A few years ago, in a book on philosophy, I read that the basis for knowing something was an adequately justified true belief. Obviously, terms like adequate, justified and belief are subjective. What I accept as adequate may fall far short of the criteria you would demand. Also, what I accept as justification you may totally reject. The same can be said of belief. However, the case of truth is different. It is not possible to know something that isn’t true. If you believe something that is not true, you are simply mistaken. Perhaps you recall the quotation attributed to Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
In the last half of the 20th Century the concept of objective truth came under assault – it stood in the way of living the way we want. By dispensing with that concept, we are free to make up our own realities, choose our own values, and adjust our morals to fit the lifestyle we choose. It also allows us to change the meaning of terms like marriage and gender to fit our relativistic worldview. However, attempting to live that way as a society leads us to conundrums like men who identify as women dominating women’s sports.
In his recently published devotional entitled God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life, based on Proverbs, Timothy Keller points out that wisdom is an acquired ability to make good choices characterized by discernment, discretion and self-discipline. Wisdom is acquired through learning, knowledge, experience and deep thought. Proverbs also points out that God is the ultimate reality, and therefore getting to know him through the study of Scripture is essential to wisdom. As Jesus said, “. . . and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).
Since truth is foundational to knowledge, it makes sense that if we want to be wise, we must seek the truth. Unfortunately, truth is not always easy to discern and requires hard work and extra effort to find. I am sure that fact caused us lazy people to sit back as the postmodernist won the day. I do not think we can do that any longer. We cannot just accept what we see in the headlines of an agenda-driven press or hear from talking heads on television. We must dig deeper, go to the sources, and evaluate the facts for ourselves. Our godless society that has resulted from postmodernist thinking is very confused and has lost its way.