What is Truth?

I have been having an email conversation with an individual regarding Christianity and my opinions regarding my belief in the scriptures; The Word of God as truth. So then came the question, "What is truth?"

It’s a very simple question. Of course, answering it isn't so simple. We can offer definitions like, "Truth is that which conforms to reality, fact, or actuality." But this definition is not complete because its definition is open to interpretation and can be used in a wide variety of ways. What is reality? What is fact? What is actuality? How does perception affect truth? We can spend all day asking one question after the other which leads to another and we end up getting half an answer. It’s like throwing a ball against a wall. It must get half way there, and then half way of the remaining distance, and then half of that distance, and so on. But, an infinite number of halves in this scenario never make a whole.

The ball-against-the-wall scenario simply illustrates that defining and redefining things as we try to approach a goal and actually prevents us from getting to that goal. This is what philosophy does sometimes as it seeks to examine truth. It sometimes clouds issues so much, that nothing can be known for sure.

But, even though it is true that an infinite number of halves do not equal a whole, we can "prove" that it does by simply throwing a ball at a wall and watching it bounce off. Trust me I checked out my theory with a college math professor I have coffee with once in a while, and he claims the ½ exercise it is a mathematical truth. The problem with my inquisitive friend is that the answers aren’t always lock step with just the “truth” per se, but in its application. The problem applied to asking the ultimate question, “So what is Truth,” becomes an exercise in verbal gymnastics.

"See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ," (Col 2:8 ).

In order for truth to be defined properly, it would have to be a factual and logical. Simply put, it would have to be true. So let me do a little twisting of your noodle by addressing what truth is not. Truth is not error. Truth is not self-contradictory. Truth is not deception. Yes, I know, I am way ahead of you, it could be true that someone is being deceptive, but the deception itself isn't truth.

My friend looks at things as relative to the next, all points of view are equally valid and all truth is relative to the individual. If it works for you then it must be “truth.” If this were true, then it would seem that this is the only truth relativism would have to offer. But, the problem with this kind of thinking, as it is in reality, relativism isn't true for the following basic reason. If what is true for me is that relativism is false, then is it true that relativism is false? 1) If you say no, then what is true for me is not true and relativism is false. 2) If you say yes, then relativism is false. Relativism seems to defy the very nature of truth; namely, that truth is not self-contradictory.

So here’s the deal. If there is such a thing as truth, then we should be able to find it. If truth cannot be known, then it probably doesn't exist. But, it does exist. For example, we know it is a true statement that you are reading my blog.

Is there such a thing as something that is always true all the time? Yes absolutely. For example, I wrote about Stephen Hawking who claimed that gravity not God started the universe. Basically, I wrote that the “universe cannot bring itself into existence." This is an absolutely true statement. In order for something to bring itself into existence, it would have to exist in order to be able to perform an action. But if it already existed, then it isn't possible to bring itself into existence since it already exists. Likewise, if it does not exist then it has no ability to perform any creative action since it didn't exist in the first place. Therefore, "Something cannot bring itself into existence," is an absolute truth.

This is a truth found in logic, but there are truths that are not logical by nature. It is true that I love my wife... a lot. This isn't logically provable via gravitational influences and formulas and logic paradigms, but it is true. So I can say that truth conforms and affirms reality and/or logic.

Is this what relativism does? Does relativism confirm to reality and logic? Actually, yes - relatively speaking. Is there an absolute right or wrong way regarding which side of your head you should part your hair, if you part it at all? So to answer my friend, there are relative "truths" that are different for different people. But, these are relativistic by nature. As an example; people drive on the right side of the street in America and on the left in England. I like to watch science fiction and not musicals. Some may say snow is better than rain, etc. These things are relative to culture, individuals, preferences…not God.

It boils down to this, if there is such a thing as truth apart from cultural and personal preferences, we must acknowledge that we by nature are looking for something greater than ourselves, something that transcends culture and individual inclinations. To do this is to look beyond ourselves and outside of ourselves. In essence, it means we are looking for God. God would be truth, the absolute and true essence of being and reality who is the author of all truth. If you are interested in truth beyond yourself, then you must look to God.

"But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him." (John 4:23)

For the Christian, the ultimate expression of truth is found in the Bible, in Jesus who said,

"I am the way, the truth, and the life..." (John 14:16)

Of course, most philosophers and skeptics will dismiss His claim, but for the Christian, He is the mainstay of hope, security, and guidance. Jesus, who walked on water, claimed to be divine, rose from the dead, and said that He was the truth and the originator of truth. If Jesus is wrong, then we should ignore Him. But, if He is right, then it is true that we should listen to Him.

The eyewitnesses wrote what they saw. They were with Him. They watched Him perform many miracles, heal the sick, calm a storm with a command, and even rise from the dead. Either you believe or dismiss these claims. If you dismiss them, that is your prerogative. But, if you accept them, then you are faced with decisions to make about Jesus. What will you believe about Him? What will you decide about Him? Is He true? Is what He said true?

