What Does The Bible Say About Truth?

What does the Bible say about Truth?

— Sharon Edmundson

What is Truth?

Today’s subject is, ‘What does the bible say about truth?’. I say this every time, but this is a massive subject and I’m only just skimming the surface today. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick up on some of the bits I can’t cover here in conversation street.

So let’s start by defining truth.

The dictionary defines truth as, ‘ that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.’

An example from my Marriage

When I married Matt we agreed that in our marriage we would only ask each other questions that we were prepared to hear an honest answer to. So for example, I was not going to ask, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ unless I was prepared to hear an answer I didn’t want to hear. We knew that the bible says to tell the truth and we wanted to always encourage each other to do that. Here is one of the verses that speaks about telling the truth.

“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbour, for we are all members of one body.”

-- Ephesians 4:25

Have a look at these verses though:

“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

-- Ephesians 4:15

The Bible says we need love to go with our truth. Truth without love is needlessly hurtful. Love without truth leaves us in danger of going down the wrong path.

So, the Bible tells us to tell the truth but it says a whole lot more about the subject than that. It makes a lot of claims about the nature of truth. It makes a lot of truth claims. Before I get into some of the specific truth claims of the Bible I want to look into the subject of truth claims.

Objective/ subjective truth

Truth claims can be subjective or objective.

Snickers Vs KitKat Analogy

Now, on these livestreams, after the bit we call conversation street, we used to end with a bit of a silly question just for fun. The question could be something like, ‘Which is the best chocolate bar, ‘Snickers or KitKat’ and people would write in the comments which chocolate bar they thought was the best, and which ever two people were hosting the livestream that week would get into a friendly argument and a bit of banter about which was the best.

The answer to that question and most of the questions we asked in that section were subjective. The answer to the question about the chocolate bar doesn’t depend on the actual chocolate bar, it depends on your opinion. So, I could make the claim that Snickers is the better chocolate bar but that is just my opinion and actually next week I might change my mind and say that KitKat is the better chocolate bar.

If however, I say that Snickers has the higher percentage of sugar than KitKat, I would be making an objective truth claim. My truth claim is either objectively true or objectively false. The answer doesn’t depend on my opinion it depends on reality.

Subjective claims depend on the subject, on the person making the claim. Objective claims depend on the object, the thing the claim is being made about.

Are the truth claims of the Bible objective or subjective?

Two story truth

Francis Schaeffer, who was a theologian, philosopher and pastor, had something to say about this. He said,

“People tend to organise truth claims as if they are in a two-story house with objectives truths on the ground floor and subjective truths on the first floor.”

— Francis Schaeffer

So on the ground floor we tend to put things like maths and science. On the first floor we put personal opinions. The problem, he said, is that sometime we put things on the wrong floor. He said that in western culture we tend to put belief about God and morality in with the subjective truth claims on the first floor.

You may hear people say things such as, 'It’s great that you believe in God if that makes you happy but I don’t believe in God. You do you and I’ll do me.’

Beliefs about God and faith are the sort of beliefs we are told we have to put aside if we want to learn about the real world. There’s a disconnect between the two stories of the house. A disconnect between faith and how we are expected to live in the real world. There’s a sacred/secular divide.

Pluralism and Tolerance

In the west there’s not only a tendency of thinking that religious beliefs are subjective, there can also be a tendency to think that all beliefs are equal, that all religions lead to God. We are told to be tolerant of other views.

The old definition of tolerance was to be respectful towards people whose opinions, beliefs, religion and so on differ to our own. In other words, tolerance required disagreement of ideas but respect towards people. And I think this version of tolerance is quite helpful. It means we can discuss and debate in order to discover what is really true and what isn’t. The Bible encourages us not just to accept the latest ideas floating around but to test them to see if they’re true.

Nowadays the definition of tolerance seems to have changed to mean that you have to agree that all views are equal. If you say that you think someone else’s views are wrong or that one particular view is right, you are seen as intolerant or maybe even hateful.

So should religious truth claims be put on the first floor of the house with all the subjective truth claims, or should they be on the ground floor with the objective truth claims?

Religious truth claims are objective.

I want to show you that religious truth claims are objective not subjective. For example, the atheist says there is no God, but the Jew, the Muslim and the Christian say that there is. Either the atheist is right and the others are wrong or the Jew, Muslim and Christian are right and the atheist is wrong. The atheist’s claim that there is no God is either objectively true or objectively false. No-one can make it true or false by what they believe.

Christians believe that Jesus died on a cross and was raised to life again. Muslims don’t believe he even died on the cross, let alone be raised to life. They can’t both be right. But the claim that Jesus died and resurrected is either objectively true, or objectively false. What we believe about the matter doesn’t change the facts.

