Facts are the Engine of Life – Part 2

21 Mar Facts are the Engine of Life – Part 2

Last week, in Facts Are the Engine of Life – Part 1, we saw that our American culture is abandoning a commitment to absolute truth. Not all truth. Most people still believe in the laws of gravity and physics, for example, but in many other areas of life, the bedrock ground of objective truth is shifting. This is such an important issue to understand, we’re going to take a second look at that troubling trend.

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

Truth is relentless and all powerful. You cannot change truth any more than you can defy gravity. Therefore, Christians must be people of the truth… people who know the truth, believe the truth and live the truth.

• Columnist William F. Buckley once famously said, “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The next and most urgent counsel is to take stock of reality.”
• Churchill once wrote: “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
• Einstein said: “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.”

Truth has become a choice between facts and feelings

Sometimes things are stated as true which everyone knows is a subjective preference. To say “Italian food is the best!” is a subjective statement. Someone else may prefer French or American or Mexican… and so would not agree with the Italian food claim. We all understand that. It’s subjective truth – “true for you, but not necessarily true for me.”

On the other hand, there is objective truth. “The sky is blue,” or “the grass is green” or “two plus two equals four” are all statements of objective truth. They are factual statements of truth, not determined or affected by feelings. You might wish the sky was green and the grass was blue, but that doesn’t change reality.

Our culture used to recognize this difference between facts and feelings, between truth and preference, understanding that in cases of provable reality, the sentiment of “true for you, but not for me” doesn’t work. However, modern culture for the most part today, especially in matters of religion, morality and identity, has moved away from the “objective” into the “subjective” when it comes to truth. Why?

When we reject God, we lose truth

How this disorienting state of affairs came about is tied to the fact that we, as a culture, have rejected God and His revealed truth. And without that touch-point, each person is free to choose for himself what he will accept as truth and what he will not.

This has opened the door to a cultural shift unlike any in the history of the world. It used to be that truth was external and feelings were internal. So when our feelings conflicted with truth, we aspired to bring our feelings into alignment with truth. Now, we aspire to bring truth into alignment with our feelings

Yet this cultural shift has wreaked sudden and dramatic havoc on our American culture, and many others around the world. Societal structure is breaking down because humanity cannot function in an orderly manner without truth. Life is reduced to the “survival of the fittest.” Those in power inflict their values on those under power. This has been happening  for several years in American culture, and the results are devastating.

Our challenge as Christians is to stand for truth as effectively as we can

We must stand against this cultural shift as best we can for three reasons.

First, because not to do so is to fail at a fundamental Christian value.

Second, because whatever affects our culture also affects the church. Christians are called to be “in” the world, but not “of” the world. Yet, noble as that value is, we cannot deny that Christians are often compromised by culture, and to lose a cultural commitment to truth is to create another battle front for Christians in their spiritual maturation process.

Third, we are to be salt and light to the world around us. When we help stand for truth, it helps others, even non-Christians, have a better world.

There are three things a Christian must do to combat this alarming cultural shift.

We must believe the truth, we must live it and we must share it.

1. We must not be fooled into getting soft on truth. By “getting soft on truth,” I mean getting deceived into accepting relativism and subjectivity regarding truth. We must be defenders of God’s truth revealed in Scripture, and champion the consistent and historical interpretation of Scripture. For 2000 years, the Bible has been clearly understood to teach principled living. Now, it is common for Christians to read rapidly changing and deteriorating cultural values back into Scripture and embrace interpretations that fly in the face of two thousand years of settled interpretation.
2. We must not get deceived into not living the truth. This, of course, rests on point #1. We normally live out that which we believe, but through ignorance, Christians are getting deceived into living out truth that they have not adequately thought through. There are Christians who are not clear on the teachings of Scripture and who may condone unbiblical values, not realizing the Bible is clear on the subjects.
3. We must not be intimidated into not speaking truth. The most destructive influence of the politically correct cancel culture is to silence opposition. The majority of people in the United States do not agree with wildly unbiblical values, but out of fear of losing their jobs or being thought of as intolerant or bigoted, they don’t say what they believe.

Conclusion

There are three things in our lives that we must keep in proper order: facts, faith, and feelings. All three must be alive and well if we are to live lives of purpose and satisfaction. But like the engine, coal car, and caboose of a train, they must be kept in the proper order. If you get them out of order, the train won’t run.

Facts are the engine. They must be first. Truth must run our lives, not faith, not feelings. If unfounded, uninformed faith runs our lives, we may believe something that is wrong. If feelings run our lives, we may do something that feels good up front but hurts us down the road. Facts, and facts alone, can be trusted to lead our lives.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). But God does not ask “blind faith” from us, rather faith that is founded on His revealed truth.

In these last two blogs, we’ve looked at Part 1 and Part 2 of “Facts Are the Engine of Life”, focusing on the need to safe-guard objective truth in our life and culture, keeping it first, before faith and feelings. Next, we’ll look at faith and feelings, and explore how we can keep them in the right order.

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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