and truthfulness as God looks into our hearts.

So, the first thing that happens is there is hiding. That’s why Jesus said people prefer the darkness rather than the light. They find Isaiah the prophet said, “There are those who make lies their refuge.” There are people today who make lies their refuge. We need a refuge. We run to the lie. So, the first thing was hiding.

Then of course the other is blaming. All of us know how the garden of Eden story goes. God comes to Adam and says, “Has thou eaten of the tree? Where have I commanded thee that thou should us not eat?” He said, “The woman whom thou gavest to me.” Listen to me, but also look at my hands right now. “The woman whom thou gaveest to me, this weak-willed woman that you created, she gave me of the tree.” (Genesis 3:8–13). Then what’s a guy supposed to do? Of course, I ate. The man blamed the woman. The woman blamed the serpent, and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on. [laughter]

I want you to know that Adam blamed his wife even though there wasn’t a chance in the world he had married the wrong one. [laughter] That’s the whole history of the human race right there, hiding and blaming. That’s why the Bible says people do not love the truth. They don’t love the truth about God because that means they are obligated to Him. That means if He is a holy God—and He is—that they have a responsibility to Him they don’t want to face. They don’t love the truth about themselves. You and I are more wicked than we realize we are.

When Eva Braun was making her movies and later on, they were found, and they were played. All of us have seen her movies with Adolf Hitler there on the— I forgot the name of the place. I’m going to say that it is the Eagle’s Nest, and it is there Hitler is seen as a human being and people said, “These movies should be banned because Hitler looks like an ordinary man.” We want people to think of him as a man with horns. A very evil man, the likes of which there are none, others or very few others on this earth. I have to tell you; he was an ordinary man.

I could tell you about his mother, Clara. She died of cancer when he was seventeen. He took care of her. He loved her. His father was abusive. Hitler threw himself across his mother’s grave and thought he would never stop crying. Her doctor later on said she’d have been scandalized if she’d had known how her son turned out. It’s amazing, but we don’t like to admit the possibility of evil in all of us.

There’s another statement I want to make, and that is truth brings freedom. Truth brings freedom. You remember in John 8:31-34, Jesus has this discussion with the disciples. “Jesus said to the Jews who had believed on him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free.’ They answered him. ‘We are the offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved by anyone. How is it that you say “We shall become free?”’ Jesus answered them ‘Truly, truly. I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.’”

We’re living in a day and age in which slavery to sin is seen as genuine freedom and liberation. But Jesus said, “Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever.” In other words, you don’t always have to be subject to the slave, but the Son abides forever. So if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed. In other words, darkness to the world looks like liberation. But to those who know their own hearts and to those who know God, exposure to God actually brings freedom because along with it, it brings forgiveness, it brings cleansing and all the blessings of the gospel.

But in order for us to see ourselves as we are, it really takes a divine intervention of God. That’s why we pray for our children. That’s why we pray for the unsaved is because unless God shows them their great need and shows them the beauty of Jesus, all of our talking does very little good. In the moments we have left, I want to remind you of the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 6:1, and we don’t have much time, so you need not turn to it because you’re acquainted with it. But it says, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” Uzziah was a king who reigned for more than 50 years and apart from the way he ended, he was a good king. Now Uzziah would be concerned about the leadership because there was a vacuum on the throne of Israel. God says “There may be a vacuum on the throne of Israel, but there’s not a vacuum on the throne of the universe.” God is high and lifted up and His train filled the temple speaking of majesty. Then you know the rest of the story, how the seraphim shout, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory!”

I mention this passage because of Isaiah, who is a very righteous man. He sees himself in the presence of God and he says, “Woe is me! For I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5) But he experiences God’s grace. One of the seraphim take tongs and take a coal from the altar and put it on his tongue, and he is cleansed. Then God gives him an assignment that says, “Go preach the truth.” Then God says, “Preach., but seeing, they will not see. Hearing, they will not hear.” In other words, you’re not going to be successful, but you and I don’t have to be successful in order to be faithful. We have to be faithful even when we are not successful. God did not promise Isaiah success. If you wonder about that, read that passage on your own sometime. But God said, “Isaiah, even if people don’t want to hear, you should share the truth with them.”

Then there would be those who God would graciously intervene and show them the glories of the truth. That’s why even in the ministry, the prison ministry we’ve heard about this week, there are those who believe and there are those who don’t believe, but there are those whose hearts God opens. But only the truth can set us free and that truth is found in the scriptures and found in Jesus.

There is a story Lloyd C. Douglas, who wrote The Robe. When he was a college student, he said he lived above a man who was a music major. He was a retired musician and every morning they had a little ritual. Douglas would come down the stairs, he’d open the door, and he would say to this retired man who also was an invalid, “What’s the good word for today?” And the musician would take his tuning fork and hit it against his wheelchair and say, “That is middle C.” The tenor above me is out of tune. He’s flat. The piano across the hall is wildly out of tune, but that is middle C. It’ll be middle C tomorrow. It was middle C yesterday. It’ll be middle C tomorrow and it will be middle C in a thousand years. The good news is that is middle C. We’re living at an age when our politics is out of tune. Many of our judges are out of tune. Many of our universities are out of tune the whole story as well as I do. But there is good news. There is a middle C. C-H-R-I-S-T, that is middle C.

Let’s pray together. Father, we thank you that you came to reveal the truth to us and that the truth does set us free. For those who have listened to this message and even now still are resisting the truth, overcome that resistance. Show them they can’t handle their guilt and their sin on their own, but they need a savior who’s actually qualified to save them from their sins. And we pray that in a world that has lost its way, you might give us great confidence and joy in saying to a world we have a middle C. We love Him, and we thank you in His name. Amen.