The Postmodern Age: Create Your Own Truth

Postmodernism is a worldview that asserts that external, absolute truth—that is, a truth that is true for all people, in all places, and at all times—cannot be known through reason or science because truth is either nonexistent or unknowable. Postmodern thought asserts that experience is more reliable than reason, and the idea of truth is created rather than discovered. In a nutshell, postmodernists say, “If it’s true for you, then it’s as true as it needs to be.”

Postmodernism now shapes the attitudes of our society as a whole even though most people don’t even know the meaning of the word. Don’t be surprised to meet many adults or even Christians who are reluctant to draw a line between right and wrong or to affirm a belief in absolute truth. They have adopted a postmodern mind-set without bothering to check whether it is based in absolute truth—or even needs to be. Perhaps, if pressed, they might offer an explanation that borders on New Age mysticism.

Contrary to postmodern thought, we do not create truth--we discover it. Belief does not determine reality--reality exists apart from belief. Our belief in the truth merely brings us into alignment with it and activates its power in our lives. Absolute truth is an objective reality that exists totally independent of what anyone thinks or feels about it. Truth is real and solid whether or not we choose to believe it, just as Mount Everest is real and solid whether or not we choose to climb it.

Which Comes First: Truth or Belief?

Does it matter which comes first: the truth of the Bible or belief in the Bible? I assert that the Bible is inherently true even if one chooses not to believe it. Darren (from my last blog) thought the Bible is true for him or his friends because they believe it. I say that truth exists as an objective reality outside ourselves and that it is true for all people, at all times, and in all places. Darren’s position would mean that truth is fluid and adaptable to one’s own internal belief system. The difference between these two views is not merely an abstract theological point; it has far-reaching practical implications.

But, it’s not only young people who are losing a solid sense of absolute truth today. While speaking at a conference, I asked one of the most outstanding, astute and best theologically trained youth pastors why he believed in the Bible. He responded like Darren, “Because I have faith.” So, it appears that even those who lead and train our young people have adopted the idea that the exercise of faith creates a working truth for each individual. It’s no wonder our kids grow up without understanding the absoluteness of truth.

Make no mistake--what you believe about the nature of truth will determine whether or not you find and experience certainty in your life.

The Truth about Truth

I was speaking to a crowd of high school and college-age young people one evening at a denominational youth conference. These were not ordinary Christian kids; they were the brightest and most exceptional from their churches, handpicked by their leaders. Approaching several young people, I held up my Bible and asked the same series of questions: “Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?” (“Yes!”) “Do you believe the Bible is true?” (“Yes!”) “Is it historically accurate and reliable?” (“Of course!”) Then I lowered my voice and asked them, “Why?” Each confidently affirmed belief in the Bible, but not one of them could tell me why he or she believed.

The next day at the morning session, a young man—I’ll call him Darren—came up to me, bursting with excitement. “I know the answer—the answer to your question about why the Bible is true.” “Wonderful,” I said. “Let’s hear it.” “It is true because I believe it,” Daniel beamed as if he had just won a new Ferrari. The young people who had gathered around him smiled and nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

I asked him, “Does this mean that the Bible would also be true for other kids in your school?” “It is if they believe it,” Darren responded. I gazed at him for a moment. “Do you know the basic difference between you and me?” I asked. “To you the Bible is true because you believe it. For me, I believe the Bible because it is true.”

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 20

Right now, maybe as I have been sharing my testimony, God has been convicting you that you need to trust Christ as Savior and Lord. Remember, it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship. Maybe quietly, right where you are, you may want to pray this prayer that I prayed. “Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank you for dying on the cross for me. Forgive me and cleanse me. Right this moment I place my trust in You as Savior and Lord. I accept Your forgiveness. Come into my life and change me from the inside out. Thank You that I can trust You. In Christ’s name, Amen.”

If you just prayed that prayer, I’m going to ask you to share that with someone. Tell them of the decision that you made today. Remember what Paul said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things pass away, behold all become new.”

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 19

While my life was changed basically in six months to a year or year-and-a-half after I accepted Christ as my Savior, the life of my father was changed right before my eyes. It was like somebody reached down and turned on a light bulb. He only touched alcohol once after that. He got it to his lips, and that was it. Fourteen months later he died, because three-fourths of his stomach and many of his inner organs had been destroyed. But as a result of his decision, scores of people in that little tiny town and surrounding areas where I was born came to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord because of the changed life of the town drunk.

