Is Absolute Truth a Lie?

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01:27

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

01:33

We're your hosts, Harrison Kering and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age -old question, is absolute truth a lie?

01:41

Now, Tim, for me, this is one of those questions that I feel like I've only just recently seen people bring up more and more, and I can't really tell if that's because this is sort of, you know, the first time in a while people have started resorting to this claim that there is no absolute truth, or, you know, that maybe there is absolute truth, but we can never know if we know what is true.

02:07

So I can't tell if it's just people are bringing this up, you know, for the first time in a long time, or if it's just my sort of limited perspective in terms of, you know,

02:16

I've only been, I've only sort of been running in these circles for a few years now myself, and so I don't, you know,

02:24

I'm not exactly the most grizzled, hardened veteran there is. So what's the deal?

02:31

Is this one of those things that has just always been an argument that people bring up, or is this a relatively, you know, new or sort of recycled claim that people are making?

02:41

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of that has to do with the fact that you are essentially interacting with people on the

02:46

Internet and skeptics in general, and maybe you haven't been exposed to a lot of, you know, Internet atheist skeptics.

02:53

Not in real life. I thought they were a myth. I thought they were like a thing you read about, but you never actually see.

03:00

Yeah, so we, you know, we live in the Bible Belt, and because we live in the Bible Belt, then, you know, a vast majority of people at least pretend to be

03:07

Christians, you know, in the South, and they may never go to church. They may never, you know, darken the doors of a church except for on Easter, Christmas, or something like that.

03:17

Maybe, maybe on Easter and Christmas. Yeah, but they at least pretend to be, you know, good Christians as far as those things are concerned.

03:24

But yeah, in many ways, I think it's probably related to the fact that you're interacting with more people on the

03:30

Internet, but then, you know, the idea of, you know, this skepticism of the notion of absolute truth, this really is a feature of postmodernism.

03:39

And, you know, postmodernism is basically a reaction to modernism, and modernism, you know, basically started in the 1900s, and, you know, these are, you know, ideologies that are coming out of the

03:50

Enlightenment and all that, but you know modernism when you see it. Like if you think about like the

03:57

World Fair, things like that, the World Fair or the World of Tomorrow, you know, I mean, like movies, you know, movies where there's this optimism, like this strong sense of optimism that, you know, when in 20,

04:11

I mean, I remember growing up, there's this strong sense of, you know, optimism that, you know, when 2020 comes, we'll have flying cars and all this, and 2020 came and gone, and we didn't have flying cars yet.

04:22

You just get coronavirus instead. You just get coronavirus. But you know what I'm talking about, like those movies with like the

04:28

World Fair and the World of Tomorrow, and like there's just this hope that like science will conquer everything, right?

04:35

So that like if we're just, we're advancing at such a rapid rate, and, you know, we can know things, and like we can know things like with certainty, and we're going to overcome, you know, all the problems that exist.

04:46

And part of what's happened is that postmodernism was a reaction to that that happened after World War II. And, you know, it's been steadily increasing, you know, over the course of just, you know, my life in general growing up.

05:00

Things started to become more and more heavily dominated by postmodernism, and postmodernism is basically just like a radical skepticism.

05:07

And, you know, there's a lot of factors as to why people began to adopt this radical kind of skepticism that we're talking about there.

05:16

But, you know, some of those things have to do with the fact that we're living in a world, essentially, that is over, you know, overcrowded with information.

05:26

So we're basically like living in a time where there's so much information, and people are disillusioned about, you know, what's true and what's false, and, you know, all the fake news kind of discussions, and, you know, how do

05:37

I know what's real? How do I know what's right? And so, you know, postmodernism was kind of this reaction to modernism that, as I've said,

05:46

I grew up in, and a lot of the novels, like this showed up in a lot of the novels that, you know, I would even read, to where, you know,

05:53

I grew up kind of reading Star Wars novels and things like that. And, like, you know, there's a whole series of, like,

05:59

Star Wars books that are, you know, based on this premise of moral relativism, where the

06:05

Jedi essentially embraced moral relativism, and that was basically a feature of all the books. But then we're kind of moving past that, like in terms of, like, academic discourse.

06:14

We're kind of moving into a post -postmodernism kind of phase now. And, you know, post -postmodernism is kind of, like, characterized by critical theory and intersectionality and all that.

06:26

And so, like, the pressing questions that people have now are not so much, you know, nothing can be known, right?

06:33

It's not like the radical skepticism. Like, when you're thinking about the way critical theory and intersectionality works, there's a lot of confidence that they're on the right side of history, right?

06:43

And so it's different than modernism, like, in terms of, like, an optimism that you're going to fix the world. But, like, you're moving away from kind of the radical skepticism.

06:51

But then when you're interacting with, you know, internet trolls, you know, you're probably interacting with, you know, internet trolls influenced by post -modernism, which is now starting to go out of fashion a little bit.

07:03

They're lagging behind, huh? They're lagging behind, but they're still recycling the same kind of nonsensical arguments that they were making before, for sure.

07:11

Yeah. So, okay. So basically, long story short, what you're saying is it's kind of, sort of, relatively a new idea?

07:22

You know, if we're talking hundreds, if we're talking, like, centuries, right? Yeah, I mean, it's a new idea in the sense that, you know, post -World

07:30

War II, like, you know, there's a newness to, like, the radical form of skepticism that you can't, you know, know anything.

07:40

But then, you know, these kind of intellectual ideas, they move in and move out. And, you know, certainly, I mean, you know,

07:47

Pilate says to Jesus, you know, what is truth? And that's, like, a classic kind of postmodern, you know, question as far as I'm concerned.

07:55

But, I mean, that's obviously, you know, not, he wasn't influenced by postmodernism at that time.

08:00

But that is, like, just skepticism in general is a feature of life in a fallen world to where, you know, if someone is making a truth claim, certainly people are going to respond with, how do you know that's right?

