Growing up, did your parents ever have what seemed like random phrases that they would say every so often? Phrases that they would repeat over and over again throughout the course of your childhood. Phrases that were meant to teach you something. Phrases that were meant to make you laugh. Phrases that were meant to make you think at a deeper level. If you are like me, as an adult, those phrases are now burned way deep down into your memory, so far down that they have in many ways became a part of you.
Well, when I was growing up my dad used to have a phrase that I will never forget. He used to say, “Liars are worse than thieves.” Anytime someone would tell a lie, you would hear my dad say, “Liars are worse than thieves.” And this may be an interesting way of saying it, my dad was communicating to us as kids, “that lying is one of the worse things you can do.” As an adult, I am so grateful for these words because these five words as well as my dad’s example taught me a valuable lesson. From a young age, they taught me to value the truth.
One of the challenges with having a conversation about truth in our current cultural context is that so many people are confused about what truth actually is. With that said, Speaking Your Lingo is built on the idea of helping this generation think well and I am convinced that I cannot do that unless we start with truth. In other words, in order to think well, we have to understand how truth and reality come together.
So, at this point, I need to clarify what I mean when I use the word truth. Because there are two ways that something can be true. Something can be Subjectively True and something can be Objectively True.
Subjective Truth
When you think about subjective truth, I want you to think about music for a moment. What is the truth about music? Well, the truth about music is that early 2000s pop-punk is the best music ever created. I am talking the early 2000s Blink-182, Fallout Boy, and Good Charlotte. Pop-punk is truly the best music. Even if you grew up as a 90s kid in a strict Christian home and Reliant-K was all you ever got, you have to agree that early 2000s pop-punk is the best music. Now if you disagree with me, I can’t look at you and say that you are wrong because when it comes to music, I have my favorite genre of music and you have your favorite genre of music, it’s subjective. As long as your favorite genre of music is not country, then it’s okay. I’m only kidding, but I can’t say you’re wrong for liking country as the best genre of music, because when it comes to music, what’s true for you is true for you and what’s true for me is true for me. This makes sense when it comes to music. We do not have to like the same kind of music. We do not have to agree on what the best genre of music is and that makes sense because it’s a preference. That’s a subjective truth.
Objective Truth
Now, let’s talk about objective truths for a moment because objective truths are different. When you think about objective truth, I want you to think about an antidote.Imagine that you and your family are on a vacation in Australia and you are bitten by a super rare and venomous snake. Because of course, that’s what happens when you visit Australia. Now imagine that you are rushed to the hospital and you describe to the doctor on duty the situation you are in and the type of snake that bit you. Next, the doctor looks at you and says, “You’re lucky you came in today because you only have a few hours left to live and there is only one antidote that will save your life.” He then says, “Lucky for you we have a supply of it here.” Imagine the doctor is correct in their assessment, you wouldn’t say, “What else do you have? I don’t like antidotes or I don’t like that kind, I want to try something else.” “Let me try some essential oils.” The problem is that you can’t try anything else because this is the one true cure for the bite.
You see, it doesn’t matter if you don’t like the antidote and it doesn’t matter if you believe the antidote will work or not. If it is the one true cure, it’s the one true cure. It’s true whether you believe it or not. That’s the thing about objective truths, they’re true whether you believe in them or not. So again, subjective truths are preferences like your favorite type of music, but objective truths are facts about reality.
Let me give you another example of this: My family and I own a dog and my dog’s name is Charlie. Charlie is a mix of two major dog breeds and I want you to take a moment to think and guess what kind of dog you think Charlie is or what two breeds she’s made up of. So, picture her in your mind and make a guess. Now if you were able to share your guess with me, I wouldn’t say that you have your truth about my dog Charlie and I have my truth about Charlie. That wouldn’t make sense because there is an objective truth about Charlie and the breeds that she is made up of, and that truth goes beyond our opinions. If you said that she is part Pitbull and part Rottweiler, you would be incorrect. That is not what she is. So, what is Charlie? She is half Frenchie and half Pug, also known as a frug. After knowing that, again wouldn’t that be odd to say that you have your own truth about Charlie? Yes, that would be weird. You can’t really say she’s a Chihuahua because she’s not, she’s a Frug, and saying she’s a Chihuahua or some other kind of dog would mean we have two mutually contradictive claims.
