My Feelings About Truth

The moment the Romney camp announced that fact-checking would not run their campaign, what the nation should have heard was the hundreds of thousands of Christian Republicans running for the door.
Well, really, every self-respecting Republican should have run for the door, but I feel like picking on Christians. Because we are the ones who are supposed to believe Jesus, who came to this earth to testify to the truth (John 18:37); who taught us that to know the truth is to be free (John 18:32); who said that it is the devil who is the father of lies (John 8:44); whose apostles taught us that we should rejoice in the truth (I Corinthians 13:6); and who told His revelator that outside the gates of the new Kingdom on earth were those who love and practice lying (Revelation 22:15). So when the Republican Party basically says: “We don’t care about the truth!” every Christian should have said: “Aaaaahhhh!” and ran.

But there’s a sticky point. It’s not actually that sticky, but we like to make it sticky. “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:20b – 21)

I heartily agree that this applies when the wisdom of the world says: “What is right is what feels good” a la Postmodernism. When the wisdom of the world says: “Take care of you and yours, and forget everyone else.” When the wisdom of the world says: “Why should I care about them? They don’t pay my bills.”

When I disagree is when the wisdom of the world says: “We’ve seen that if you give this money to these people, it has this effect on the economy; but when you give it to these people, it has this other effect on the economy.” Or: “We know light waves act a certain way; when they act this particular way, it means they’ve been traveling for13 billion light-years. So your idea that the universe is only 60,000 years old isn’t possible.”

Oops! Did I just say the Bible lied? Of course not. I’m saying we shouldn’t abandon the scientific method when it seems to disagree with how we interpret the Bible. Remember that whole “the earth travels around the sun” discovery? Or the “our earth and solar system is on the edge of just one of myriad galaxies” discovery? That was the scientific method. Which we’re fine to believe as the truth.

But “seven days” being a storytelling trope? Egads, you’re going to hell you heretic.

Personally, I would rather it be a trope than to find everything we’re discovering about this incredible universe is a lie. Because it can be a trope, and tell the truth; studying the universe and discovering truths which are yet lies is impossible, and means God is tricking us with supposed order that is actually chaos-by-whimsy.

In the Christian hypothesis that God created the universe with age, does that include light-waves zipping from their galaxies to a point 60,000 light-years away in an instant, to then journey as normal till it hits earth and fools astronomers into thinking they’ve actually been traveling for 13 billion years? Because that would be chaos-by-whimsy. It would be God saying: “My created order works this way now, but it didn’t always work that way because I didn’t tell Moses it worked that way. Gotcha!”

“But isn’t He then lying to us about creating the earth in seven days?” I hear you ask.

Here’s what I find claimed about the Bible: it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness (II Timothy 3:16b*). Is the creation story suddenly not useful for those things if the seven days were a trope instead of objective, historical fact? Well, did you know that evolutionary theory goes in roughly the same order as the Genesis account? Amazing that desert wanderers would manage to agree if they were only conjuring up a creation myth. Almost like someone was whispering to them how things actually went. But for them to grasp the concept of billions of years of time? I don’t think they would write it that way if they were told it was true. Because it wouldn’t be useful to them (for teaching or training in righteousness) to know the universe is billions of years old. Much better and more important for them – and us – to know that God created it. It is His, and He has control. I’m fine to be the evolutionary product of primeval salamanders if it was God’s intention and design for me to be such a product.

The wisdom of the world says evolution proves we don’t need God to explain how we got here. I think that’s foolishness. And I think the Bible teaches, corrects, and trains me in regards to that truth.

And the truth is what is of utmost importance, in every area of life. Including politics.

*Yes, I left the “God-breathed” part out of that reference intentionally, not because I want to ignore it, but because I find a lot of people cannot; they read that and immediately stop using their God-given brains to
consider the rest of the verse.