08:13

Right, right. How do you know that's true? Right, yeah. So, okay. So, when it comes to the title question that we're asking here, is absolute truth a lie?

08:22

You know, we're basically taking aim at postmodernism, that sort of, the skepticism that you're talking about.

08:28

So, what is your response to that question? Is absolute truth a lie? Are they right?

08:34

You know, are we, you know, fools for thinking that there is any absolute truth?

08:41

Well, I mean, certainly, yeah. That's the question that the postmoderns are, you know, leveling against Christians as far as that's concerned, that, you know, absolute truth is a lie.

08:51

This is a myth. But then the problem with that is that, like, it's self -defeating on the face of it. So, you know, if you're going to say that absolute truth is a lie, you're making an absolute claim, right?

09:01

So, you're essentially saying that I know for certain that, you know,

09:08

I know for certain that there can't be anything that you know for certain. And so you basically, yeah, you're sitting on a branch of a tree that you've sawed off at that point.

09:18

You're making a very dogmatic truth claim that is without foundation at that point, for sure.

09:23

So, you know, I mean, it's obviously logically self -defeating to say, I mean, to make that sort of claim.

09:31

And, you know, more sophisticated, like, skeptics, they can, you know, modify that slightly. But it still ends up in the same kind of place.

09:38

But yeah, no, I mean, it's self -defeating. It's a self -defeating kind of claim. But then as you read through the Bible, there's a lot of statements in the

09:46

Bible that lead us to think that truth is not some sort of illusion, that we can know things, and we can confidently know things, and we can know things with certainty.

09:55

So, you know, you can think about John 8, 30 through 32, where Jesus, where John, you know, basically is telling us, as a narrator, as he was saying these things, many believed in him.

10:07

So Jesus says to the Jews who have believed in him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

10:15

So, you know, Jesus had some concept of the truth, and that he was the truth, and that his disciples had access to truth.

10:25

And then, you know, Luke, yeah, basically, good historian that he is, he basically says this in Luke 1, 1, and as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who are from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all these things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account to you, most excellent

10:50

Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you've been taught. So certainly the

10:55

Bible is making reference to this category of truth, and Jesus is truth, and God is truth, right?

11:06

Right. And, you know, the scriptural writers were painstakingly compiling the things that they compiled so that we'd have confidence that we have access to this concept of the postmodern state that's impossible for us to have.

11:19

So with that being said, you know, what does that mean? So when we're talking about truth, what are we even talking about?

11:28

What do we mean when we're using that word truth, if you had to define it? Yeah, well, you know, if you're just talking about truth,

11:37

I mean, truth is basically corresponds to who God is, like in terms of His nature, in terms of who

11:43

He is as a person, in terms of how He's made the world. And so, I mean, you know, truth comes in different forms. You have general revelation that tells us that God, like that there must be some sort of being, you know, who has created the world with power, and the creation itself declares

12:00

His glory, right? So you can look around the world, you can see the world shows evidence of design, like we're complicated beings, like we're irreducibly complex, kind of beings, and, you know, the world itself bears witness to this, you know, reality.

12:17

So you have these two categories. You have general revelation that teaches us that there's a God who made us with power, and then you have special revelation, and both of these things are pointing to, you know, they're both revelations of who

12:28

God is, but then God ultimately is the source of truth. And everything, you know, that is true is going to correspond with, like, reality as it's been created by our

12:39

Creator, if that makes sense. And so, you know, what truth is, is it's, you know, things that are right which correspond to the world that God made, essentially.

12:48

So does that mean that, you know, when someone comes along and they say, hey, there is no absolute truth, or, you know, we can't know what is absolutely true, is that essentially a rejection of God?

13:01

Yeah, I mean, it's essentially suppressing the nature of God. And in both of those things, so the first thing is there's no such thing as absolute truth.

13:09

That would be more the sloppy, like, postmodern way of criticizing the concept of absolute truth. So, like, there is no such thing as absolute truth.

13:16

And then the more modest, like, proposal is the second one you mentioned to where, like, basically it's there may be, you know, may or may not be absolute truth, but we can't, you know, know for certain whether or not that absolute truth actually exists, if that makes sense.

13:33

But then, you know, like, either way, like, the first point was either way, those are self -defeating, right?

13:38

So if you say absolute truth doesn't exist, right? It's like a lie. You're making an absolute claim.

13:44

But then if you try to modify it slightly to say, hey, you know, maybe it exists, maybe it doesn't exist, there's no way we can possibly know, you've still made an absolute claim, right?

13:53

Right, yeah. To say that there's no way we can't know. Yeah, right, right. So if it is, yeah.

13:58

So, but essentially, yeah, that's what's happening is when people are denying the existence of truth, they're suppressing, like, they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

14:07

This is basically the problem with Romans 1, that they, you know, they ignored what could be made known about God, which is plain to them, right?

14:15

And they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, claiming to be wise as they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible

14:22

God into, you know, images resembling, you know, creatures and all that. So, yeah.

14:27

So, I mean, fundamentally, like, a rejection of truth is a rejection of God because God made the world and God is truth, right?

14:33

And what he says goes. And so if you're saying there's no such thing as truth, you're saying there is, like, God, there's no, like, this is just blind, meaningless, random chance.

14:43

Like, the world is just, like, putty in our hands and we can do whatever we want with. But then, I mean, it just, like, you're, you're denying reality as it exists.

14:51

And that's what's, that's the problem, is that, like, there's obviously things that are true, right? Like, there's obviously, like, you existing, that's true.

15:00

You're here. You know, you can see. You know, if you have eyes, like, if you're not blind, you can see, right?

15:05

Your senses are giving you information. well, I might be a part of the matrix, though.

15:15

Yeah, yeah, well, you know. I don't actually think I'm a part of the matrix.

15:22

I mean, even if you're a part of the matrix, you still exist, right? Somehow I exist. Yeah, you exist.

15:28

Like, you know, so it may be that, like, you're deceived about certain aspects of the life that, you know, as it exists, but you still exist or exist, so I think, therefore,

15:36

I am, like, that's, that there is something to that. So, for sure. Okay.

