Clicking on the title of this post will take you to the original message at Stand To Reason. This may seem a little deep, but the message behind it is very critical to defending Christianity.Writing about the universal message of Christianity, Chuck Colson writes:
Well, I don't know about "a higher truth." Truth isn't a degreed sort of thing - it either is or isn't. Maybe Jim means that there's a more significant truth. But experience depends on propositional truth.
Colson is writing specifically about the Emerging Church, but he puts his finger on a problem that has its roots are in the broader spectrum of modern Christendom.
A major shift seemed to have occurred in the early 70s with the Jesus Movement. Reacting to what seemed (an in some cases no doubt was) stale, empty religious practice, Christians began putting an emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus. While this is an important balance, since then the message often offered by Christians seems to be much more subjective than objective.
A personal relationship with Jesus does matter. And personal experience adds a dimension to the truth that is unique. But too often the appeal seems to be primarily or even wholly subjective. And that plays into the relativism and pluralism of the age.
The Gospel message is an objective statement about our sinful state and broken relationship with God, and the offer is also an objective one: We can be reconciled to God only through His Son. The objective facts make the subjective relationship possible. The two sides cannot be reversed because a personal relationship with God is predicated on reconciliation only Jesus makes possible. There is no other way.
And the objective facts are an anchor that ensures perseverance. Feelings are fleeting and we may not always or rarely feel close to Jesus. Jesus doesn't always make life better - Hebrews says God will discipline His children and Peter warns us of testing. Subjectively, life doesn't always feel better with God; but objectively we are better off because of what we know to be true.
The Christian life can be subjectively full when a personal relationship with Jesus is fulfilling. Our relationship with Jesus is based on a state of reconciliation with God, and that's objectively true even when it doesn't seem so subjectively.
Propositions won't save us, but experiences won't either. It's the truth conveyed in propositions that allow us to place our trust in Jesus, who does save us. The truth is, He's the Savior.
1 comment:
Well, I don't know about "a higher truth." Truth isn't a degreed sort of thing - it either is or isn't. Maybe Jim means that there's a more significant truth. But experience depends on propositional truth.
Good point about "higher truth".
One thing which has sometimes puzzled me is the meaning of "half truth". How does one arrive at a "half truth"? Are they lunging towards the truth and then fall half way there, hence defying the laws of boolean logic? Is it possible? I think what people mean when they say "half truth" is really that the group of propositions that they are refering to consist of both true and false propositions. But if that is the case, the two options (in terms of dealing with the group of propositions collectively) would seem to be:
1. With AND logic (all need to be true for the group to be true)
2. With OR logic (one needs to be true to make it collectively true)
#2 doesn't seem to be an options, so I'd say it must be #1. Is saying something is a "half truth" just a common way to express that we believe a set of ideas is actually false, but we concede that it may have some remote shred of agreeableness to us? Or that some of its premises may be true, but "it" (the collective we are speaking of) is false?
Ok, I'll stop here before I go too far off topic.
I think this is a very well said point: "Our relationship with Jesus is based on a state of reconciliation with God, and that's objectively true even when it doesn't seem so subjectively."
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