I’ve come to one conclusion, Christianity is not a religion. Religion is men and women trying to work their way to God through good works and religious ritual to please God in order to be accepted. That’s not Christianity – that is religion. Christianity is God coming to us. “For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son.” It’s God coming to us through His Son Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for your sins and my sins, to be buried, raised again on the third day through the power of the Father, and then to offer us a free gift of salvation.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 18

About six months after my mother died, I was in a serious car accident at the university. My legs, arm and neck were in traction. I was taken home, and my father came into my room and was very sober, because when they called him, he was drunk and thought I was dying. I will never forget his walking back and forth at my bed.

All of a sudden he just leaned over, because I was all tied in bed and strapped in with the cables. He blurted out, “How can you love a father such as I?” Lying there in bed like this, I said, “Dad, six months ago I despised you. I hated everything that you stood for.” Then I shared with him my conclusions about the Bible--why I believe it’s true and about Jesus as the Son of God. I said, “Dad, all I know is that I asked Jesus to forgive me. I invited Him into my life. As a result, I found the capacity to love and accept you and other people.”

Right there my father said to me, “Son, if God can do in my life what I have seen him do in yours, I want to give Him the opportunity.” You talk about joy. Most people do not have this much joy in a lifetime. I had it in one moment. Right there my father prayed with me. He prayed a very simple prayer and said, “God, if you are God, and Jesus is your Son, if He died on the cross for me, and if He can forgive me for what I’ve done to my family, if He can do in my life, what I’ve seen Him do in the life of my son, I want to invite Him into my life. I trust Him as Savior and Lord. I accept His forgiveness.”

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 17

Two months before I graduated from high school, I came home from a date about midnight on a Saturday, and I heard my mother crying. I remember running into her bedroom yelling, “Mom what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” She sat up in bed and said, “Son, your father has broken my heart.” And then she reached down and put her arms around me and pulled me to her and said, “Son, I have lost the will to live. All I want to do is live until you graduate, then I just want to die.” Let me tell you that was hard to hear as a kid.

Do you know what happened? Do you know the irony? Two months later I graduated from high school. Sixty one days later, and the next Friday, the 13th, my mother died. Don’t tell me you cannot die of a broken heart. My mother did. My father broke it, and I hated him for it. After I made that decision to place my trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, to accept His forgiveness, a love--I can only say the love of God through Jesus Christ-- came into my life and took that hatred and turned it upside down. I found myself looking my father right in the eyes and saying, “Dad, I love you. I love you.” Well, that shook me up, because I didn’t want to love my dad. Even as a brand new Christian, I chose, by an act of my will, to hate my father. Do you know why? I believe it is because I didn’t want to give up that satisfaction or the joy of hating the man who had killed my mother and destroyed my family.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 16

When I was a kid, I would go out in the barn, and I would see my mother where we lived on the farm. I would see her lying in the gutter in the manure behind the cows where my father had taken a milk hose and beaten her so bloody that she could not get up and walk. All she could do was roll out of the manure onto the cement sidewalk behind the cows. And I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old and I remember standing there just swearing that when I am strong enough, I’m going to kill him.

We would have friends over, and my dad would be drunk. If you have an alcoholic parent or a drug-dependent parent, you know what I was experiencing. You know the shame that goes through you when your friends see your parent that way. And so before our friends would get over there, I would grab my dad around the neck, and I would pull him out to the barn, and I would throw him into the pen where the cows would have their calves. I would take the car out of the garage and park it behind the barn so no one could see it. Then we would leave the garage doors open and tell everyone that my dad had to go away on an important appointment. I would go out to the barn, and I would prop him up against the boards, and then I would stick his arms through the boards. Then I would tie one arm to the other arm. I would put a rope around his neck and pull his head all the way over the top board, and then I would tie the rope around his feet, so if he shuffled his feet to get loose, he would choke himself because of what he had done to my family. One of my sisters committed suicide. My oldest brother, imagine this, sued my parents for everything that they had in a court of law. My other brother ran away from home. I despised my dad.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 15

I want to just share with you one area that changed in my life after I came to the point where the Holy Spirit led me to place my trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord. It’s an area that is not easy for me to share, because there was a lot of deep pain in it. But I want to put into context what I am going to share, and I want you to understand this. Jesus has dealt with the pain of the memory, but I still have the memory of the pain. Does that make sense to you? Christ has dealt with the pain that I experienced and is still dealing with it in my life, but I hope I will always have the memory of the pain. Do you know why? It’s a constant reminder of how great my God is and how He forgives and heals and cleanses.