You see, this is where relativism comes in, when people think all truth is subjective. Yet, we inherently know that’s not how reality works. One of the challenges when we talk about truth in our current cultural moment, is that for the vast majority of human history when we have used the word truth, we were talking about, objective truths, something that corresponds with reality. But in our modern cultural moment, with its emphasis on relativism, some people use the word when they are really just talking about subjective truths and their own opinion. I love what apologist Greg Koukl says about this, he says,
“Confused talking leads to confused thinking. Some beliefs are true. Others are not. The difference matters. If a story is not accurate to reality, it’s not any kind of truth at all, so it could never be my truth or your truth, even though we may believe it. It can only be our delusion…”[1]
So, when I talk about things being true on Speaking Your Lingo, I am talking about things being objectively true. Things that correspond with reality, an external reality that is separate from human opinion.
The next question we have to ask is, “How do we know if something is objectively true?” Well, I am glad you asked. There are three important tests for truth to help us in this process.
Correspondence:
The first is correspondence. We have to ask; does it account for all the facts? In other words, does it make sense of the way things really are? With all of the information and evidence that we have, does the claim or statement correspond with reality? Let me give an example: If I said, “I am a 250-pound, professional heavyweight MMA fighter and I have a fight coming up this Saturday.” But then you went on my Instagram page and you saw a picture of me or even better you met me in person, it would be reasonable to conclude that I didn’t tell the truth. In fact, I only weigh about 165 lbs. and although I grew up wrestling, I have never been in or plan to fight in a professional MMA match. So, when it comes to my original claim, the facts don’t support the claim. I don’t get to say that I am a 250-pound professional MMA fighter because it doesn’t correspond with reality.
Coherence:
The second test for truth is coherence. We have to ask; does it contradict itself? If I said, “My sister is jealous of me because I’m an only child.” You would think, wait what? Someone can’t be an only child and have a sibling at the same time. That statement contradicts or cancels itself out by definition. In other words, it cannot be coherent if they are two mutually exclusive claims. So, try to think of some statements that contradict themselves. Here are some examples:
- You shouldn’t believe a word I say. (Should I believe that?)
- We can’t know anything. (Do we know that?)
- There’s no such thing as truth. (Is that true?)
- Science is the only way to determine truth. (Can you prove that scientifically?)
- Everything is an opinion. (Is that just your opinion?)
- All truth is relative. (Is that relative?)
Functionality:
The last test for truth is functionality. We have to ask if the belief is functional and if is it possible to live it out meaningfully and consistently. Sometimes you hear people make the claim that life is meaningless. But no one can truly live as if there is no meaning in life. Some people say morality is subjective, that we each get to choose our own but no one can truly live that way either.
So, why is all of this important? Well, we all have different views on reality. We have different views about God. Is there a Creator or did we get here by some cosmic accident? We have different views on morality. Are their objective moral truths or is all morality subjective? Is gender fixed at birth or is it fluid and something we get to decide for ourselves? One of the biggest questions is, is the earth flat or is it a sphere? At the end of the day, there is an objective reality to all of these questions. Either there is a God or there isn’t. Now obviously we can go further and debate who that God is, but on the simplest level either God exists or he doesn’t.
Back in January 2016, when my family and I first moved to Utah, a good friend and mentor of mine spoke about an article he had read that focused on this concept of truth. The newspaper article was published in the Salt Lake Tribune by Columnist Robert Kirby and was titled, “Could you handle the truth about your religion?”[2] In this article, Kirby poses an interesting question, he says, “What if you could learn whether the religion you follow is true simply by pushing a button?” What a great question. For our purposes, we will call this the “Truth Button.” Imagine you had access to this, “Truth Button” and now you are standing in front of it. If you choose to press this button, you will learn if everything you believe about life, God, religion, and evolution is true. Do you press the button? The reason this is such a great question and scenario is that it exposes whether or not you and I are truth seekers. In other words, it exposes how much we value truth over comfort. Or how much we value truth over being right.
See, the challenge for most of us is that we often value two things over truth. First, we overvalue comfort. Another way to say it is, we are on a comfort quest. We don’t want to be challenged and we don’t want to be hurt. The truth is that the truth can be hard or as the saying goes, “The truth hurts.” But does the truth hurt?
Marcus Aurelius the ancient Roman emperor and philosopher once said, “If anyone can prove and show to me that I think and act in error, I will gladly change it–for I seek the truth, by which no one has ever been harmed. The one who is harmed is the one who abides in deceit and ignorance.” I love what he says, it’s not the truth that harms, the truth is truth whether we know it or not, but on the other hand, it’s truly ignorance and deceit that cause harm in our lives.