15:43

So, we've, you know, essentially said, hey, so there is absolute truth, right?

15:50

Every time we're saying truth, you know, truth, absolute truth, it's the same thing, right?

15:56

Right, right. Okay, so we've said, like, yes, there is absolute truth. No, it's not a lie.

16:02

And in fact, you know, to claim that absolute truth doesn't exist or that it does exist, but we can't know what it is, number one, both of those things are self -contradicting, but then they're also functioning as a rejection of God, right?

16:23

Yeah, both general revelation and specific revelation, they're rejecting both. Right. So, you're not only contradicting yourself, you're not only wrong, but you're also rejecting

16:32

God, you know, at the same time, which is wrong. So, with that sort of foundation being laid, how can we know what is true?

16:46

So, let's go beyond just the, like, hey, they're wrong part of this and talk about, well, how do we, you know, how do we actually figure out what is true, what we can actually count on?

17:03

Yeah, well, I'm not sure that this question is all that, I mean, there's a sense in which it's like a complicated question to answer, like, how do you know what is true?

17:11

But then, like, there's another sense in which it really isn't as hard as what people are making it out to be.

17:19

So, people are making, like, so, if you start with the latter, like, in terms of, people are treating this question as if it's just fundamentally some sort of incomprehensible riddle or something along those lines that's just impossible to know, but then, you know, as you look around the world that exists, the world that God has made, like, there's, there's obviously things that are incontrovertible, if that makes sense.

17:46

And so, like, the issue is, like, with Romans 1, when people are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, it's not as if, like, like, the information that your senses are giving are just giving you just a convoluted mess of, like, irrationality or something like that.

18:06

So, you know, like, it may be just helpful to think through what Romans 1 is saying at that point.

18:12

And, you know, like, what's, what's, what Romans 1 is saying is, you know,

18:18

Romans 1, 18, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

18:27

And then it says in verse 19, For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his indivisible attributes, namely his eternal power, his divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and things that have been made, so they are without excuse.

18:40

And so, like, you're, basically, you're asking this question as if it's just, like, it's a hard question to answer, right?

18:47

So there's a sense in which it's like, and that's what, like, the atheists are saying, and that's what the skeptics are saying.

18:53

But, you know, from the perspective of, like, God, like, God has made certain things very plain.

19:00

Right. That individuals are suppressing in their own righteousness. Yeah. And so what I mean is, like, like the, you know, there's different, like, philosophical arguments that are trying to get at this basic point.

19:11

But, you know, one of those arguments is essentially to say that, like, if you were to walk on a beach and if you were to see, like, a stopwatch on the ground, like, what would you assume?

19:23

There's a, I'm at the beach and there's a watch that someone left on the ground. All right, so someone must have made it, right?

19:30

Right, yeah. Like, one of the most irrational assumptions you can make at that moment would be to say that that thing just, like, developed, you know, through a blind, random chance.

19:39

Someone might say by accident. Right, right. So, like, the issue is it's just too complex, right?

19:45

Sure, yeah. It's too complex. So you look at a watch on the ground, like, you think about, like, the way a watch works and you're looking at it laying on the ground and you're saying, that's so complex it can't just happen.

19:55

And so that's what your senses are telling you. That's what your experience is telling you. That's what your reason is telling you that this is too complex.

20:02

In the same way, like, if you were to walk in the middle of the forest and you were to see, like, just a, you know, a meadow or whatever that had grass, like, that high, right?

20:14

Mm -hmm. Like, all the way, like, no weeds whatsoever. Like, nothing in there, right? Yeah. And you would think, someone put that there, right?

20:23

Yeah, yeah. Like, because you know, like, what happens with your own yard and, you know, everything else.

20:28

Like, you know that, like, you know, nature, when it's left alone, it tends to chaos, right?

20:34

It doesn't tend towards, like, order in that way. And so, like, you know that weeds would come.

20:39

You know that there wouldn't be this just perfectly green grass in the middle of a wood, you know, all the same exact height.

20:46

That, like, bears evidence of, like, human interaction and manipulation. Someone's spraying some weed be gone, huh?

20:52

Someone's doing, someone must be doing something, right? Some Roundup. No, but, I mean, when you think about, like, who we are as human beings, like, you can look around the world and you say that, hey, man, like, we are way more complex than that stopwatch, right?

21:08

Like, we are so complex. Like, we are so complex to the point where, like, it's just irrational to view us through any other lens.

21:17

And so, I mean, God, you know, God, like, had a plan to create us as people.

21:23

And, like, there's so many aspects of who we are that's just, like, unfathomably complex.

21:29

They're irreducibly complex, like, in the language of philosophy in that way. And, you know, so, like,

21:35

Darwin, you know, one of the things he said was that the way you disprove evolution is that you show that the world is irreducibly complex.

21:42

And that's just a phrase that basically means that, like, the world is so complicated to the point where you can't, like, take one feature out of, like, the design of some sort of organism and it still function.

21:56

And so, like, to give you a metaphor to explain how this works, I mean, think about the way a mousetrap works. So, with a mousetrap, you have, like, you have a base, right?

22:04

Yeah. And then you have your pressure plate. And then you have a spring, right? And then you have, like, a bar, right?

22:12

So you have, like, you have all these parts on a mousetrap. But then if you were to take a part, if you were to take, like, one of those things off, like, the whole thing would fall apart.

22:22

Right. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. Now, like, Darwin says the way you disprove evolution is to show that the world is irreducibly complex.

22:28

It's so complex that if you take away one part, it falls apart. Well, the problem is that the more that we've learned about science, the more we realize that things are way, way more complicated than what we thought they are.

22:38

Mm -hmm. And the more, like, they're just way more. So, like, think about the way evolution trains you to think.

22:44

Evolution trains you to think that you have this mousetrap and you're gonna, like, every few years have some sort of random mutation where it's gonna leap forward, right?