Truth always conforms to reality. The truth is, Jesus performed many miracles and rose from the dead. So my friend is asking the wrong queston. The truth isn't about "what", it's about "who."

Be grounded in reality,

Bishop Ian

Resistance Training

As Christians we often act surprised when the good things we try to do don’t go according to plan. Big or small, it’s annoying to say the least and devastating to some depending on the situation.

“He shall wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the former world has passed away. (Rev 21:1-5).”

OK, this is the end of the story. John is speaking of a new heaven and earth where God reigns unopposed. The problem is that we’re still in the story, living in the old heaven and earth where there is yet plenty of opposition to Christians and the Lordship of Jesus.

Remember the story of Paul in Lystra? He has just been “raked over the coals,” yet in an effort to strengthen the souls of the disciples following him, he encourages them to continue in the faith.

“...and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14: 22)

Look at what Paul had just come up against.

"But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead." (Acts 14:19)

Paul can speak from experience, having been stoned nearly to death, beaten with rods, jailed, shipwrecked, and bitten by a poisonous snake. When he and his companions came into Macedonia, he says;

“...our bodies had no rest but we were afflicted at every turn – fighting without and fear within.” (2 Cor 7:6).

Following Christ is not a cake walk folks. God provides, but he does not necessarily provide comfort and convenience. Simply put if we never experienced resistance, we’d never grow. I ride a bike as many of you know. I am an endurance rider. It’s about going the distance at a steady pace. There are training exercises I do to expose my already sore muscles to a greater resistance in an effort to increase strength. I push against the pedals in a high gear until my muscles burn to the point of failure. I do sprints in the short training runs so I have the strength to go the distance on the long rides. No pain, no gain.

“...count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” (James 1:2)

Like I said, endurance riding is about distance at a steady pace. James is telling us that spiritually, God doubles as our personal trainer by increasing resistance from time to time. Resistance may come from inside our own churches as well as outside. So how do we deal with fellow Christians who being difficult? The Lord gives us a commandment; to love one another as he has loved us. (John 13: 34) Remember, Jesus had just washed the disciples’ feet, and Judas had responded to this act of love by slipping out into the darkness to betray his master.

So metaphorically are we to wash the feet even of those who annoy us, or worse, betray us? This does not mean always agreeing with them or acquiescing to their wishes. But we are to love them, and lay our lives down for them. Granted, this is not a natural response. It is natural for us to love those who love us, agree with us, and think like us. We resist loving those who we dislike. And that’s the point. We are no longer limited to what comes naturally, we must strive to love when it’s difficult as well.

The death and resurrection of Christ has spread God’s supernatural love upon the earth. We have become “sharers in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), and we know from John that the nature of God is love (1 John 4:8).

It is a very painful experience to love those who don’t like us or may even wish us harm and we resist, yes there’s that word again. Yet, scriptures tell us we are to love one another so that our joy might be full. But that’s not the main reason. The world needs to know that Jesus is different from the many false prophets and phony religions that constantly come and go.

So how will the world know that Jesus is God the Son?

"I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." (John 17:23)

Good stuff! But what does the world see when it looks upon those who call themselves his disciples? They see division, bitterness, and hypocrisy that eats away at the fabric of faith. Soon all that is left to present to the world as evidence of Jesus’ love are nothing more than filthy rags.

If we are to make a difference, if we are to present the Gospel and be disciples, then we are going to be tested, and we are going to have trials. We are going to have resistance added to our daily lives to increase our strength and our faith. Sometimes it is going to leave us spiritually sore.

"In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1: 6-7)

Be Strong,

Bishop Ian

The Silent Majority

Jesus, the founder of the Christian faith, was being questioned by the Jewish authorities regarding a tribute tax to Caesar. Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Mark 12:13-17 (The same passage appears, slightly modified, in Matthew 22:15-22 and Luke 20:20-26).

For the most part Christians have based their attitudes toward government on this passage. The accepted theology here is that Jesus' statement establishes two separate realms, Caesar's and God's, and that people should render to each what they ask for in their respective realms. This passage has come to be understood as recognizing the existence of two distinct authorities, one spiritual and the other political. The establishment of a separate Church and State was established here in America. With it came the freedom to practice a religion without government intervention.

But much of Islam has no such distinction. Muhammad was a religious and political leader, the Prophet and the head of state. Under his successors, the caliphs, Islam grew into a huge empire and world religion. Islamic sharia, or Holy Law, deals with power, authority, and political philosophy. Specific applications differ among Islamic nations. In an extreme example of this spiritual political blend, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini once said, "Islam is politics or it is nothing.”

With this mindset, many Muslims believed that the Western world and the United States became infidel invaders; imperialist bullies who desecrate Islamic states by force. European colonialism, Western imperialism, and U. S. policies are at the heart of all the Jihads of recent history. Many Muslims deplore the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. America and Israel often are seen as collaborators trying to destroy Islam.

