Truth is important. Let’s see if you agree. Imagine lying on your favorite couch on a rainy Saturday afternoon, one perfect for a nap. Your 5 year-old is in the kitchen and it’s unusually quiet throughout the house. You ask yourself, “What are they up to?” But believing the best of your child, you assume the truth is they are reading quietly and decide to take that desirable and well-deserved rest. Afterwards you awake feeling refreshed and walk into the kitchen and discover a beautiful horse painting your child has made…on your white kitchen cabinets! As always, truth eventually is revealed.
Now, I know this is a very simple example, but it illustrates the importance and practicality of knowing the truth. Despite its significance, truth is currently taking a beating in society today, mainly in 2 ways. One, to disprove and deny its existence, and two, to downplay its importance in life. However, truth is real, but it must be sought. Truth is important, having significant consequences (such as having horses painted on your white kitchen cabinets). And not only is knowing the truth important in everyday life, it has significant impact for the meaning and purpose of life.
So why do so many people attempt to deny or downplay truth? Many state they hold to this view because it leads to freedom. This allows for people to subjectively determine what is right and what I wrong, or to deny anything is objectively right or wrong. So, if a person likes something then it’s right, but if they do not like it, then it’s considered wrong. “No Truth, Total Freedom” is their motto (I expect this philosophy would have been grasped by many of us while in college!). As Jean-Paul Sartre famously said, “It’s forbidden to forbid.” So, this view of no foundational truth sounds pretty good, right.
However, there is a real problem with this thinking. The main objection to this viewpoint, one that is openly confessed by many philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus, is that you must take with it the reality that life becomes void of real and lasting meaning. Thus by removing a foundational and unchangeable truth, we rid real meaning and purpose to our lives. Well, what is the response of these philosophers, such as Camus and Sartre? Well, it goes like a Kenny Chesney song…”No truth. No meaning. No problem.” You see, they’ve come to accept the meaninglessness of life in order to live freely. However, there is a problem. And the problem is that none of us really live as if our lives do not matter! Deep down in our souls, we know there is an intrinsic meaning and purpose for our life. So, if denying truth leads to meaninglessness, but in reality we know our lives have meaning, then accepting truth can lead to real meaning! As C. S. Lewis put it in his “The Abolition of Man”, “But you can not go on ‘explaining away’ forever: you will find you have explained explanation itself away. You can not go on ‘seeing through’ things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it…If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same thing as not to see.” In other words, to deny the reality of underlying truth leads to a futile existence. For humanity to gain understanding, purpose, and meaning in life requires something ‘opaque’, which is manifest as truth.
Don’t be like the napping parent in the story, assuming truth. Seek it out. Question your beliefs. When you find the truth, you will know it. How? When you find real freedom! You see, truth and meaning and real freedom go together. “And then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
