The Truth War Read Free Page A

understand, and our faith in turn is fed and strengthened as we gain better understanding. Both faith in God as He has revealed Himself and the understanding wrought by faith are therefore essential if we hope to apprehend truth in any serious and meaningful sense.
    Scripture describes all authentic Christians as those who know the truth and have been liberated by it (John 8:32). They believe it with a whole heart (2 Thessalonians 2:13). They obey the truth through the Spirit of God (1 Peter 1:22). And they have received a fervent love for the truth through the gracious work of God in their hearts (2 Thessalonians 2:10). According to the Bible, then, you haven’t really grasped the truth at all if there is no sense in which you know it, believe it, submit to it, and love it.
    Clearly, the existence of absolute truth and its inseparable relationship to the person of God is the most essential tenet of all truly biblical Christianity. Speaking plainly: if you are one of those who questions whether truth is really important, please don’t call your belief system “Christianity,” because that is not what it is.
    A biblical perspective of truth also necessarily entails the recognition that ultimate truth is an objective reality. Truth exists outside of us and remains the same regardless of how we may perceive it. Truth by definition is as fixed and constant as God is immutable. That is because real truth (what Francis Schaeffer called “true truth”) is the unchanged and unchanging expression of who God is; it is not our own personal and arbitrary interpretation of reality.
    A BIBLICAL
PERSPECTIVE OF TRUTH
ALSO NECESSARILY
ENTAILS THE
RECOGNITION THAT
ULTIMATE TRUTH IS AN
OBJECTIVE REALITY.
TRUTH EXISTS OUTSIDE
OF US AND REMAINS THE
SAME REGARDLESS OF
HOW WE MAY
PERCEIVE IT. TRUTH BY
DEFINITION IS AS FIXED
AND CONSTANT AS GOD
IS IMMUTABLE.
    Amazingly, Christians in our generation need to be reminded of these things. Truth is never determined by looking at God’s Word and asking, “What does this mean to me?” Whenever I hear someone talk like that, I’m inclined to ask, “What did the Bible mean before you existed? What does God mean by what He says?” Those are the proper questions to be asking. Truth and meaning are not determined by our intuition, experience, or desire. The true meaning of Scripture—or anything else, for that matter—has already been determined and fixed by the mind of God. The task of an interpreter is to discern that meaning. And proper interpretation must precede application.
    The meaning of God’s Word is neither as obscure nor as difficult to grasp as people today often pretend. Admittedly, some things in the Bible are hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16), but its central, essential truth is plain enough that no one need be confused by it. “Whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray” (Isaiah 35:8).
    Moreover, our individual perception of truth certainly can and does change. Of course we gain better understanding as we grow. We all begin by being nourished on the milk of the Word. As we gain the ability to chew and digest harder truths, we are supposed to be strengthened by the meat of the Word (1 Corinthians 3:2; Hebrews 5:12). That is, we move from a merely childlike knowledge to a more mature grasp of truth in all its richness and relationship to other truth.
    But truth itself does not change just because our point of view does. As we mature in our ability to perceive truth, truth itself remains fixed. Our duty is to conform all our thoughts to the truth (Psalm 19:14); we are not entitled to redefine “truth” to fit our own personal viewpoints, preferences, or desires. We must not ignore or discard selected truths just because we might find them hard to receive or difficult to fathom. Above all, we can’t get apathetic or lazy about the truth when the price of understanding or defending the truth turns out