Eastern religions believe that God is not personal but is a force. Christians believe that he is personal.

“Jesus said this, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ ”

-- John 14:6

He is basically saying no-one can have a relationship with God unless they do it through him. That is either true or false. It’s not a matter of opinion. Hopefully you can see that claims about God are not subjective but objective. They are either objectively true or objectively false. The claims of the Bible are either objectively true or objectively false.

C.S Lewis put it this way:

‘Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of the facts - to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it give him no help at all.’

— C. S. Lewis

‘Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth - truth about the whole of reality.’

— Francis Schaeffer

With Christianity, the ground floor and the first floor of our house are not unrelated, they are integrated. If God is real and He’s the God of the Bible, He has stuff to say about every aspect of our life from who we are as humans, what the problem with the world is, what the solution is, morality, how to deal with our emotions, how our relationships should work, money, life after death, how a country should be governed … everything. They all work together as a united whole. There is no sacred/secular divide.

Truth claims of the Bible

So lets look at some of the specific truth claims from the Bible and a tiny bit about how they relate to life in the real world.

#1 - Origins

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, is about the origin of so many things. It says that God is eternal, he has always existed, but that he created everything. And that we can know something of God from looking at what he has made just as you can see something of the artist in their artwork.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

-- Romans 1:20

When we look up into space or down into the details of a single cell it can give us a sense of awe. One of the things that convinces me of God’s existence from creation, other than there being a creation at all, is the DNA in every cell of our bodies.

DNA is a long molecule that contains our genetic code. It’s an instruction manual for making all the proteins in our bodies. It’s a language. In every other scenario in life, language points to intelligence and I think DNA points to an intelligent creator. There are many other things from the physical world that point to a creator.

Hugh Ross is an astrophysicist who, through science, saw that God must exist. In his search for God he ended up becoming a Christian.

#2 - People

What about people? The Bible gives people dignity and worth just from being humans because it says we’re made in the image of God.

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.””

-- Genesis 1:26

It doesn’t matter what race or sex we are, how old or young, or how much we contribute to society, we all have innate worth and value. This is the best foundation for human rights to sit on and for racial equality.

#3 - What’s wrong with the world

So that all sounds very nice but I think we can all agree that as well as seeing amazing design and beauty in the world, there’s also a fair few things that are not too good. Corona, wars, people having to flee their countries, cancer, child abuse…you get the picture.

In the previous verses I read, we saw that God gave people the job of ruling on earth on his behalf. The idea was for us to do this in a trusting relationship with Him. He did, after all, set the whole thing up and knows the best way for it all to work. Unfortunately, the first people he made decided to rebel and do things their own way. This then broke their relationship with God and sent the whole of creation into decay.

So now, as each of us is born into the world, we grow up having a sense of something being missing. We sense something more than just the physical world but we can’t quite connect. So according to the Bible, the problem in the world is our broken relationship with God as a result of our rebellion. The Bible calls this rebellion sin. This is a problem for every single person.

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

-- Romans 3:23

Society often pits different people against each other but according to the bible the source of the problem in the world isn’t a particular race or colour of people, it’s not the rich or the poor, it’s not chauvinistic men or feminist women, it’s our rebellion against God. The problem is in all of us. Even those of us who think we’re good people. All of the good stuff we do… this is what God has to say about it:

“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”

-- Isaiah 64:6

It’s no wonder we can’t connect with God. He is so perfect and beautiful, how can any of us stand before him. If He just let’s us off from our sin, He wouldn’t be perfectly just. If He doesn’t let us off how can He love us as He wants to?

#4 - The solution

It all sounds a bit depressing, but the Bible is actually good news. Because God has a solution to the problem of our filthiness and disconnect from Him. He came to earth in human form as Jesus to take the punishment for our rebellion so he can be just, and so he can reconnect us with Him so that he can love us as he wants to.

“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life.”

-- Romans 5:10

God loved us while we were his enemies. And that gives us a great basis for loving everyone whether or not they agree with us. It gives us a great basis for the original definition of tolerance.

The Bible also gives us hope for the future. That one day, God is going to finish what he started and put an end to all suffering and pain.

#5 - We can know the truth

The Bible tells us that we can know truth, not just through scientific study of the world around us but through God’s words in His holy book, the Bible, through Jesus and through his Holy Spirit. And that truth isn’t just a set of facts to be learnt, it’s personal. As I said before, Jesus said He IS Truth. All other truth originates from him. And his truth brings freedom and beauty. I’ll finish with these words from Jesus.

“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.””

-- John 8:31,32 ---