How shall we live in a world where truth is defined as something it is not. According to Britannica online:

“Truth, in metaphysics and the philosophy of language, is the property of sentences, assertions, beliefs, thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case.

Truth is the aim of belief; falsity is a fault. People need the truth about the world in order to thrive. Truth is important. Believing what is not true is apt to spoil people’s plans and may even cost them their lives. Telling what is not true may result in legal and social penalties. Conversely, a dedicated pursuit of truth characterizes the good scientist, the good historian, and the good detective.”

So, what is TRUTH?

We can get objective truth through nature. Truths like, there are two genders for mammals, there is a certain boiling point of water, and gravity on earth is a constant that we cannot change. These are some scientific objective truths. Scientific truths are not constructed realities. We can play games with words that describe scientific realities, but we cannot change them. We can deny that gravity exists, but I advise you to avoid pretending to be Superman. You cannot change gravity, even though you reject it. Gravity is objectively true. I cannot fly into the Sun, even though I might want to. The Sun will destroy me and that is objectively true. We can try hard to reorder nature, we can play with genetics, and we can define “humanity” the way we want to, but none of these things change what we are. If I call myself a cat, just grab some cells from my body and clone me. That clone will never be a cat. It will be who I am, a human female. I am subject to nature, and nature is subject to God. My opinion is irrelevant.

A Christian understands that objective truth also comes from the Bible and through the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Biblical objective and moral truth is not something we decide it is, but something we know it is, through the lenses of the Scriptures, the Prophets, the Saints, and the Church Fathers. Christians may not agree with Biblical truths, but as people of the Bible, they are called to obey in faith, and know that God’s truths are the Church’s truth. They are EVERY Christian’s truth. Sometimes truth hurts.

Today, people who do not have Scripture to guide them, or perhaps they simply deny science, will seek truth elsewhere. TikTok might be the source of their truth, but wherever you look, people are seeking objective truths even though they may not realize it. Without these objective truths, there is no line in the sand for any behavior or action. Without objective truth, we cannot understand nature or begin to understand who God really is. Without objective truths, we have no way to define truth at all without inserting our own individual desires and opinions into the mix.

Let me give you some examples of how people are defining truth in 2023.

Is this truth? I am a middle-aged white woman. If I say that I am a purple people-eater, is this a truth? Yes, because I say so, or no, because, well, that’s not what I look like or do for a living. What is the truth? Who determines MY truth or YOUR truth? DNA? Looks or appearance? Behavior? Common sense? What?

BOTTOM LINE: “If everyone is right, then no one is.” We simply cannot all be right in our thinking. Someone must be wrong for me to be right. Your truth can’t be right and mine be right too, otherwise, neither one of us has discovered the “truth.”

For truth to exist, we must have falsity. I cannot be just what I say I am. I speak from experience because when I was three years old, I wanted to grow up to be a rainbow. Clearly, I am not a rainbow. If we look at the Bible for answers, we can see several objectively true things. One of them deals with sexual immorality: Romans 1:26-27 states (NET Bible on BibleGateway):

For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged the natural sexual relations for unnatural ones,^[a] and likewise the men also abandoned natural relations with women^[b] and were inflamed in their passions^[c] for one another. Men^[d] committed shameless acts with men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Footnotes:

Romans 1:26 tn Grk “for their females exchanged the natural function for that which is contrary to nature.” The term χρῆσις (chrēsis) has the force of “sexual relations” here (L&N 23.65).
Romans 1:27 tn Grk “likewise so also the males abandoning the natural function of the female.”
Romans 1:27 tn Grk “burned with intense desire” (L&N 25.16).
Romans 1:27 tn Grk “another, men committing…and receiving,” continuing the description of their deeds. Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

The Biblical truth is clear, yet, Christians still struggle with how to live in a society which normalizes these very things. How shall we then live? (shout out to Francis Schaeffer there…)

We must live the truth, even when we do not like it. We must hold to it, even when the teachers, professors, friends, students, loved ones, and even clergy disagree with us.

This also means that we cannot participate in any culture that presents its own truths over Bible truths. Here’s the rub. How shall we then live when everything on TV is this:

Go ARMY! Here’s one of their recruiting videos…

or the “fairy godmother”….

and let’s not leave out the gay wedding during the flower show…

or cartoons for little kids with non-binary bison…

or the Transformers, in case your 3rd grader missed the bison….

and of course, for all ages, the Star Wars movies…

Where does it end? Will it end? Yes, but it will not end until nothing sexual is sacred or crosses the line anymore. It will be anything goes and that’s going to be a big problem for Christians.

The schools are in on it, and asking little kids to color their sexuality unicorns…