The second thing we often value over truth is, proving our views right. Sometimes, we can be more focused on making sure we win an argument than stepping back and asking what is actually true. When we do this, we often hurt our relationships and miss an opportunity to learn what is true.
What we are talking about in philosophical terms is Epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Epistemology is the study of what we know and how we know it. According to Barry F. Vaughan, when we study Philosophy there are three questions that Epistemology asks:
What is knowledge? (What’s the difference between Knowledge and opinion?)
Can we have knowledge? (Are human beings capable of achieving knowledge?)
How do we get knowledge? (What is the process that will lead us to knowledge?)[3]
Let’s focus on that first question for a moment. What is knowledge? When talking about Epistemology, knowledge also has three key parts belief, truth and justification.[4] Belief is an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. Truth is that which corresponds with reality. Justification is why one has good reason for holding their beliefs. When it comes to justification, it connects the beliefs in our minds to the world. Justification is the argument, support, or base for a belief that shows that it’s true. If I can provide evidence for my belief that is adequate, then I would have what we call true justified belief. If I have true justified belief, then I can claim to have knowledge. Plato is actually the one who first put this formula together. In other words, knowledge equals true justified belief. As truth seekers, we want to increase true beliefs and decrease false beliefs. And we want to get as close as possible to true justified belief with all of our beliefs. We want knowledge.
Now the problem with skepticism is that some people will say that we can’t acquire truths and if we can’t acquire truths, then we can’t acquire knowledge. But again, to say we can’t acquire truth falls apart because you would have to ask, where did you acquire this truth from? The problem with relativism which says, “what’s true for you is true for you and what’s true for me is true for me,” is that our beliefs don’t form the world, our beliefs are perceptions about the world. But the world remains what it is regardless of our thoughts about it.
Mr. Jones
I recently saw a film by the title of “Mr. Jones.”[5] Overall, this film was great. From the storyline to the acting, to the spotlight it shines on this historical moment, it was all great. With that, there is one scene you might want to skip past due to some nudity, but other than that, I give this movie two thumbs up.
The movie is based on real historic events about the Stalin led Soviet Union of the 1930s. In the film, a journalist by the name of Gareth Jones decides to travel to Ukraine in order to uncover the truth about what was really going on there. In doing so, he discovers the horrors of Stalin’s man-made famine firsthand. And so, in the film, you get a picture of the ruthlessness of the communist party, and you see the weakness of the West which is too afraid to stand up to what is happening. You also see the New York Times and the other intellectual elites during the 1930s defend this horrible atrocity. This is definitely a film worth seeing, but I want to highlight one dialog in the film that I really appreciated.
There’s a scene in which Mr. Jones and another character Ada Brooks are going back and forth in a conversation about the importance of truth and journalism. At one point in this conversation after being accused of having an agenda, Jones fires back,
Gareth Jones: “I don’t have an agenda. Unless you call truth an agenda”
Ada Brooks: “Yes, but whose truth?”
Gareth Jones: “The truth. There is only one kind.”
Ada Brooks: [Scoffs] “That’s so naive.”
Gareth Jones: “Journalism is the noblest profession. You follow the facts wherever it leads.”
And so, as we are talking about truth, and what it means to be a truth seeker that is ultimately the goal. To follow the facts or the evidence wherever they lead. That’s what I hope to do throughout the rest of this series as we wrestle with some of realties biggest questions.
Conclusion:
Whether you agree or disagree with my thoughts, I hope this article has challenged you to think well about the topic of truth. In the next article, I am going to be answering the question, “What Happened to Civil Discourse?” In other words, how do we have these conversations about truth? Until next time, thanks for reading.
[1] Gregory Koukl, The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important That Happens in Between (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017).
[2] Robert Kirby Tribune Columnist. “Kirby: Could You Handle the Truth about Your Religion?,” The Salt Lake Tribune, January 24, 2016, https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=3446377&itype=CMSID.
[3] Barry Vaughan , “Introduction to Philosophy (Phi 101) – Unit 2,” YouTube, accessed May 15, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOzcQPqeCK_Vu8yuItI_y8zf-OOLQ-U4U.
[4] Barry Vaughan , “Introduction to Philosophy (Phi 101) – Unit 2,” YouTube, accessed May 15, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOzcQPqeCK_Vu8yuItI_y8zf-OOLQ-U4U.
[5] Holland, Agnieszka. Mr. Jones. 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Jones-James-Norton/dp/B089XVJB9S
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