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The Relationship Between Truth and Reality
Collapse of Western Civilization
Many people are asking whether the West or the Western world, once mostly called Western civilization, is on the verge of collapse. I believe people stopped using “Western civilization,” because they question the civilization now of the West. Maybe the West isn’t civilized any more. But why? What happened to the West? It relates to God and the Bible for sure, but in a more rudimentary form, truth and reality.
For many decades the leading intelligentsia of the West called Western civilization bad, because of its origins, they would say, in colonialism, racism, exploitation, and having white skin. They treat these ironically as even the sins of the West. This necessitated a kind of repentance and transformation, led by the elites of the West into something vastly different than what it once was.
The changes in the West from what it once was, from its foundational and fundamental values, resulted now in an inability to defend itself. It has no basis for its own existence, giving a good argument for those who wish to destroy it. The military defenses of the West also withered away because it spent its money on globalism, welfare programs, egalitarianism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. They sucked up revenues like quick sand.
Inclusion or Exclusion
Someone recently said that the West embraced John Lennon’s song like an anthem, that there is nothing to live or to die for, the world that they imagine. They prefer the world of their imagination, rather than the real world, the actual one in which we and they live.
The attack on nationalism combats exclusion. Nations by nature exclude, not include. This is the cause of division that gives people something to live or to die for. An irony of it is of course that it caused the rise of various groups that receive their identity from victimization. They are oppressed in many various ways by a sundry of oppressors. What proceeded is instead a fight for power all of the time.
Objective Truth or Feelings and Opinions
Powerful intellectual elites of the West started telling us decades ago, and this has only become worse, that there is no objective truth. To get there, they had to eliminate God, the supernatural origin of heaven and earth, a first cause. The belief in God was unsophisticated and again of course resulted in exclusion. The truly sophisticated said, there is only opinion. Everything is relative or only opinion. What I feel is what is.
Feeling in the new and deteriorating West trumps all facts. This is to say that the subjective is superior to the objective. If no objective truth, then also no lie, so you can’t know the difference between truth and lies. You can’t know, so you also then become very gullible to lies. Not knowing the difference between truth and lies means you also have no reason. Everything becomes irrational. A hyper-rational society, an intellectual one, becomes irrational, which is a paradox.
Reality and Truth
What really happens, happened, and will happen is reality. That is also truth. Denying reality is also denying the truth. I like to refer to the reality of the world represented in the hymn, This Is My Father’s World. The world really is the Father’s and He also wrote the Bible. The Bible, which is the truth, matches with reality. Scripture is a guide to reality.
Reality is the state of things as they actually exist. It refers to the actual state of affairs, facts, or conditions that are present in the world, independent of our perceptions or beliefs about them. A statement or belief that is true will however correspond to a fact in reality. When we deal with the truth, we are also dealing with reality. The two do not separate from one another.
Today truth and reality seem, and I say “seem,” not to correlate with one another. They diverge in this world in which we live. In that sense and in others, we live in a post-truth world. That should not surprise someone, when he reads the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:4, when he calls Satan, “the god of this world.” Jesus had said in John 8:44 that Satan is the father of lies. What Satan says does not correspond to reality. He lies about reality. For instance, he told Eve, “Ye shall not surely die.”
Both heaven and earth, everything there is, operate on absolute truth. You can test if it is true, like defying the law of gravity, and find out. Whether you believe it or not, it still holds true. It’s as simple as falling from a cliff and then hitting the ground.
Truth and Power
The chief enemies of the truth today lead a pervasive population that holds to, promotes, and even enforces the unreal and false. Sometimes they defend their cause by saying that truth, which is reality, is a mere construct of power. With truth as a construct, they reconstruct a different reality and call it their truth.
Today the most consequential governing authority, the education system between kindergarten and postgraduate in the United States. won’t allow the teaching or propagation of the truth or reality. That’s not the primary interest any more if not any interest. Many other authoritative and influential institutions or entities cooperate with the bias against the truth and reality, including the legal system (courts) and the mainstream media. One entire political party is against truth or reality, the Democrat Party.