22:54

And then what's gonna happen? So, you have your base, right? Yeah. And then what's gonna happen is all of a sudden this base is going to grow a pressure plate.

23:05

Okay, a pressure plate. Or it's gonna, you know, grow a spring or something. Well, it's like, well, you have a base and a spring.

23:12

Now, the problem is that, like, that didn't confer any survival advantage to your, you know, quote -unquote mousetrap, right?

23:18

Mm -hmm. Like, because it can't do anything until it gets four evolutionary leaps down.

23:24

Do you get what I'm saying? Mm -hmm, yeah. All right, so the world is that complex. And when you think about how complex we actually are, you can't just take certain things out.

23:33

Mm -hmm. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And, like, so, like, evolution tells us that we start from simple and we grow to complex, complex, complex.

23:40

Everything our eyes tell us tells us that that isn't the way that nature actually works. Right. Nature goes from order to disorder, not from disorder to order, right?

23:50

Mm -hmm. Like, that's not the way it actually works in real life that we can observe. But then, you know, you think about, like, your skin, you know, just to camp on this point for a second, and I'll explain the significance.

24:01

Like, God, like, you know, I don't know if you've really thought about this, but, you know, you may think, like, hey, you know, why didn't

24:09

God make us stronger than what we are or something like that, right? Yeah. Well, if he made us, like, 10 times as strong as we are, then we might accidentally punch, like, a hole through people, right?

24:23

I guess so, yeah. Yeah, all right. So, but then, like, right, well, he could fix that, too, by giving us, like, skin that was metal, right?

24:34

Adamantium skin. Yeah, but the problem is if he gave us skin that was metal in order to compensate for the super strength that we have, then you would have, like, think about, like, all the things that would change, okay?

24:48

So, like, now you have metal skin, well, now you don't have any way to regulate your temperature as an organism, right?

24:55

Uh -huh, yeah. Like, see, like, when it's hot, like, your skin would, like, super heat up, right?

25:01

Yeah, I'd be glowing or something. You'd be glowing, right? And then, but then, like, think if you had, like, metal skin or something like that.

25:08

Like, you have metal skin, you, like, what would happen if you get hit really hard with it? You'd have a dent in your skin. Right?

25:16

Have you thought about, like, about this before, haven't you? Yeah, I mean, but then, like, but think, though, like, you'd have a dent in your skin, like, that wouldn't just come back out, right?

25:24

Yeah. And then, so you wouldn't be able to have, like, sweat glands at that point to remove some of the temperature out of that.

25:30

You wouldn't really even be able to feel, like, what it's like to touch another human being, right? Mm -hmm, yeah. And so,

25:36

I mean, but that's just, like, so you tinker with the design a little bit. What I'm trying to say is, like, every part of the human design, it all works together with a bunch of different things, right?

25:45

So, like, you know, like, everything has a purpose. Like, everything has a function, and you start messing around with it, and you're messing around with, like, 10 different things at once, and that just goes to show, like, human beings as organisms, like, we're just, like, we're very, very complex, right?

26:04

Right. Like, we're more complicated than, you know, anything that we could ever make, right? Yeah, yeah. We can't make cameras that replicate our eyes.

26:12

We're not even close. Yeah, so, like, we're so complicated. Like, we're so complicated, and then you have, like, you know, all this variety within the human species itself, and then you think about the way the world is.

26:22

Like, it's, like, the conditions, like, these are called, like, in the language of science, like, anthropic constants, but the conditions necessary for life to exist in the world, like, they're just so precise.

26:35

Like, if our planet, like, we're just a little bit further away from the sun, we'd freeze to death, right?

26:40

If it was a little closer, we'd burn to death. You know, we have to have, like, a big planet like Jupiter, you know, a couple planets away from us in order to keep us in our orbit.

26:49

You know, so, like, it's all, like, we're rotating at the exact level we need to rotate. Like, if the moon was a little bit bigger, there'd be massive out -of -control tides.

26:59

If it was a little bit smaller, right? So, I mean, there's, like, all these, like, everything is held together by this precarious kind of balance that, like, we're hanging on the knife edge of extinction or something, and God's upholding the world by the word of His power.

27:13

But the reason why I say all those kind of things, though, is not just to, you know, go on a big rabbit trail. It's just to say, you're asking, well, how do you know what's truth?

27:21

And, like, you could, like, what I'm trying to say is, like, there's a sense in which, like, you look around the world and you see, hey, we are obviously designed, right?

27:30

Yeah, yeah. Like, we're obviously designed, man. Like, we didn't just happen. Like, that doesn't just happen in real life.

27:36

Like, we're designed, we're made, right? Like, and so someone made us, like, something, like, greater than ourself, made us, and in the language of Romans 1, like, this is just plain, right?

27:46

Yeah. This is, like, you have to, like, be an idiot to deny it, essentially, right? Mm -hmm. Who's, like, you know, not like an intellectual idiot, but like a moral fool to deny the fact that you're real, that you exist, and that you were made, you know, and you look at, like, like, the fact that you can, you know, you and your wife can make a child and you see the child come out of, you know, you see a child come out and you think, man, how did that, this is a new person, right?

28:13

Like, this is life, and so, you know, I think there's a sense in which, like, like, knowing the truth, you don't have to have, like, a complicated degree in philosophy to realize that, like, there is truth, right?

28:28

Mm -hmm, yeah. Like, you exist. Like, there's right and wrong, you know, and, like,

28:34

I mean, even the most hardened skeptic who is sitting there saying truth is relative, right?

28:41

Like, you can test their, they don't believe that truth is relative. All you have to do is get a hot cup of coffee, hold it above their head, and say, you know, would it be right or wrong for me to pour this on your head, right?

28:55

Well, truth is relative. Ah! All right, you know, but they would sue you just like that, you know, and so,

29:02

I mean, like, there's right and there's wrong, right? Like, there's good and there's evil, right?

29:08

But you exist, and when you do, you know, commit wrong things, you feel intensely guilty, right?

