04.23.08
Do We Really Know It’s True?
Research from Lifeway and Barna shows that 70% to 80% of young people in solid Christian churches walk away from the faith when they move into young adulthood. Further research, reported by Josh McDowell, says that when those young adults are asked why they left the faith, the number one set of responses had to do with intellectual difficulties with the faith. They’re just not sure it’s true.
Christianity is under continual attack from atheists and skeptics who insist that the faith just isn’t true. They’re becoming more vocal. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Dan Brown, Phillip Pullman, and Bart Ehrman are all New York Times bestselling authors who argue that religion is false and (most of them would say) positively dangerous. They include all religions in that accusation.
Meanwhile over the past 50 years or so, Western culture has adopted a relativistic view of knowledge regarding religion and ethics. Relativism says there is no objective truth that can be known regarding God or morality. If “objective truth” is defined as truth that can be known through science, this is a correct assessment; and for many people, science is the only trustworthy route to knowledge. (We’ll deal with that issue in a later blog posting. For now, let it be sufficient to say that science is not, and cannot be the only route to knowledge. After all, even the statement, “science is the only reliable route to knowledge,” is not a scientific statement–what lab did it come from?)
Here is better definition of objective truth: truth that would be true even if nobody believed; truth that is true in the mind of God, or in the world as it really is. Francis Schaeffer called it True Truth to distinguish it from relativists’ “truth.”
Here’s what relativists consider “truth:” since there is no True Truth out there regarding religion or ethics, but we need meaning and morality anyway, then we all have the freedom to create our own truth. And since every one of us is equally qualified to create our own truth, then every person’s truth about religion or morality is equal. Everybody’s truth is true for him or her, even if it contradicts others’ truth.
Relativists’ great challenge toward Christianity is that we Christians are terribly arrogant and awfully discourteous for saying Christ is the only way to God, that we know this to be true and we know that contradictory beliefs are wrong, and that we desire others to come to this same belief. This breaks all their rules!
But then, what’s wrong with relativism? I can outline only a few things here. For one thing, nobody is a relativist about everything. I picture myself in the doctor’s office asking the nurse, “Is that flu vaccine in that syringe?” She answers, “It is in my truth, what is it in yours?” You get the picture. I suppose there aren’t many relativists who leave the supermarket checkout line without counting their change–they are realists, not relativists, about their money.
Relativism is hopeless self-contradictory. It says there is absolutely no absolute truth regarding ethics and morality; but that’s an absolute statement that purports to be true about ethics and morality. It says that nothing another person holds as true should be treated as wrong, since all truths are on an equal footing, but it won’t hold “Christ is the only way to God” on an equal footing. As I already said, relativism considers Christianity to be incredibly arrogant and rude, even evil, while all the time saying there is no such thing as evil.
There’s an interesting story about this coming out of the 9/11 attacks. This was originally published in the Los Angeles Times just one week after the attacks:
The campuses, once citadels of opposition to military action, generally are quiet, in part, said author and commentator David Rieff, because this generation of students is hamstrung by the “politically correct” education it has received since kindergarten. “The nice kids have been taught that all differences are to be celebrated,” said Rieff, currently a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, “and they’re in full cognitive meltdown. Their homeroom teachers and guidance counselors never told them that there are people in the world who mean them harm.”
“Differences are to be celebrated,” says the relativist, “for all beliefs are equal.” Then came 9/11, and “full cognitive meltdown.” What a descriptive phrase! And what does relativism do with Islamic fundamentalism? It’s a terribly intolerant system, isn’t it? So do we tolerate that intolerance? Mark Steyn concluded, in regard to someone trying to figure out the puzzle that poses,
Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable.
I can’t read that without grinning. (The whole article is well worthwhile.) Relativism is also absurd in what it will allow as possibly being moral–like the Holocaust. On my Thinking Christian blog, an atheistic/relativistic commenter named Paul said,
I missed one of your questions, Tom. Just to be clear, I think the Holocaust was wrong. From my culture’s morality, from many cultures’ morality, but not from Hitler’s. I would fight against it no less.
Hitler’s morality was not wrong from Hitler’s perspective, he says. That, to me, is just absurd. And why and how would he fight against it? He doesn’t have any higher morality he can appeal to. For Paul, the only available approach is through power:
A relativistic moral law is made when a group of people (family, tribe, culture, country, etc.) decide to do so. There is no absolute or objective foundation for doing so: as I’ve said before, it is merely a question of power what laws are made…. When differing moral cultures clash, it’s up to power to decide the difference. Doesn’t look pretty, but that’s the way it is, assuming there’s no God.
That’s absurd, too: do we really want to agree that power decides morality? Do we really think that the nation with the most guns gets to decide what’s right and wrong for the rest of the world? Or that the gang with the most knives gets to decide for the whole city?
Finally, at least one relativist is unsure it’s really wrong to say that 2+2=5. Jacob thinks that’s illegitimate, but not wrong. It’s purely a cultural convention, he thinks. This is the depths of absurdity.
Do we really know the Christian faith is true? This blog post only gives a very quick answer to just one attack. But it illustrates that there are answers. This illustration could be extended on and on. On ThinkingChristian.net, atheists have been attacking Christianity’s truth for three years now, and I have yet to see one objection raised that could not be met with a sound answer based on an appropriate combination of Biblical revelation, reasoning, and evidences.
But I would not want that answer to have the wrong result. It could cause some people to hold back on asking their questions about the truth of the faith–they might think questions are bad, evil, or embarrassing. No–questions are one of the best things in the world (outside of good, solid answers, of course). Here at Seaford we’re trying to open up the door for good questions, as a route toward figuring out good answers. Do we really know the faith is true? As time goes on, let’s look at the questions together, and see what answers we find!
