Absolute Truth

As you may or may not know, I finish grad school in 6 days. Graduation is in 11 days. That’s just craziness. Anyway, one of the classes I’m taking now is called “Money and Capital Markets.” Yesterday was our last lecture and it was about ethics. I just love it when egomaniac professors talk about ethics. I love it so much that I could only take an hour of it and I left early. Sometimes educated people really bother me. They’re so “enlightened.”

So my prof got a big kick out of asking people how they defined “ethics.” We had everything from moral relativism to “people just are who they are and ethics is a made up concept.” It was all very intriguing.

(Incidentally, if you were interested, Oxford defines ethics as "the science of morals in human conduct." Did that clear things up for you? :) )

As I was sitting there, I realized that one of the reasons that people had such a hard time defining it was because they had no concept of absolute truth. Every definition they came up with could be dissected in such a way that we were left with something that couldn’t be explained. It all seemed to contain circular reasoning. Truth is relative. You can’t ever know anything. Then how do you know truth is relative? Ethics is based on fairness. Is it fair that some people are born healthy or into a family with money while others are not? No. So is it then unethical? Hmm. Ethics is about doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That hardly seems fair to the ones getting left out. Ethics is about generally acceptable good behavior. Sounds a lot like democracy. What if 99% of the population thinks that lynching people is acceptable? Does that make it ethical? How do we decide where the line is drawn? What is our standard? How do we instinctively know that some things are good and some things are bad? Why do we know that murder is wrong? Why do we know that stealing is wrong? Or lying? Most societies (if not all, I’m no anthropologist) seem to agree on these things. Why? Where does it come from?

Isn’t it funny that even those who deny God have His precepts written on their hearts? It shouldn’t surprise us. God tells us it is so. “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”

Even when they deny God, when the deny absolute truth, by their very statements they profess that there is real truth and therefore unwittingly profess that God’s law is the perfect standard for behavior.

The prof broke down every argument for every definition of ethics or fairness or justice into something that no one could explain. How do you know something is bad? Who gets to decide?

As Christians, we get a break. We have an answer. What is the answer? Because God says so. He is absolute truth. How do we know murder is wrong? God said so. Stealing? God said. Lying? God said. Committing adultery? God said.

But is there more to truth and God than just figuring all the “thou shalt nots”? The funny thing about absolute truth is that it sort of doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. That doesn’t make the truth any more or less true. Something either is, or it isn’t. It either happened, or it didn’t. What I love about Christianity is that any argument we have about truth can never be reduced to something that we can’t explain. It’s all reduced to what God has said. Some may think that’s a cop out, but it makes much more logical sense than anything else I heard in class last night. And not only is God truth, He is also faithful because I know that He is true and will always be true.

I don’t mind people asking questions about truth. Paul tells us we should question things to work out our salvation in our own minds. And I like the fact that it’s okay to question things about ‘religion.’ The Bible isn’t afraid of being questioned. What bothers me, though, is when people use their questions as an excuse not to believe. If you have questions, fine. Seek answers. God will reward your search.

Back to the Bible dictionary:
Because God’s word is truth, it is ultimately real and not ephemeral, as opposed to all else, and liberates men. Satan and men lie and enslave. Jesus is Savior because He is Truth incarnate. Now the Holy Spirit indwells believers, guiding them into all truth. Yet people resist the truth. The Bible teaches that believing truth is not a mechanical psychological function but is related to the human will. People choose the lie rather than God’s truth…Jesus is the true way leading to life, and men should not come to Him seeking truth but, because He is the end of the search, the revealed reality of God.

So have your doubts. Ask your questions. But don’t stop there. Look for truth. What you will find, in the end, is Christ.