29:15

And so, like, there's evidence, like, in the world, like, that general revelation would tell you all that, right?

29:20

Without even getting the special revelation, general revelation would tell you all those things, and when you get through special revelation,

29:26

God, you know, testifies to the truthfulness of His Word with, you know, the inward testimony of the

29:33

Holy Spirit, which confirms, you know, what our eyes are telling us. I mean, there's nothing more reliable than the

29:39

Bible. You know, the more you read the Bible, you are reading truth, and you can look around the world, and you can look at it in light of the

29:45

Bible, and everything the Bible says about it is right, and so it's, you know, it's verified within, you know, testimony of the

29:51

Holy Spirit in your heart, but then it's easily empirically verified just by looking around the world and saying that everything

29:57

God says is true, and everything He says is right. And, you know, the grass withers, the flowers fade, but the

30:04

Word of God stands forever, for sure. Yeah, and it isn't that, you know, interesting. I mean, we're talking about Romans 1, specifically, right now, and a little bit of the

30:13

Gospels, too, where Jesus is making claims about Him being truth, and the truth setting us free, and we can, you know, we can trust and count on those things.

30:22

It's pretty interesting, and sometimes, I think we take this for granted a lot of times, where we read verses like that, and then we, you know, we look up from our

30:33

Bible to view the rest of the world, and we see exactly what the Bible was describing playing out in our own cultures, in our own societies, even today.

30:45

So, you're talking about these writings that are thousands of years old at this point, you know, written by people on the other side of the world in a completely different cultural context, and societal context, historical context, all of these things, to a completely, you know, different original audience.

31:08

You know, so like, for Paul, it would have been, you know, the early churches, and Asia Minor, and whatnot, for example.

31:18

And so, we're reading these passages, and then we're looking up and seeing that, oh, hey, all of these things are still true today, even.

31:28

Right? I mean, how many, you know, how many people make claims about things every day that continue to be right thousands of years into the future?

31:39

Not many. No, I mean, if any at all. I mean, even other religions, their books are filled with contradictions and prophecies that didn't happen, or, you know, haven't come true.

31:57

And yet, the Bible still stands. And I think, you know, even secular people recognize this through gritted teeth.

32:06

I might be misremembering, so this may not be true, but I feel like I remember

32:12

Time Magazine even coming out with an issue, this would have been years ago, you know, essentially saying something along the lines of, like, the

32:21

Bible still stands. You know, like, no one has been able to discredit the

32:27

Bible. I mean, people claim they have, but then they're not, you know, they don't have any sort of, like, actual proof that they have.

32:38

They just think they have in their own mind. And so it's interesting to see that we can read these, we can read these things that Paul is saying and Jesus is saying and John is saying and, you know,

32:47

Peter and James and the prophets, and they still hold true even to this day.

32:54

And not only do they hold true, but then, like, they're obviously true. Like you were saying, they're obviously true.

33:00

And the only time truth is obscured is when we're in just completely, you know, when you're living in, like, a completely unrepentant life consumed by sin, right?

33:17

And that's why Jesus, I think that's why Jesus is saying, you know, the truth will set you free.

33:23

Right? He's alluding to, at least in part, what Paul is talking about, the fact that people who live in unrepentant sin, who live in open rebellion against God, they're confounded by the truth.

33:36

The truth is not plain to them because they're suppressing it in their own unrighteousness.

33:42

Right? Right, yeah. I mean, I think there's been, you know, many universities who've declared war on the

33:48

Bible and, you know, I think it was University of Chicago, but I could be wrong. Yeah, it was them.

33:54

University of Chicago who was basically saying that there was no such thing as Hittites, but then now there's, you know, they've uncovered it and now their school is devoted to studying the

34:03

Hittites. Right, yeah. And so there's many such things like that, you know, the grass withers, the flowers fade, the

34:09

Word of God remains forever. And, you know, as much as like we're intent upon denying the reality of truth, you know, truth exists, you know, and it can be known.

34:22

Right. Yeah, and that's why, you know, I always tell people kind of jokingly, but then this is a true statement, you know, sin makes you stupid.

34:32

Yeah, I mean, it really does. It really does make, really does make you stupid. So, you know, if you think about like the nature of the way the world actually exists, like we're dead set on trying to overturn like this notion of truth.

34:49

At every level. At every level, yeah. Yeah, and truth is relative and, you know, your truth, my truth, you know, you live your truth,

34:56

I live my truth, you know, all that stuff is just products of postmodernism in general where individuals like they really have a

35:03

God complex. They really believe that they can remake reality and their own image and, you know, the world is just like Plato to them, you know, you can change pronouns, you can change the meaning of words, you know, like, but then like there are just like biological realities that we're just dead set on denying.

35:22

I mean, and, you know, the more that we do, we do these, these kind of things. I mean, like stupid, stupid never works, really.

35:28

So we can, we can play stupid, but, you know, in the long run, stupid, stupid doesn't work.

35:34

People are, people are going to orient themselves in general around things that are right.

35:41

but then, you know, I think the other, the other part of this and that kind of conversation is you said this earlier and I wanted to come back to this, you know, you made a distinction between people who are highly intellectual, but, but fools, right?

35:59

So there, so there are people in the world who, who come off as smart, right?

36:06

But then, but then are ultimately fools, right? Yeah, I mean, there's a certain kind of stupid that's only possible when you have like very high levels of intelligence.

36:15

Right, right. So, but that's more of a moral folly. And, you know, if you have a mind that's like unhinged from morality and unhinged from the

36:23

Bible, it can go in some very weird way, very weird directions, you know, and, and, you know, there's, there's a sociopathic, pathic tendencies that are accessible, you know, at very high levels of intelligence.

36:40

Sure, yeah. So there's things, things along those lines. But yeah, I mean, I think that there's, there's plenty of very intellectual, very intelligent people who are encouraging people just to deny like the basic facts, you know, that they can observe.

