Facts are the Engine of Life – Part 1

14 Mar Facts are the Engine of Life – Part 1

There is a difference between “tall tales” and lies

I read one time of a liar’s club in Burlington, Wisconsin, that you could join for $1.00 and a good-enough lie. Some of the stories people submitted to get into the liar’s club were doozies! One man said his wife’s feet were so cold that every time she took her shoes off the furnace kicked on. Another man said he was fishing one day where the fish were biting so well he had to stand behind a tree to bait his hook. Someone else said he cut a tree down on a day when it was so foggy the tree didn’t fall over until the fog lifted.

A gentleman from Alabama looked over the national registry of the liar’s club and discovered there were liars from every state in the Union except Alabama. He wrote to the liar’s club, making that notable observation, and then added that it was because there were no liars in Alabama. The liar’s club was so deeply impressed they gave him a free lifetime membership.

Sometimes life sounds like a tall tale, but isn’t. I once read a story involving Beverly Sills, one of the great operatic sopranos of the 20^th century. She told of when she was first trying to break into the world of opera, she got a job traveling to remote rural areas of the United States bringing culture to places that would otherwise be unable to have it. She was scheduled to go to a very small town in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, where, coincidentally, they were having a serious outbreak of a cattle disease called stinking smut. On the front page of the local paper, they got the pictures and the captions mixed up. Beneath the picture of a sick cow was the caption, “Beverly Sills to sing locally.” Beneath the picture of Beverly Sills was the caption, “Stinking smut hits Nebraska!”

The difference between a lie and a tall tale is that no one is supposed to know a lie is a lie, but everyone knows that a tall tale is not true. Lying is wrong. Tall tales are just good fun.

American culture is abandoning a commitment to absolute truth

While outrageous stories and tall tales are harmless, lies are very harmful. Truth is the ground we stand on. If we lose that ground, we go into free-fall. Truth is vital, yet we are now living in a post-truth world. In our cultural climate today, Christians must abandon themselves to truth.

Look at the emphasis Scripture places on truth:

• John 3:33 says, “God is true.”
• Romans 3:4 says, “let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.”
• John 17:17 says, “sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
• John 14:6 says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life;”
• John 8:32 says, “you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Truth is that which conforms to reality. Truth is equal to “what is.” Therefore, truth is true whether we know it or not, and whether we believe it or not.

Yet, years ago, Alan Bloom, in his landmark book, The Closing of the American Mind, stated that the single most agreed-upon truth on the American campus today is that truth is relative – that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Rather, each person is free to determine what is true for him/herself. You may believe one thing is true, and I believe the opposite, but that’s okay because each thing is true to the one who believes it.

This perspective of relativism is now wreaking havoc in government, education, business, social media and entertainment. As a result, Judges 21:25 is becoming a characteristic of American culture: “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary named post-truth their word of the year.

According to their definition, post-truth is “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

In a post truth world, people are guided by subjective feelings rather than objective facts. Oprah Winfrey captured the idea in her acceptance speech for a Golden Globe award, rocking American culture by saying, “Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.”  She said, “your truth,” instead of “the truth.” That summarizes the idea in a sentence.

“What’s true for you doesn’t have to be true for me” is the mantra of the post-truth age. This is preposterous. It is a fundamental tenant of reality that something cannot be A and non-A at the same time. And yet vast segments of our population, particularly those educated in the last few decades, are giving themselves over to this previously unthinkable perspective.

This abandonment of truth is wreaking havoc in the world 

We lost truth and God at the same time. Without one, we cannot have the other. They rise and fall together. If God does not define truth, then all humans are equal and we can each define truth as we wish.

English writer Aldous Huxley said the reason he and his contemporaries were so eager to latch onto the theory of evolution was because belief in God was so restricting to their sexual preferences, and evolution gave an explanation for reality that did not require God.

But this opens Pandora’s Box.  Dostoyevsky, in his book, The Brothers Karamazov, wrote, “If there is no God, all things are permissible.” And by implication, all truth is permissible. If we jettison God, we jettison truth, or our claim to truth.

Do you believe the holocaust was wrong? Why? Hitler thought it was right. Do you believe child pornography is wrong? Why? The pornographers think it is right. Do you think theft is wrong? Why? The thief thinks it is right. If you cannot appeal to an authority higher than humanity, you cannot say that something another person does is wrong. You and that other person are on the same moral level and cancel each other out. The best you can do is say that you do not prefer something. But you cannot call it wrong.

As a result, the world is a frightening place without God and the Bible. Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Nero, Hitler, Stalin, and a thousand nameless monsters throughout history are the legacy of mankind ruling others without God and the Bible. Right and wrong disappear, and those with the power make the rules.

And this is becoming a defining feature in today’s world. During the 2016 presidential race, Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader, from the floor of the Senate, accused Mitt Romney of having not paid any taxes over the past decade. Romney, in fact, had paid taxes and released his tax returns to prove it.

Fact Checker gave Reid the highest “bad mark rating”, four Pinocchios, for the claim. Everyone knew it was a lie. But Reid not only refused to retract the allegation, but hammered on it and seemed to almost take pride in the fact that it wasn’t true. After the election, in an interview with a major news outlet, a reporter challenged him about continuing to defend the statement even though it was not true. Reid’s cold reply was, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

This is but a single sample of a reality that is taking hold in our post-truth world.

Conclusion

The collapse of biblical and traditional American values founded on Scripture is happening faster, and is going further, than anyone could possibly have imagined. As Christians fulfill their biblical responsibilities toward God, each other, and the lost world, we must stand on the foundation of truth. Not to do so casts us adrift on a sea of relativity in full sail and high wind, but without a rudder, driving us toward certain disaster.

Our only safety, our only deliverance, is a towering commitment to truth. Today’s generations must recognize this flaw in today’s culture and resist it with every fiber of our being.

We must believe the truth, live the truth and proclaim the truth! Join me next week as we take a little deeper look at this necessity in Facts Are the Engine of Life – Part 2.

For previous posts in this series, the entire “Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble” series is in the archives, beginning with the first post on July 26, 2022, Happiness: King Solomon’s Conclusion.

If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this series, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to www.maxanders.com and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blog.

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