I was reading a blog post by Professor David Watson about "alternative facts and Christian truth, and the idea that the idea of truth has changed over the years. Where truth once consisted of one particular set of facts, then truth became slanted and spun by propagandists and proponents of particular political view, now it appears that each person sees his or her own particular "truth".
I've been thinking about this for a couple of years, how otherwise intelligent people can end up with views of reality that differ in such remarkable ways. For example, intelligent people from all walks of life disagreed tremendously about the ethical character of Hillary Clinton, which is amazing since her character has been the subject of intense public discussion for the last twenty-five years or so. (Less people disagreed over the ethical character of Donald Trump - people just disagreed over whether or not it was worse than Secretary Clinton's character.)
But our disagreements go far beyond politics, and even moves into the church. What constitutes "sin"? What is salvation? What are the characters of God and Christ?
And I believe that what used to be called the "relativism of truth" actually has a combined theological and personal background basis.
First, the personal side.
I live in West Virginia. Most decent paying jobs in West Virginia require extreme attention be paid to facts, for we are coal miners, steel workers, chemical workers, well drillers, foresters. A section of roof is either correctly supported by beams or it will cave in and people will be killed. Valves are either open or shut - ambiguity about their condition leads to Bhopal-like accidents. Pipes are either appropriately welded or explosions happen. Our lives are based upon definitive, objective facts and the correct interpretation of those facts. And it doesn't depend upon whether or not I like you - is the vale open? Did you shore up the ceiling properly? These are the only important questions when you have dangerous work.
But I have also lived in Atlanta and in New Jersey. In both those areas, most of the high paying jobs are in advertising, marketing, sales, management, finance, education. Facts are somewhat susceptible to being molded by the speaker. My opinion about the success of Ad A or Ad B is what makes the difference in which agency I select - I have little to go on except my admittedly subjective understanding of what makes a good ad, and that is influenced by my opinions of the salespeople from the ad agency. And so, when living in these areas, I find that my people-to-people relationships hold a much higher place in my analysis than "facts" do.That is the way it is in work that is people-based. In addition, in these work areas, people began to work with the idea that "everyone lies a little bit", that spin and slant are to be expected, so everyone began spinning and slanting their "truth" so it was in their best interest.
So depending upon which culture we grew up in, we are more or less concerned with "facts" and we have a different idea of how "hard and fast" facts are.
Then there is the theological angle.
Until the late 1800's, theologians were most concerned with getting an excellent picture of God - all the characteristics of God. What should be emphasized? God's goodness, God's power, God's grace, God's wrath? God was recognized to be very, very complex and theologians spent a great deal of time dealing with that complexity of character.
But somewhere around 1900, it became fashionable to say, "God is love", which is actually a Bible quote, but is just half of a verse from the Book of James. Unfortunately, more and more people began to see "God is love" as the total description of God's character, leaving out all the other messy stuff like when God rained fire and brimstone down on certain towns in the Old Testament or destroyed hundreds of thousands of men overnight outside the walls of Jerusalem.
With that simplicity, it became also rather simple to change our focus upon the inherent tension between God's declaration of what is sinful (the Law of Moses) and the love of Christ, to a sole focus upon loving all people as God loves all people. No longer did we "hate the sin, love the sinner", but now we chose to completely ignore the sin, because if "God is love", all those Old Testament historical facts of God hating sin can be ignored. Right?
In addition, in the 1960's, certain French philosophers and literary experts began to teach us that even the author's opinion of what her writings were about was to be ignored in favor of the opinion of "the reader", and therefore, the idea of "facts" took another hit, with the idea now being that you had a duty to spin the facts, to slant, to even make up truth if it didn't fit your "narrative".
And so we end up with a divide which mirrors the dangerous work/people work divide. We have some churches today focusing upon finding the entire character of God - and others who assure us that "God is love" and that's the end of it, so we need to love all people.
Yet is it possible that in our rush to love all people, we are ignoring the fact that their ceilings are not well-braced, that the whole mountain is about to cave down upon us? Is it possible that we have become the equivalent of the likable salesperson, friends to all, loving everyone, but a bit short on the truth?
And so, is it any wonder, with both of these work and theological dynamics at play, that we have learned to look at the world with a bit of a skeptical eye about the truth, looking more toward the person who is telling us something than the so-called "facts" themselves?
In ancient times, politicians were taught rhetoric and that there were three sources of persuasion power. There were logic/facts, there were emotions,...and there was the personal credibility of the speaker.
Today, we have been told so long that facts aren't important, we have been hit repeatedly with emotional appeals far out of proportion to any real effects political programs can have, and now, all that we are left with is a choice of who to believe. And when the previously respected sources of truth become overwhelmingly supportive of one point of view and slanted "just enough" facts, they lost credibility and other sources of truth became more respected by many individuals.
So, as C.S.Lewis hinted, we need to go back to the old books. Old books, Lewis wrote, are much better than new books written to analyze the old books, for it is the old books that have survived the test of time. We need to stop reading what someone says about Aristotle and read Aristotle. We need to stop reading what a Twentieth Century scholar says about St. Paul and read St. Paul. We need to stop listening to edited sound bites and clipped paragraphs about what our politicians said - and instead listen directly to what they say and do. That is the only way to recover the Truth for our world.
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