Especially disturbing to the Muslim radicals is the Western world’s relationship with rulers of Saudi Arabia -- Islam's Holy Land -- whom they see as warped by greed, graft, and moral corruption. One Saudi diplomat noted after 9/11, "What shocks me most is why they hit America and not us."

But they did hit America, and radical Islamic views of politics played an important role. In the aftermath of 9/11 much has been said about Islam and its growing influence on the western world. Most Americans can’t wrap their head around a religious state and given what most of us see in the Muslim world, Islam is anything but a “Religion of Peace.” Sharia Law is as foreign to us as was Jesus’ statement to the people he spoke to regarding Caesar’s Coin.

These Islamic laws in practice are brutal to the western observer; they are barbaric, and what makes it even more disturbing is it is mainly levied against women and children. Let’s face it, we in the U.S. are loathe to see Sharia Law instituted here no matter how many times the so called “moderate Imams” tell us how peaceful their religion is and how tolerant the west must be.

The simple fact is that the radicals rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the radicals who march shouting, “Death to America”. It is the radicals who wage any one of 50 wars worldwide. It is the radicals who systematically slaughter Christians, Jews or anyone else who aren’t them. It is the radicals who bomb, behead, murder, and honor-kill. It is the radicals who take over mosque after mosque. It is the radicals who zealously spread the doctrine of stoning, physical abuse, and mutilation. It is the radicals who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority including Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Western World, the 'silent majority,' say nothing.

Communist Russia was comprised of people who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill 70 million people.

The average Japanese prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by swords, shovels, and bayonets.

I have a brother. He isn’t born of my family, yet I love him and consider him as such. He is a man who spent his youth under the thumb of the communist party in the days of the USSR. He watched as members of his family disappeared for having a viewpoint that differed from the party. He, with others, could say nothing without fear of it being repeated to the authorities; the authorities who were always looking for the next example of what would happen to those who were in non-compliance with the law. The basic premise was that if you aren’t one of us, you must be one of them. My “brother” is a Jew from the Ukraine… a man of God, a scholar of the Book, a man of peace. He is also a Rabbi. He has seen what happens to the silent majority.

Lastly, I was asked recently to participate in an interview offering my opinion on the proposed Quran burnings in Gainesville. I declined the offer; they weren’t looking for an educated viewpoint. They wanted to pick a fight. But I will ask this question. Does burning the Quran change what is written in it? How about the Bible? Yet, everyone from the Pope to Barrack Hussein Obama are bending over backwards to appease radical Islam because some “pastor” gets it in his head to BBQ the Quran. Once again the Muslim World is out burning U.S. flags and threatening death to all Christians; Imams telling the people in the name of their “religion of peace” that they are obligated to kill all Americans on sight.

Let’s be honest here. There is never going to be a way the Western world can appease radical Islam. There will always be something else that they find offensive.

If you want to silence the rising voice of radical Islam, know what’s in your Book first. Be able to defend the Christian Faith first. Once you do that, burning any other religions book will be irrelevant.


Be that Voice,

Bishop Ian

How Original

How original; scientists claiming that creation is the product of random acts of gravitational forces, and well… compressed gas. According to Stephen Hawking, the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being. The Big Bang, he argues, was the inevitable consequence of these laws, “because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

Unfortunately, while Hawking's argument is being hailed as controversial and ground-breaking, this is old news folks. For years other scientists have made similar claims, maintaining that the awesome, sophisticated creativity of the world around us can be explained by simple physical laws such as gravity. But then Stephen Hawking said it so it must be true. But then where did gravity come from?

For me, as a Christian the laws of physics and science only reinforce my faith in an intelligent, divine creator. The more I understand science, the more I believe in God because of my wonder at the depth and sophistication of creation. The very reason science flourished so vigorously in the 16th and 17th centuries was precisely because of the belief that the laws of nature, which were then being discovered and defined, reflect and point to the influence of a divine law-giver. Here, in the 21st century, almost every scientist in the world will be the first to tell you that they don’t need God to explain the universe. That’s a problem because it’s two different sides of the same coin.

The basic difference between science and religion is this. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together for us to see what they mean. They are different pursuits for the same purpose.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things,and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Revelation 4.11

God consistently throughout Scripture wants to be known and acknowledged as the Creator of all things. Isaac Newton said that, "He is want to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler."

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. Psalm 19:1-2

I am always skeptical when a guy like Hawking shows up with a controversial opinion about the existence of God or the lack thereof. It’s the old Science vs. Religion debate that has gone on for centuries and is always a media crowd pleaser. As a guy with a background in media, I know it is a fundamental law of PR that anything as controversial as the God-science debate is a sure fire source of publicity. That kind of PR is always welcome when one has a book to sell.

What would we do for entertainment without scientists telling us, with breathless excitement that, “God did not create the Universe,” as if they were the first to tell the world about it? Stephen Hawking is the latest, but certainly not the first.

For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else. Isaiah 45:18

Be in awe,

Bishop Ian