Truth Seeking and Truth speaking - Part 1 Truth Seeking

In our modern world that mostly denies absolute truth and instead promotes 'your truth' and 'my truth', it is interesting that the world still has 'fact checkers', accusations of 'fake news' and it accuses politicians of lying.

If there is no absolute 'truth' in our 'post-truth' world, why should it matter if politicians lie or facts be 'checked'?

The problem of truth

Whether humans like it or not and deny it or not, deep down we inherently have an awareness that there must be a fundamental unequivocal absolute truth that all things can be checked against. 

I would say there is a pursuit of such a standard without people even realising what they are doing. 

Thus humanity is creating for itself a love-hate 'problem' with truth.

I remember (sorry don't have the link), watching a breakfast show commentary on the Oprah interview of 'Meghan and Harry' (the Duke and Duchess of Sussex) in which the TV show host reminded the audience that some things that had been said by Meghan about a supposed secret real wedding prior to the public wedding, had been shown to be untrue, and the co-host said something like 'but it was her truth'.  The pondered reply by the host was then 'but surely though some things are just true'.

TRUTH SEEKING

In politics now days, it almost seems like people are obsessed with 'truth' in the sense that there is an obsession with finding places where leaders and politicians might be not speaking truth…ie 'lying', and then 'exposing' that….there is then a desire to shame any liars.

Yet at the same time the 'searching out what is true' seems to only go so far, and so much is just taken at face value and never checked, or questioned, and if you do question it, you are labelled as someone who 'offends' others and there is risk of getting 'cancelled'.

It seems the 'fact-checking' 'truth' warriors are maybe from a particular political 'side' who is far more desirous to 'cancel' people - so the their 'desire' for truth doesn't seem to be to find 'what is truth', but to try to declare a belief of 'who is not truth'.

That leads to another linked issue….

The 'Who' vs the 'What' of Truth

This is an important distinction to make as we look at the issue of 'truth'. 

There is a 'what' and a 'who' that impacts how a person determines or identifies 'truth'. 

Here are three examples in which I have recently noticed this issue in the Australian context:

• In a recent pre-election interview with Martyn Isles, the Director of ACL (Australian Christian Lobby)  Senator Eric Abetz commented that it was important that 30 year old female Senator Claire Chandler, and not himself as a 60 year old male, is putting forward a bill to say that only biological women and not 'trans-women' should compete in women's sports. He said it was important because people (particularly the media) 'no longer examine that which is actually said, that which is actually promoted, that which is actually advocated, it is who said it and the colour of their skin or their sex or their age' (emphasis mine). He said there is a need to get away from identity politics and that it was Martin Luther King who said that his kids needed to be judged not by the colour of their skin but the content of their character.

• We also see this issue of 'what' and 'who' in comments related to the recent Australian elections that election campaigning appeared more about the 'people' (leaders) and their personal strengths or weaknesses, rather than their policies. This is, I believe, once again reflecting a move from a 'what is truth' society to a 'who is truth' society….in a context where society has generally ignored or rejected the real Who of Truth - God himself, and without realising it are looking for a substitute. 

• During the pandemic, leaders would often expect to be believed as always speaking the truth about the disease, as Dr Campbell raised in a recent video . It was interesting to hear comments in the media about people looking to leaders such as politicians and Chief Health Officers so as to 'know the truth' about the pandemic. There seemed less desire to personally seek out what is truth, and instead a desire to just have someone who would 'tell us' the 'truth'.  People were looking to a person to follow. Some might suggest this is laziness of people to do their own research and not just blindly follow like sheep.  But maybe there is something more to the situation, something that emerges in all kinds of contexts.

The Australian context is not so different from the African context:

I have published articles noting the emphasis on 'who' rather than 'what' in African culture. (see here . But below are a couple of situations related to 'truth' I have encountered:

• In a church on the verge of a 'split', when someone raised the matter of a need for truth, most people said nothing, but the response of one person was 'what is truth?'… and another was 'I will wait to hear what the elders say'. There was by many, a sense of whatever was said by the leaders was thus 'truth'….truth was defined by whatever would be said by those in positions of leadership.