The area which I want to share with you deals with hatred, bitterness, and resentment. I had a lot of hate in my life, but there was one man that I hated more than anyone else in the whole world, and I hated his guts. I can remember when I was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, lying awake at night in bed plotting this man’s death. How could I kill him without being caught by the police? That man I hated so much was my father. Because growing up in a little tiny town, to me, he was the town drunk. I hardly ever knew him sober until I was twenty years old. I would go to high school and my friends would make jokes about my father downtown in the gutter making a fool of himself. You see, they did not think it bothered me. Because I am like some of you, I would laugh with them on the outside but oh, let me tell you, every time they told a joke about my dad, it hurt on the inside. But I never let anyone know. That was my secret.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 14

Have you ever been around happy people, and you are miserable? Does that irritate you? That is what happened to me. Finally, I returned to the United States, back to the university, and I could not get to sleep. I would go to bed at ten o’clock at night, and I couldn’t get to sleep until four o’clock in the morning. I believe one of the reasons was for the first time in my life I knew. Now I had done this before, but this was the first time that I knew that I was being intellectually dishonest, and that bothered me. Finally, I knew I had to get it off my mind, so I put it to the test and became a Christian. You say, “How do you know?” I was there. It changed my life. I got alone with my friend Jerry, and I prayed four things that literally transformed my life and my relationship with the living Creator God.

The first thing I prayed was “Thank You for dying on the cross for me.” One of the most humbling thoughts I’ve ever had in my life is that I realized, through reading the Scriptures, that if I were the only person alive, Jesus still would have died for me. That’s what brought me to Christ.

Second, I said, “I confess that I’m a sinner.” The Bible says, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Now what that means is this: I knew there were things in my life that were incompatible with a holy, just, righteous God, and God says if I confess, He will forgive it and remove it. So I said, “Forgive me and cleanse me.”

Third, I said, “Right now,” and I did not know a whole lot, but I said, “Right now I place my trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord.” The Bible says, “But to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God.” I said, “Right now I receive You as my Savior and Lord. I accept Your forgiveness, come into my life. Change me from the inside out. Forgive me.”

The last thing that I prayed was--it was rather simple--I just said, “Thank You for coming into my life.” And nothing happened. There was not any bolt of lightening. I did not rush out and sprout wings or anything else. Well, something did happen. Right after I made that decision, I felt like I was going to vomit. I felt sick to my stomach. I think for two reasons--one, I was afraid that I had made an emotional decision I would later regret intellectually. More than that, I was afraid of what my friends would say. You see, I didn’t have the faith to understand that most of my friends would end up coming to Christ. But somebody among all of my friends had to take that first step, and that was me.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 13

The whole reason for writing my first book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, was to write a book to make an intellectual joke of Christianity – to refute those students and professors I had encountered in the university. I thought that would be easy. I left the university. I traveled throughout the United States, England, and the Middle East. I gathered evidence to write the book.

I was sitting in a library in London, England. It was late on a Friday afternoon around 6:00 or 6:30, and something happened that never happened to me before. It was like a voice spoke to me. Now I don’t normally hear voices, but it was like a voice spoke to me. It said, “Josh, you don’t have a leg to stand on.” I immediately suppressed it. Do you know what was interesting? Almost every single day after that, I heard the voice. The more I examined the evidence, the more it took me to the opposite conclusion of what I wanted to reach--that the Bible is the very word of God, and Jesus Christ is His Son, and He was raised from the dead on the third day. I had finally arrived at the conclusion that what my mind told me was true, but my will was way over here. I had quite a conflict between my mind and my will. The reason is that I found out Jesus Christ makes a direct challenge to each individual personally to place his trust in Him as Savior and Lord, to accept His forgiveness, to invite Him into his life and to allow Him to live His life through him. My mind told me that was true, and my will was way over here.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 12