36:58

And like sometimes, I mean, like, you know, your standard garden variety redneck knows a little bit more about the world than your university professor.

37:08

And, and part of that is just because like once you adopt a series of absurd propositions and you devote your life to, you know, explaining the world through the lens of these absurd propositions, like, all that you're really doing at that point is just, you know, expanding upon folly because the foundation is bad.

37:29

And so if you have a bad foundation, you can pool knowledge on this bad foundation. And I mean, a lot of like the dating systems you think about like as it relates to things like evolution and, you know, the age of the earth and everything else, like you just, you have a lot of creative story writing that is being done on a very bad foundation and, you know,

37:49

I mean, it's amazing. Like you can just, you know, as I've kind of watched like dinosaur like shows my kids and things like that and like they elaborate on like, you know, this dinosaur type, right?

38:03

So this dinosaur existed and like this is its habitat and this is its traits and this is its, you know, food and, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?

38:14

And this is its coloring and pigmenting and all that but then when you like trace it down to how are they making all these like determinations, you realize that they found like a bone, you know?

38:27

They're extrapolating all that from the presence of a bone. I mean, that's not, you know, I'm not adopting some kind of radical dinosaur skepticism or something like that.

38:35

I'm just trying to say that that's a lot like in a lot of what you have as you have a bunch of creative story writing.

38:41

Right. This being done. This been, this built on a very poor foundation and so like when you think about the way that they're even coming up with like the stories that they're telling, they're all based on like assumption after assumption after assumption that's bad, right?

38:55

So you have a bad foundation and you have assumptions that are built on this foundation. So, I mean, you look at like, like, like just think about like dinosaurs are being buried at different levels in the ground.

39:05

Mm -hmm. Like and what you're supposed to believe is you're supposed to believe that that means that like these dinosaurs underneath like the ones that are buried lower than the ones on the top.

39:18

Like the way you figure out how old they are is you have to count the number of layers of sediment that form each year, you know, and then you count them down until you get to the bottom and what you assume like your basic assumption is the world continues as it was from the beginning, right?

39:36

Mm -hmm. So everything continues as it was and so like if, if this amount of sediment is one year's worth of dirt, all you're doing is just adding that all the way down to get to like these dinosaurs that are buried below the ones on the top.

39:49

But then the problem with all that is that's built on a bunch of assumptions and, but then when you're going to write your stories about them all, right, you're writing your stories about them all, they all are operating in different periods and so you're thinking the ones at the bottom are at a different period than the ones at the top and then you have to write big, massive like narratives to try to get from the ones at the bottom to the ones at the top and how that all worked and what their life were like based on these theories but then when you think about like how many layers were laid down when like Mount St.

40:19

Helens erupted, like all these layers that we're counting, they were laid down in several hours and you think about like, like why, why is there so much vegetation that's buried underneath the ground?

40:30

Right. And why are there so many animals buried underneath the ground? And like what, what typically happens when you have an animal die?

40:37

Like what typically happens when an animal dies is it lays on the ground and it gets eaten. Like it, it only is going to fossilize if it's rapidly buried and it's like, well why do we have animals all over the earth and plants like where we get all of our oil and our natural resources?

40:51

Why are they all buried underneath the ground? Right. Like in mass amounts? All right. Well, maybe because the world was flooded.

41:00

Okay. Well, you know, that's what's funny is like hey, you know, eventually all dinosaurs were wiped out in some kind of catastrophic event.

41:09

Oh, you mean like a flood? Yeah. Oh, well, you know, maybe. And then you're like, well, you mean like a worldwide flood?

41:20

No, no, not like that. so with something like that though you can have someone who's very, very intelligent who has adopted like a bad starting point and then you get a bunch of intelligent people who have adopted like a like a ridiculously.

41:35

I mean, like the Big Bang, like, you know, life coming from nothing. These are all just absurd, magical, irrational, stupid starting points, right?

41:44

To say that everything that exists like started out as one small speck of dust that just rapidly expanded, right?

41:53

I get the speed of light and created everything. That requires you to break all of the known laws of physics that apparently can never be broken.

42:03

right. So like you think about like how many miracles have to actually happen in an evolutionary worldview. So what happens is you get a bunch of smart people who are ignoring like the dumb assumptions at the bottom of it all.

42:15

Like how did all those and all those dinosaurs get buried like that? And all those like how come like there's so much vegetation that is fossilized, buried, buried all underneath the world and pressurized like rapidly pressurized like you think about the condition.

42:31

So you have to deny all these basic starting point assumptions about everything and you like you ignore that and then what you're doing is you have a bunch of intelligent people getting together and trying to speculate how you can make sense of that.

42:44

Ignore the starting point, right? And then you just build like a house of cards on top of it and then they all like cite each other as experts.

42:53

But then the problem is it's all based on nonsense. Like and so you can get like very intelligent people who are have a moral interest in suppressing the truth who are basically asking you to deny like just everything that your eyes see you know and that can be verified in the way that the world actually works like it's like hey you know what like I've never actually seen one animal transition into another type of animal.

43:17

Yeah. Like you know and if you try like what happens is like nature resists that, right? Right. So like you try to breed a lion and a tiger you're going to get a ligon or a tigon or a liger or a tigon yeah.

43:29

Liger or a tigon and they're going to be sterile because nature is going to prevent that kind of thing and so we have no like ability to replicate this but we're asked to believe it at every single level because it's just you have to assume stupid, right?

43:43

Right. Once you assume some stupid proposition then you can you know take all your intellectual abilities and build a scaffolding on top of dumb and then you end up getting something that may sound like persuasive but then when you examine the base of it it's nothing, right?

43:58

Yeah, you get a tower right in the middle of stupid town, huh? Yeah, basically. But I think you know the point

44:04

I was trying to get to there is I think that because you have people who can be who

44:09

I mean legitimately are you know intelligent right?