• One day our African co-worker announced that he had realised that 'truth for an African is an accident'!….he went on quickly to add 'its not that we never speak truth, its just not our highest priority, harmony is'. Once again its not the content of what is said that is seen to be discerned as to whether it is true or not, but making sure relationships with 'who' is important in society are maintained so as to maintain harmony. This is not much removed from a recent article by Ajith Fernando of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka about the issue of truth and lies in honour-shame type cultures.

• A letter was sent by a church denomination national office/leader and to be read at all the churches. When it was read in the church, the people said we won't believe it as true until the leader comes and speaks it to us directly in our presence. Until then we don't know for sure if it is authoratively true.

When a society rejects the existence and primacy of God (like generally in the West), or doesn't understand God to be present with us by His Spirit and communicate his truth with human beings directly through His Word (like in Africa who traditionally believe God to be far away and detached from humanity and thus ancestors/elders are his mediators), then those in that society move 

- from honour of God as Absolute Truth under which we are obligated to seek out what is in line with His truth or not, 

to honouring people as the 'god' dispensers of truth based on whether we consider those people as authoritative in our lives or not.

This then means we are no longer all human beings on equal footing with no-one having full knowledge of truth, and all of us as fallible and limited and humbly seeking to align ourselves with the only One who is Truth. We then fail to acknowledging that others may either not have all the facts and could be wrong, or that others can help us see and know things we didn't see or know before, and that disagreement will help challenge our views and examine matters more objectively—particularly against the standard of God and his Word. 

Without a right perspective, instead of courageously working to discern truth, we will fearfully see disagreement as an offensive personal attack or lack of respect. 

But it is only when the 'Who' of truth in our lives is God, 

that we are then free on this earth to search out the 'what' of truth. 

And yes….Identity politics have got the issue of truth off-kilter….but not as far as some of us might think. 

We might see that it is a problem to attach truth to any one person on this earth, or any one group of people or even one international organisation or overseeing body…and that is correct. 

BUT the problem is not that truth is attached to a Person/entity…it's just that that Person is meant to be God. In fact, Truth is actually unknowable without firstly being firmly attached to the Person of God.  

This much Identity Politics has got totally correct….

...Truth is rooted in 'Who' before 'What'.

The problem is that when we unhinge ourselves from God (or try to), we don't stop seeking truth, but we develop a warped idea of how to find truth. We don't recognise that we all actually have a 'what' of truth, but that it stems from the 'who' of truth we have chosen to designate as authoritative and honourable in our lives. 

When that 'who' is God, we become free to examine everything in our world against Him…the One who Is Truth. 

And yes, we are not allowed to disagree with Him, and it is offensive to Him to dare to disagree or challenge what he says. When we do, as Adam and Eve did, our ultimate punishment is death, to be banished from him and from relationship/community forever. 

But….When that 'who' is not God but some other person, we are only free to examine things according to their standard of 'truth', and are thus not 'allowed' to disagree or else we will be banished from them and their community forever.

The problem is that the 'what' we believe gets un-hinged from seeking to align ourselves with the 'Who' of God and his Absolute Truth, and becomes hinged to popular or prominent public belief/approval, and to ourselves, as the 'Who'.

We set ourselves up as 'gods' in our world.

What we can learn

1. Truth is rooted in whoever we have as the 'Who' of truth in our lives.

2. Both the Who and the What of truth is important but how we understand or view the 'what' is subject to who we have in the place of 'Who' we believe brings us truth.

3. When God is the 'Who' we have freedom to humbly question and analyse and seek truth, and humbly allow interaction with others who question and analyse us in order to find and know 'what' is truth, in order to live by it with accountability to God. We also readily acknowledge that Satan is the father of lies and seeks to deceive and trick us into believing lies which will keep us away from the truth for life that will set us free. We have been given the light of God's word so as to expose lies and live in truth. 

So we have an obligation to use our minds, study God's word, analyse and test what we hear and thus discern truth. We are not meant to blindly disengage our minds and just wait to be 'given' a truth by human authority that we unquestioningly follow….like sadly happened so often in the COVID pandemic as people, and even individual nations, had no standard of 'truth' outside of themselves, little practice in analysing and testing what they hear and discerning truth, and so just waited to hear the announcements of bigger governments, and certain health leaders…to the point where the WHO become the global 'who' (pun intended) to which, though actually very fallible, most of the world looked to as the authority to dispense all 'perfect' health knowledge. 

