Truth, and variations thereof

I'm going to talk about Truth for a bit. It seems that the concept has gotten a bid muddled lately, so I want to explain some things. I figure I'll start with the dictionary definition of "True":

True[troo]adjective
1.
being in accordance with the actual state or conditions; conforming to reality or fact; not false: a true story.

Philosophically speaking, there are three kinds of "Truth" with which we are concerned: Absolute Truth, Relative Truth, and Subjective Truth. Absolute Truth is truth that is always true. Relative Truths are things that are true for you, but not true for me. Subjective Truths are things that are always true, but mean different things to different people.

It sounds confusing, right?

Yeah, it confuses me too sometimes. I'll use a an analogy to try to break it down. Imagine, if you will, a garage door. Garage doors roll up and down, and well, you know what a garage door is. Open the garage door you're thinking about to halfway.

Now, what's true about our theoretical door? Well, Objectively, it's there, it's not closed, and it's open to about six feet from the ground. Those could be defined as Absolute Statements

Subjectively, things get interesting. Six feet might be enough for you to walk under, but if I try to walk out, I'm gonna smash my nose on it. So while it's objectively true that the door is open, subjectively it means different things to different people. A short man will be able to walk out, I will have to duck.

Now, continuing our analogy, what would a Relative Truth be? Well, were I to say that walking out the door requires ducking, that's true for me, but false for a short man. It's an absolute statement to say that "all men must duck because I must duck", but it's false, because not all men must duck. 

The way to pick out Subjective Truth as opposed to Relativism is that Subjective Truths always refer back to an absolute, and are defined in relation to the subject. "The door is open six feet from the ground, a tall man must duck, while a short man does not."

Relativism doesn't define absolutes. It's not concerned with an absolute frame of reference, so instead of defining the precise height the door is opened, we'll just say that "it's open", and that "some folks have to duck."

You can see the effects of relativism everywhere in modern society. Instead of one man killing another always being wrong outside of a self-defense situation, just watch the news. People get killed, and suddenly it doesn't matter who attacked who, it's more important that one was poor and the other rich, or one was white and the other black.

The absolute statements, like "The law defines this act as justifiable homicide because it was self defense" get washed away, and suddenly it doesn't matter who swung first, because the relative issues, the ones that have no Absolute Truth to them are promoted as being important.

Things that are fundamentally required for the stability of society like law and order, right and wrong, and an accepted method of how things work are all being tossed aside because "muh feelings" trump "your rights." Society-wide, we are swimming in a putrid sea of Relativism, and it is going to drown us all. 

The Sales Pitch

So a while back, a friend on catastrophebook posted that "If you're Christian, you shouldn't be posting about how hard life is, about how you think it sucks, etc, because what will it make people who aren't Christian think?" Now, granted that's a really short paraphrase of what he had to say, but it boiled down to "We should make Christianity appealing to people, so they'll choose it."

This was like two months ago or something, but regardless, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It sounds so simple and true, on the face of it, so why am I bothered so relentlessly by it? It was a pretty convicting quote, do I bitch too much about my life, and all the things I struggle with?

Like all things theological, the best place to start is with the Bible itself. Matthew 10 has a lot to say about what's in store for Christians. So does Luke 14. They're...umm, they're not nice. We're going to be hated, hauled before the authorities, put on trial, face family troubles, and in a lot of ways, it's going to suck. Intensely. Paul had nothing resembling an easy life, neither did the rest of the Apostles.

So if we're just trying to say "If you choose Christ, your life will be easy!", we're still nowhere near correct as to what the Bible actually says. Yeah, life gets easy in a way, but just because the straight and narrow path is simpler doesn't mean that it's ever truly easy. The Christian life is a war against evil, both the evil in the world and the evil in us, and that war won't stop until we're dead.

But, that's not actually the issue I have with the post I saw two months ago.

See, what I've realized is that if we have to sell Christianity properly, then we've tacitly accepted that we're selling it based on how good it is compared to other options, not that it is the ONLY option.

I can't speak for other people, but I'm not a Christian because the benefits package is better than that of Islam. I'm not a Christian because it pays better than Hinduism, or because the girls are prettier than Mormonism. No, I'm a Christian because I believe it is true. I'm not a Muslim because I believe it to be false. Same with every other faith.

Every major faith in the world is mutually exclusive to all the others. One is true, the rest are false. A false religion is not "another option", it is a complete and total waste of everyone's time.

Because I believe Christianity is true, because I believe that Jesus Christ really did die for my sins, because I believe God exists, than to me it doesn't really matter what struggles I have or don't have in this world. It doesn't matter if I end up being Job #2, or if God decides to bless me with a beautiful wife and a dozen kids. It doesn't matter if I'm going to spend the rest of my life broke, of if I'll be wealthy.

None of that matters, because I didn't choose Christianity out of the crowd just because some dude pitched it just right and convinced me that I should give it a shot. I'm a Christian because I believe it to be true, and The Philosophical Requirements of an Extant Deity demand certain things.

So, then, what should we do?

Well, maybe we should START by acting like it's true, and not simply one option among many. Let's start tomorrow by living the most authentic, Christ-centered life we possibly can. Let's not hide our struggles, but instead say "Yes, I'm struggling mightily with X or Y or Z, but in Christ I will prevail."

I certainly don't mean this to brag, but a few people have said my life inspires them. I'm guessing they're not talking about the time I got thrown into a psych ward, or the times I've been homeless. I'm pretty sure they're not talking about being single and lonely, or struggling to cope with being manic-depressive.

What they might be talking about is that no matter how badly I get my ass kicked by life, God picks me up, dusts me off, and says "Well, I hope you learned something, my child. Now, try again, and stay close to Me." Because by this time, the things I've survived inspire me, so it figures that they might inspire others as well.

So my non-Christian friends, who also struggle mightily with life, what do I want them to see? I want them to see that I struggle, that I fail, that I come up short, because it's in those moments when God lifts me up out of the muck and mire, and redeems my failures. It's not my life that I want them to see, it's God working in it.

I can't talk to people about how God has beautifully, miraculously, and graciously worked in my life without discussing the times I have utterly fucked it up. Those are the moments I cherish, albeit after the fact, because I can now point to God and say "When I was at my lowest, when all my efforts brought ruin, when all hope was gone, God stepped in and turned everything around...again. I'm a moron, God is awesome!"

My goal in life is to bring Glory to God, not to make God sound like a better option than Thor. I talk about my weaknesses, my failures, and my utter lack of being able to handle my own life because, like Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, Christ's power is made perfect in our weakness, not our success, strengths, and triumphs.