44:15

Right. But then they're stupid they're fools when it comes to morality and the implications of like what

44:24

God has done is revealed to us through general and special revelation or specific revelation what then happens is it becomes very tempting for other people to you know hear these intellectual people come out and make the ridiculous claims that really don't add up when you just think and use common sense they don't add up at all but then it's very tempting because it's like well hey you know they're the one that spent 12 years researching this you know

44:59

I just I just work my day job and and so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna you know that sounds pretty crazy but I'm just gonna trust them you know and then and then eventually it just becomes so ingrained in society that it's like don't you dare ever challenge this theory because it's still a theory well yeah that happens in yeah it happens in every way possible like and a lot of this is related to just the sophisticated vocabulary so like if you wanna master any subject you master the vocabulary in that subject and often what's happening is like you if you wrap everything in technical language then you're gonna confuse people and they're just going to assume if I can't understand you you must be more you know intelligent it's because you're more intelligent because you're more intelligent

45:43

I'm just gonna defer to you and you know and that's where like when when you

45:49

I mean you can do that in every single area and that's part of what's happening with psychology in general it's like painted in this very sophisticated language but then if you basically just take your take a step back and ask basic questions of it it all just falls apart it's all nonsense it's all crazy the same thing is true of like evolution the same thing is true of like atheistic materialistic science if you just ask some basic questions about it it all falls apart and I mean they can't you know they can't answer questions that your two year old will ask them right right like your two year old can ask them questions that they have fundamentally no answers to you know yeah so you know and it's interesting it's interesting too because like like you're saying

46:30

I mean I mean there are there are you know hunter -gatherer societies that recognize basic truths that we fail to understand you know like you like we we

46:42

I mean right now we're we're pretending that you know because because our society rejects truth and thinks anyone can do whatever they want whenever they want essentially you know we we think that men can all of the sudden become women and women can become men and not only that but that those aren't even the two sexes there's more than that you know and and it's not tied to your biology and and you know we have politicians that can't even tell you what a woman is and then you've got like Matt Walsh going to the third world country in Africa and asking the

47:20

African tribe you know hey can a can a man become a woman and they just laugh at him because they think he's telling a joke because because they see you know they recognize reality and it's not because you know what's funny about a situation like that is is all of the intellectual people they can't just outright call the

47:39

African tribe stupid for rejecting the gender thing that they believe because then they're going to violate their other you know their other laws related to critical race theory so so their own their

47:53

I mean everything they believe contradicts itself and and eventually that shows but then they keep playing into the lie and hoping that if they if they say it loud enough if they wrap it in enough technical language you'll believe that they're the ones who have have access to knowledge and have access to the truth but nothing could be further from the truth at that point right?

48:15

That's right yeah I mean it's all nonsense I mean and you know the more that you get the experts to agree you know most people just go along with it because we're kind of made to be sheep and we're made to be followers but I mean it's all absurd

48:27

I mean like transgenderism is absurd it's an absurd idea like you know and you think about the series of contradictions that all the social justice crowd is trying to get you to hold together in the same in the same moment

48:40

I mean it makes your brain hurt you know so I'm supposed to believe like simultaneously that a woman right?

48:45

that a woman is basically can do anything a man can do and probably better so I'm supposed to believe that like that women have been oppressed by men so I'm supposed to believe that women have been oppressed by men and women can do anything that a man can do probably better and then at the same time

49:02

I'm supposed to believe that a man can just decide arbitrarily that he's become a woman and then receive all the privileges that I'm supposed to be giving to women in order to make up for the oppression of men against you know the quote unquote oppression of men against women so I'm being asked to believe that men are the villains and that women are the victims but then if a man decides he wants to be a woman then he is even more of a victim than a woman is towards a man the math gets hard to follow he's the ultimate victim at that point but then you know how does he even figure out that he's a you know transgender at that point well he basically says that like I've realized

49:43

I'm transgender because I gravitated towards all those stereotypical female things right yeah that the feminists are telling me are not real and don't exist and like are just social constructs and so like for the feminist

49:56

I'm supposed to believe that all those gender stereotypes are just social constructs that women only like pink because we train them to like pink and boys only like blue because we train them to like blue but then when the transgender boy says like hey you know

50:09

I like pink then we're supposed to believe whoa you must be a girl then right right yeah yeah and so it's all nonsense it doesn't make any sense and the

50:17

African tribes will shame us for stupidity yeah who knew that the third world countries would soon become the leaders of morality in our world but you know so so okay we've said all that you know um we understand that there are people who reject the fact that there is absolute truth and the reason that they do this is because they're morally bankrupt they're living lives of rebellion against God um you know so so we've established that but then you know how do we interact with those people how how do we share the gospel with a person who says hey

50:56

I don't you know sure maybe maybe there is absolute truth but you know you can't know that the gospel is absolute truth any more than I can know whatever

51:06

I believe to be true we just can't know how do you how do you interact with a person like that and share them the gospel um you know in the most faithful way possible yeah

51:18

I mean I think there's a lot of a lot of people who treat those kind of objections with more seriousness than what they actually are but then

51:27

I think if you remember what Roman says which true is plain to them right they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness and God's revealed himself and that's plain um

51:36

I think like most people's impulses at this point is to basically have like a philosophical discussion with them and you know part of what's happening is a similar thing to Jesus with the woman at the well essentially so you know

51:52

Jesus is confronting this woman at the well and you know telling her that the man she's with is not her husband and all that and you know instantaneously she changes the subject and you know basically says you know

52:05

I perceive that you're a prophet so why don't you answer my theological trivia at this point and tell me you know the

52:11

Jews say that we worship God in Jerusalem you know the Samaritans say that we you know worship him here who's right and so she she kind of like alright you're

52:21

I perceive that you're there's something more to you than what meets the eye let me ask you my theological trivia that's what she says to him and you know but Jesus you know goes to the heart of the issue there at that point he doesn't really get distracted so like so what

52:38

I'm trying to say is like what we what we can what people often do with these kind of issues is they debate like individuals on their terms right so you can try to give them philosophical arguments for the existence of truth