4. When we delete God or misunderstand his place in our lives, and the place he wants other people to have in our lives as equal fellow human beings seeking truth, and not as truth-usurping authorities in our lives, we also lose the framework and freedom of having God as authority. 

We then look to others to fill the 'gap' of someone to submit to, someone who will 'know' what to do, someone to guide us and keep us 'safe' with knowledge that is 'true' and that we inherently understand is bigger or outside of ourself. 

Sadly we then expect perfection out of leaders, with no allowance for fallibility, and no room for forgiveness.

Then, either we will discover they will fail us—which will damage false expectations we have of them and ruin the relationships we should have with them, preferring to condemn, 'cancel', or demand they resign if they don't meet our expectations...

….or….

….. we will never question them and always excuse them—which then means we as societies will be constrained/prevented from a freedom to explore creatively and discuss openly in ways that take society forward. 

Knowledge that grows through fair accountability, challenge and testing will be squashed and we will morally and socially decline.

5. There is such a 'thing' (what) as Absolute Truth because there is 'One' Who is Absolute Truth. 

The danger is that we replace God with 'gods' - people - (ourselves or others, elders or peers), who we then believe are those who can bring 'truth' so as to 'know' how to live our lives.

6. The issue of 'what is truth' when detached from God who is Truth, becomes too big to navigate, over-burdening people with rules to manage society, and devoid of relationship. 

So people begin to resent the rules, and seek to fill that relationship space with people and what those people say. Mixed in is the desire to now gain honour in the eyes of others rather than God, and so to admit wrong, allow disagreement, or lack knowledge 'lowers' a false high opinion we have of ourselves - akin to shame, which we want to avoid, so we disallow questioning, shame others back if they dare shame us, and 'cancel' them all-together out of our lives if we can.

7. As we share the gospel, maybe we need to move a little away from just pointing out where the world is straying from 'what is truth', to where they will discover that trusting in any human 'who' of truth will fail them, because:

 there is no human...

• who knows everything, past, present and future 
• who is everywhere when we want or need truth or 
• who is all-powerful to implement truth and bring the safety we seek.  

We need a 'Who' way bigger than just a human. 

We need:

- someOne omnicient,

- someOne omnipresent and 

- someOne omnipotent. 

We need to know what is truth, yes…..but first we need God who is Truth.

8. When people unhinge the 'what is truth' from God as the 'who is truth', then they have trouble even discerning 'what is truth' as there is no longer a consistent objective absolute truth in their awareness to go to. So they thus no longer believe there is an absolute truth at all. In our desire to have people understand 'what' is truth, unfortunately we are not going to get very far without addressing the 'who' of truth. 

The world's 'truth' problem is a 'gospel' problem….not that people need the gospel so as to just know 'what' is truth, but that they first need the gospel to know 'who' is truth!

So we get to the point that we either just choose a leader we choose to just 'believe', or we accept the 'your truth' and 'my truth' mantra. 

But like Pontius Pilate who asked 'what is truth', people need to come to know that Jesus is Truth. There doesn't have to be ambiguity anymore about 'what is truth' because there is Truth that is the same Truth yesterday, today and forever. Unlike pandemic leaders who kept changing their mantras from day to day and week to week, Jesus is unchanging. 

What God says is true today, was true 5000 years ago, and will be true 500 years from now and for all eternity.

Yes, some things are just 'true'!

Nationality and Ethnicity Can Never Fulfill Humanity's Desire for Identity

*Nationality

*Ethnicity

*Identity

Once again, foundational issues both in world events and Australian politics in the lead-up to the federal election, seem to be intersecting with so much of what Africa has taught us about honour and shame….and as Christians, how we desperately need to develop a strong biblical theology of honour and shame. Without it, we not only fail to understand our world, but can then also fail to bring clear, appropriate solutions to our world.

Something which has emerged as a common thread in all the above settings is the issue of national or ethnic identity. We might call it national pride, or tribal identity, or tribal totem, or nationalism, or patriotism. Call it what we may, in essence it is all the same thing.

However, while glorying in, or having pride in, or fighting for, our national identity or ethnicity is often held up as noble and right….