Effect on Churches
Churches succumb to this death of truth and reality. They do it mainly by questioning their own authority. The churches and their leaders undermine scripture and its interpretation, and call it humility or a basis for unity. In part this is a fear of power.
Without truth, everything becomes about who has power. Truth is not objective, so one must have power to assert his own opinions. Nothing is truth, it is only the construction of power. This goes back to the victim and oppressor narrative. Empowerment is the ability or freedom to assert ones self.
The premier institution of truth, the church, literally the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15), acceded to power over fear. Churches don’t want to victimize anyone with the truth, or even just most truths, so they acquiesce to lies, which, yes, distort reality. People do not know the truth about the world God created, because of churches that fear man more than they do God.
Pushing for and Not Apologizing for Bringing Back the Bible into the Public Square
At some point, the United States ejected from the Bible as several things: evidence, truth, history, science, facts, objective moral reality, and authority. Some might consider the Bible an authority for a church, but not anywhere else. Even churches now find the Bible as passé or at least lacking in relevance as an authority. At least true believers need to use scripture with confidence, trusting it as absolute truth. It is absolute truth and believers need to talk that way.
Very often interlocutors will attempt to rely on peer reviewed research papers, statistics, apparent observations of the animal world, government studies, cultural and historical writings, and anecdotes. If they even believe the Bible, they at least stay away from it, because it counts as equal to or perhaps something less than opinion. However, as the song goes, the Bible stands:
The Bible stands like a rock undaunted ‘Mid the raging storms of time; Its pages burn with the truth eternal, And they glow with a light sublime. . . . The Bible stands like a mountain tow’ring Far above the works of man; Its truth by none ever was refuted, And destroy it they never can. . . . The Bible stands every test we give it, For its Author is divine.
Bible Final Authority
Not only is the Bible truth, like Jesus said (John 17:17), but it is the final and supreme authority for truth. It doesn’t matter what other people say about the Bible and its authority, because it also stands over them as an authority.
The Bible is not the only authority. There are others, but it is the final authority. People can refer to other sources of truth, but the Bible is still superior to all those as an authority. I’m saying that professing believers need to either start or continue relying on and then using the Bible in public forums like school classrooms, interviews, debates, podcasts, papers, books, speeches, and government assemblies, conferences, or congresses. They shouldn’t budge when someone questions their reliance on and usage of scripture as a source for their presentation.
Foundational to Western Civilization
Law and Human Rights
The Bible has played a foundational role in shaping Western civilization, influencing its legal systems, moral values, cultural practices, and social structures. The roots of Western Civilization trace back to ancient Greece and Rome, but Christianity, which proceeds from its sacred text, significantly transformed these foundations. Concepts such as “the rule of law,” asserting that no one is above the law arises from biblical teachings.
Deuteronomy 17:18-20 emphasize that kings must adhere to the law, promoting equality before it. Leviticus 19:15 advocates for equal treatment under the law for both rich and poor individuals. These principles echo in foundational documents like the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution. Belief in human dignity as created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27) established a foundation for human rights concepts that are integral to modern democratic societies.
Culture and Science
The Bible shaped Western culture through literature, art, music, and philosophy. Artists and composers drew inspiration from biblical narratives. The literary canon resulted from biblical themes as seen in works by authors such as John Milton and William Shakespeare, who reflected deep engagement with biblical texts.
Christian theology was the impetus for scientific inquiry. Belief in a rational Creator who designed an orderly universe encouraged early scientists to explore natural laws through observation and experimentation. A predominant scientist such as Isaac Newton exemplified this connection between faith and science; he viewed his scientific work as a means to understand God’s creation better.
Crucial to Meaning
The meaning of words in the English language spring from the King James Version of the Bible, where they first appear. When someone says “love,” “mercy,” and “hope” among many other vital words, the Bible was the lingua franca for the culture. The United States should revert back to the idea of a melting pot, where new citizens assimilate into a national identity. The Bible was the centerpiece of that national identity. Professing believers today should talk like that is true and not apologize.
Scripture provides the right view of history with its Old and New Testaments. American society at least should keep that structure, if not everybody and every nation. God created time and history revolves around redemption. Mankind moves toward an irrepressible ending in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He is the most important figure in history and professing believers should keep Him there.
More to Come
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