Truth Matters

I have been re-reading Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who is There for the third or fourth time. Schaeffer is without doubt the foremost Christian thinker of the twentieth century. He carefully chronicles the descent of modern thinking into ultimate despair. Philosophy, art, music and finally even theology fell prey to the crushing loss of rationality. When people decided that God was not there, they tried in vain to create a system that could explain the universe and the human condition using only reason. That failed, leaving them nothing but despair. They decided that truth did not exist or was simply a construct of each individual.

Faith that had once anchored human thinking to a God who is there became irrational belief in something non-existent. Without a sure foundation on which to place faith, modern man had nothing left but faith in faith – a faith that somehow the universe would make sense of itself. Modern Western thinking became almost identical to ancient Eastern pantheistic monism, meaning that the universe was the source of life, mind, and even god with a small “g.”

Schaeffer correctly understood that if as Christians we don’t recognize the depth of despair of modern thinkers, if we don’t realize that they have abandoned hope in absolute truth, we will never be able to communicate the gospel to them. The evidence of their despair and truthlessness is present across all aspects of Western culture. In large measure, art has become meaningless blobs of color; music has become cacophonous, unharmonious noise; and sadly, even theology has lost connection with the truth of the Word and in its place trumpets a social justice platform without sin, miracle or redemption through the Cross.

Specific examples of this abound. From the 1960’s onward, sexual intercourse became uncoupled from procreation making the social, practical bonds of marriage as useless as the Bible truth on which chastity is based. In the 1970’s a movement began which has become a virtual tidal wave of sub-cultural pressure to remove the stigma from homosexual relationships thereby legitimizing single-gender parenting in contradiction to the Scriptural wisdom inherent in the mother/father union for raising a family. In the 1990’s political progressives picked up the mantra of their early twentieth century predecessors and began pushing a form of socialism that in all previous iterations had produced humanistic, anti-religious societies which failed miserably.

The challenge for Christians is to find a way to reintroduce truth, even the concept that absolute truth exists, into a cultural milieu that completely discounts the one thing that could rescue them from their despair. Because moderns deny the existence of truth, they can swallow whatever babble comes from their chosen spokespeople: academics steeped in post-modern humanism, talking heads in the “news” media, TV and movie stars, and ridiculously overpaid athlete-entertainers. It doesn’t matter that none of these people has any basis in reality for their opinions; they are self-validating because there is no measure by which to contradict them if truth does not exist.

Unfortunately for modern thinkers, the desire for truth remains deep within the human soul. Solomon called it eternity in their hearts. Augustine spoke of a restlessness that only God could satisfy. So even while they deny the truth that could provide relief from despair, they often live in a way that contradicts their stated position. They cannot live their humanistic philosophy consistently. Schaeffer pointed out that there was one thing that often revealed the inconsistency of their lives: love. While claiming that everything was meaningless, they clung to the meaning of love for someone they held dear.

Even though they spoke to a radically different cultural situation, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament identified the one thing that can speak truth in any time or place: love for God and love of neighbor. By this, the Savior said, all people will know you are following Me. Love casts out fear, one said. Faith, though it is misplaced, hope, though it is near despair and love continue, said the Apostle Paul, but the greatest of these is love.

I am convinced that even though I am drawn to highly intellectual approaches like Francis Shaeffer’s, the Christian’s best hope for reaching the modern generation is to love like crazy. Love one another and love every neighbor we can reach. As I have written often, biblical love is not a feeling; it is a caring for the other that is made real by actions for the other’s benefit. I also realize that although it is my duty to do what I can to share the truth, ultimately it is not anything I do that causes another to accept the truth of the gospel; it is only by the work of Holy Spirit that the madness of the modern thinker can be healed. And that’s the truth.

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