…. it can become a problem when it is supreme and not held carefully and submissively under our identity in God our Father and Creator, and in Christ our Redeemer and Saviour.

When earthly  identity or identities direct and determine our goals and choices or what we live for and uphold at any cost….we enter the zone of disappointment, of disillusionment, and ultimately of destruction. We lose perspective, and the very thing we aim to preserve - our personhood - (who we are), is what we will ultimately lose. Who we were created to be will be subsumed in cultural constraints, and we will succeed only in fulfilling 'less' of the humanity God intended for us, not more.

First We See This in Our Current World Events…..

What is it that drives a fight in which both sides believe they are fighting for nationalistic pride and identity, and which each side believes is at risk of being lost?….identity honour!

Russia (under its leader) is fighting for its 'glory'!

Ukrainians (under their leader) are seen shouting and affirming 'glory to Ukraine'!

While that current battle is seen on our screens night after night, it can seem a problem 'over there' , for 'those people'. But what about us?

But...This is not a 'their problem', but an 'our problem', and more than we might first realise. 

It might not turn up in our lives in quite the same way, but it is lurking there none-the-less for every person on the planet. And sadly it makes us very vulnerable to Satan's schemes of 'attractive' ways to enhance, promote or protect our desire for identity and to seek it in earthly identity forms.

Also in the African Context

….time and again tribal identity issues are raised. Africans will often not even first identify by their country, but rather by their tribe. It is such fighting for tribal identity superiority that fuelled the Rwandan genocide and was said to be the cause of political issues in Kenya. It's what fuels arguments about national budget allocations and presidential candidates.

What About the Australian Context?

Here is another example of the same problem of finding our identity-honour in the form of our earthly cultural identity.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (an indigenous Australian who is a Senate candidate for the Northern Territory) explained in a recent interview with ACL, that while there is a desire by some Australians to see Aboriginals hang onto all traditional culture and keep their full Indigenous identity, it's not that simple….. She explained the clash between customary law (traditional culture) and Australian law, and was asked, in considering that clash, can the two systems work in one place?

Her short answer was no it can't!

While she considers herself a 'traditionalist' in some regards, she says she has seen how traditions also encourage some of the violence in the indigenous communities….she also talked about how she believes the Aboriginal culture has not had their 'enlightenment' like the West had.**  She also sees that customary law flies in the face of Australian laws which desire to protect the rights of women and children.

She talked about neglect and abuse of children in traditional settings and gave examples, but how that sadly some in the cities try to say that instead of indigenous children being given opportunities in abuse-free settings that require them being out of their cultural settings, they should be kept in their cultural settings. But as Jacinta pointed out, it is these cultural settings that provide cultural 'permission' for the abuse of those children.

(she gave an example of a child who was literally wandering the streets, was mute, was discovered he had been sexually abused, and because his mother and father had got together outside the normal permitted 'kinship' bounds, he was considered cultural 'rubbish' and was thus abused and neglected. So the best thing for the boy, and the only option if he was going to grow and flourish was to be taken care of in a family totally outside the cultural context where instead of being treated as rubbish, he would be loved and cherished.)

She believes it's not about upholding culture but about upholding human rights, and that right now indigenous children are being failed because of a warped ideology. She believes Australia should be consistent across the country when it concerns the lives of Australian citizens. There shouldn't be unequal standards of care for one set of Australian citizens and another for other citizens. She believes there should be one law for all Australians because indigenous Australians are Australians and non-indigenous Australians are also Australians. She wants to fight for that from a parliamentary position.

I certainly stand with her in wanting more appropriate care for Australian indigenous people especially children.

But, it is interesting that the foundation from which she is fighting this, is the desire that above whether a person is white or black, indigenous or not, above all they are Australians. She is essentially fighting for dignity based on an identity 'above' indigenous.

However, while her cause is noble, I believe it's going to take more than that to enable a change at indigenous community level to let go of traditional culture. Not because of issues of how it affects children, but because any effect on children is culturally secondary to that of the cultural imperatives that require a preserving of culture in order to maintain cultural identity. There is no category on an earthly level to enable a person to be able to let go of culture, yet still have an identity. 