I used to think all Christians were ugly. I did. I figured if you could not make it anywhere else in the world, you became a Christian. This one young woman was really cute, and that kind of threw me a little bit. I kind of leaned back in my chair, and I tried to act totally disinterested. I looked over at the young lady. In a rather flippant way I just said, “Hey, tell me, what changed your lives? Why are you so different from the other students, the leaders, the professors on campus?” I couldn’t believe it. She looked me back eye-to-eye with a little smile. She said two words I never thought I would hear in the university as part of the answer. She just looked back at me and said, “Jesus Christ.” I said, “Oh do not give me that garbage.” I said, “I’m fed up with religion, the church, the Bible. Don’t give me that garbage about religion.” All I know is that she had a lot of courage or a lot of convictions. In fact, on the farm we used to call it guts. She shot me back eye-to-eye, and she did not even smile this time. She said, “Mister, I did not tell you religion. I told you the person of Jesus Christ.”

Well, I felt bad, because I had really been rude, and my parents did not raise me to be rude, so I apologized. I said, “Please forgive me for my attitude.” But then I just had to add, “But I am sick and tired of religion and religious people. I don’t want anything to do with it.” Then, I couldn’t believe it. Right there in the university, these students and professors challenged me as a pre-law student, now get this, to intellectually use my mind to examine the claims of Jesus Christ as God’s Son. Now I thought that was a joke to do that intellectually. Do you know what I believed? I believed that Christians had two brains--one was lost and the other was out looking for it. I really believed that if a Christian had a brain, it would die in isolation. You kind of took your brains and shelved them and then ran on vacuum when you followed Christ. But they just kept challenging me over and over and over. In fact, they simply irritated me. Have you ever had someone so challenge you in something that you get mad about it? That is what happened to me. I got so irritated I wanted to silence them. So I accepted their challenge, but I did not do it to prove anything. I did it to refute them.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 11

There was something that probably caught my attention more than anything within a certain group of people I met at college. It is something you find everywhere. You find it in every university, every country, every community. It is called love. In this situation, in the university, I saw a different dimension of it. Here was a group of students and professors who not only loved each other--you will find that everywhere--but here was the difference: they loved and cared for people outside their group.

Now the way I was brought up, that was weird, but I wanted it. So I made friends with them. After several weeks--two or three weeks--we were sitting around the table in the Student Union at the university. Two of the professors were there, one of their wives, and six of those students. I wish you could have been there, because it was kind of funny. We started talking, and pretty soon the conversation started to get to God.

Well, let’s face it. If you are an insecure student or professor, businessman or woman, and the conversation gets to God, and you are insecure, you have to put on the big front. Look, every university, every faculty, every high school, every corporation, every community has what I call “the big mouth.” You know the person who says, “Oh Christianity – ha! That’s for the weakies, not the intellectuals.” You know what I found to be true? Literally, in every country, the bigger the mouth, the greater the vacuum. No really, the bigger the front an individual puts on, usually the greater the emptiness on the inside.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 10

I thought, “Well, maybe education is the answer to the questions--who am I, why am I here and where am I going?” I live in a very educated country, and I figured that coming from the farm where the cream will rise to the top of the milk that the cream must be the educated. So I enrolled in the university.

Let me tell you what a disappointment it is to enroll in any university in the world in order to find truth. I was, by far, one of the most unpopular students with the faculty in the first university I attended, and the reason is that I used to go to my faculty’s offices and wait for them for hours because I had so many questions. In fact, I think when a lot of my faculty saw me coming, they would turn the lights off, pull the shades and lock the door and wait out the storm. One of the reasons they did that was because they could not answer the questions that I had about life. Do you know what I found? I found that my professors could teach me how to make a better living, but they couldn’t teach me how to live better.

I thought, “Well, maybe prestige is the answer – being known, finding a cause, giving your life to it.” I ran for various political offices in the university and got elected. And it was neat, knowing everyone, spending their money to do what I wanted to do. But there was one problem. After all of this, I would wake up every Monday morning the same individual, usually with a headache because of the night before. Almost every Monday morning my attitude was, “Well, here goes another five days.” I kind of endured Monday through Friday. Happiness evolved around three nights a week, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then I would start that cycle all over again.