52:50

I mean you can you know a lot of people will just end up and I don't recommend doing this but they'll end up just trying to answer their questions and being on the defensive the whole time defensive the whole time and then you know the opposite of that is you can go on the offensive and I think going on the offense is a little better than just letting them unload on you like one question after another question after another question after another question like you know so I mean

53:15

I've had plenty of atheists do that kind of thing where they just ask me question after question after question after question I'm giving them answers and at some point it's just like hey man

53:22

I can answer your questions but all you're gonna do is just come up with more like have you considered that maybe you don't know what you're talking about but you know

53:30

I think you know so people can stay on the defensive route and keep it in philosophical land or they can go on the offensive where they you know say hey that's self -defeating right so like you say that absolute truth doesn't exist that's an absolute truth statement explain that right well how do you explain morality right so go to like moral arguments and so they go on the offensive and try to get them on the defensive at that point but I think really like when it comes down to it the best thing you can do is just preach the gospel to them man just I mean

54:03

I think I've never been able to you know I've been in those kind of situations and like atheists they're just like over and over and over again like I attract atheists to me like flies to honey yeah you're just so sweet Tim that's right yeah so I do

54:24

I do I attract them but then the thing is like you know I've been I've been in situations where I've just answered like a hundred atheist objections and it doesn't do anything and you realize that like at the end of the day like this is a moral issue and so I mean

54:39

I had a friend had a friend of mine who who was an atheist and you know I answered every question he had he had hundreds of questions and they're all the same easy softball softball atheist kind of questions and I answered them at some point

54:50

I just looked at him I said like what is this about like I've answered a hundred of your questions and you don't want to be a

54:56

Christian and you like it doesn't matter that you were wrong about a hundred different things that you thought you were right about like I've given you an answer to everything and it doesn't matter to you what's this about and you know when it came right down to it he just looked at me and he said you know

55:10

I don't want to become a Christian because that means that I won't be able to he didn't use this word but fornicate anymore essentially yeah and like that's what it's about like it's a moral thing like the the

55:21

Bible says that men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil and that's what Romans 1 is saying they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness and so that's what it's about like you know when you're talking to like one of these like fallen pastors who've now become an atheist and all that you just look at him and you say hey man what's her name you know what was her name yeah you know that's like that's typically what it's about like and so like the issue is like like these are like people might try to hey you know we're get you engaged in theological trivia and philosophical questions but at the end of the day it's like you need to repent of your sins and believe the good news like you know you know that you're guilty and there's no answer to that right you're guilty like why do you feel bad when you do things that you do why do you feel like why do you feel wrong about them right like where does right and wrong come from it comes from God God made you and you know that right and wrong exist and you don't have any fundamental solution to that guilt that you feel and you can answer you can ask all these questions

56:20

I can give you answers all day long but one day you're going to stand before the Lord and he's going to judge you for the truth that you had access to like that's going to make it even more severe for you and so you know there's one there's the only hope for you is that you repent of your sin quit suppressing what you know believe the good news and so I think you know people need to just like not make it overly complicated these people just need to hear the gospel they may respond they may not you know but their sin are just like everyone else and they're suppressing what they know and unrighteousness and just call them to repentance man right yeah and you know it's interesting you bring that up because I remember watching a debate between Brandon Robertson who is a you know quote unquote pastor uh who affirms all the

57:07

LGBTQ stuff and amongst many other sexually immoral claims that he makes that go even beyond LGBTQ um he was having a debate with James White and Jeff Durbin on Apologia Radio and about same sex attraction and whether or not it was biblical or unbiblical and at one point towards the beginning of it they asked they asked

57:39

Brandon you know um was he tempted uh towards same sex relationships before or after right he you know he believed that uh it was biblical the same sex attraction was biblical and and he was honest he said before it's always a moral thing yeah it's always it's always a moral thing and and that's what

58:06

I found with people um who reject you know certain parts of the Bible who say that hey we can't you know you're taking this out of context or you're you know you're misunderstanding what's being said or you don't know the original language or um or uh you know we can't you know that's just your interpretation but we can't actually know what that verse says every no one says that about like you know the you know love the

58:34

Lord your God and love your neighbor no one says that about that verse you know no one no one's saying that about uh the verses about Jesus dying on the cross no one's saying any of that stuff they're only saying it about the verses that are you know clearly condemning all of the things that our current society loves right those are the ones those are the ones that are complicated even though they're not they're not complicated at all the

59:01

Bible says that same sex attraction for example is an abomination that's not complicated you know um so but I think that's a good place for us to end

59:10

Tim is there anything else that you had before we go yeah I definitely just you know

59:16

I encourage people to realize that these are moral questions and these are you know this is a moral problem and you don't you don't have to know yeah you don't you don't have to be able to answer every single objection that any atheist have and I mean often they're not very deep objections anyways you know a lot of people can get intimidated by them because maybe they use big words but they're mostly they're just pretty easy kind of questions in general but you don't you don't have to answer every single question there is to answer just remember that this is a person who's suppressing the truth and unrighteousness call them to repentance call them to believe the gospel and let

59:51

God do what he's gonna do and you know God like uses that same message to harden some and uses that same message to save some so for some it's the fragrance of life to life and to another death to death and who's sufficient for these things yeah yeah absolutely and you know finally you know it's always good to remind ourselves to trust in what

01:00:10

Jesus has said and I like that verse that you brought up in John 8 you know Jesus saying if you continue in my word you are truly my disciples then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free so let's you know let's continue to trust in what

01:00:26

Christ has said and let the world you know continue in their folly and call them out on their folly call them to repentance so our hope is that this conversation was helpful for you guys and you know

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Tim and I we love to do this every week talk about these things and interact with you guys online hear your encouragement towards us field your questions that you ask us publicly and privately we appreciate all of those who support us and support us financially and help us to do these things and help fund running the podcast because you know it does take money it does take money to do it and so we're thankful for all of those who have chosen to do that and you know we encourage you to join in supporting us financially if you want to so you can do that at our