To say one should let go of indigenous culture in order to be 'an Australian', might sound and feel a 'higher' identity for Jacinta and be a terrific goal to aim for, but it will most likely feel to her people like she is asking them to forsake their own culture for just another alternative earthly culture on the same 'level'. 

In fact it may not even be seen as on the 'same level'….because the indigenous Australian believes they have an ancestral connection to the land and the need to maintain honour of those ancestors is paramount - no amount of earthly reasoning will make it seem worthwhile to give that up in order to supposedly be fully and 'equally' 'Australian'. I think she is missing how spiritually deep-rooted the cultural beliefs are held and thus determine identity.

The belief isn't just about logical treatment of children. The belief is about ancestral honour. It's a spiritual belief. Jacinta believes that traditional beliefs can still be upheld at one level while trying to achieve letting go of traditional beliefs (like forced marriage, beating of wives, or kinship honour that results in neglect of children etc) at another level. 

Some would say she feels justified to pick and choose which traditions go and which stay….based on how she sees Western culture of the recent past. But that Western culture came about through its own changes brought about by Judeo-Christian ethics in Biblical Christian revival. But those changes didn't occur as simple cultural evolution which she seems to assume, but because of Christ's transformation in hearts which we were privileged to live in the light of, for several following generations in the West.

The Only True Solution

Yes, whatever can be done to help care for the helpless and vulnerable indigenous children is to be applauded and hopefully Jacinta can have great impact if she is elected.

But….

The only 'cultural identity' sufficiently above both European and Indigenous 

so as to enable cultural change, 

is not simply 'Australian', but 'Christ-ian'. 

Once we are in Christ where there is no Jew or Greek (Gal 3:28), ironically we are then free to be either Jew or Greek or both (like Paul becoming all things to all men - 1 Cor 9:19-20) without fearing cultural identity loss, to the degree that our cultural ways don't usurp our new identity in Christ. While there is no 'Jew' or 'Greek' nationality, Christ's body still will include people that can be identified as coming from every nation/ethnicity. We don't lose our earthly categories alltogether, but they cease to be our primary identity source and authority. As Christians, only then can we let go of being English, or African or German or Japanese or Indigenous (of whichever tribe), and just all be Australian….because then we don't have to have a foot in two cultures, or hang onto our earthly culture in order to have identity, so we are free to take up whichever 'lesser' identity is needed on an earthly level as we submit it all to our greater 'Christ-ian' identity.

Alister, the co-host of the ACL interview with Jacinta, rightly explained that every culture on this earth has sin issues, and problems lurking within them, and they all have aspects that need godly correction. That is so true…because without that acknowledgement, and thus a willingness to let go of those things and submit to whatever God defines as our ultimate identity and honour, we will fight to keep hanging onto the threads of what we believe holds together who we 'are'.

Otherwise, to loosen or lose those threads means losing identity, which means losing 'human-ness', which means losing one's foundation and reason for living….and no-one willingly does that unless they take on what they believe to be a 'greater' or 'higher' or 'more honourable' supreme identity both now and in the future.

We can easily ridicule the 'woke' world for fighting about identity politics all the time, but its not a meaningless fight for those in it…and they are fighting for it because they have 'banked' all their identity in it, in their efforts to find who they are apart from God their Creator or any religious view of God or a 'god' at all.

It's only in Christ that we become willing to 'give up' who we think we 'are', to discover in Him who we really are meant 'to be'. It's only in Christ that we don't have to feel we must fight to the bitter end for our earthly identities and try to eliminate others who oppose us.

Let us be examples of what it means to live with our identity rooted in Christ above any earthly culture or tradition or law. 

And let us strive to more clearly understand and share how the gospel brings a new identity, which both keeps our earthly identities to some degree, but also at the same time frees us from them, ...and enables us to love one another honouring the dignity of other human beings, and most of all to honour God through our identity in Christ.

**the enlightenment that Jacinta refers to and influenced the West to change and move forward to greater respect for human dignity etc, was spawned not just by some abstract movement but was preceded by Luther and the Protestant Reformation. It was a returning to God and his Word and seeking to live according to His Will for human beings above all (even above church politics and systems), that provided the freedom for people to live as God created them to live with their first and highest identity in Christ not belonging to or 'in' anything else this earth offers.