We often hear about the "Christian Right," or "Conservative Christians." Yet, if you think about it, Jesus was the original liberal.  He cared about motives more than the deeds themselves (Matthew 23:5 & Mark 12:41-43) and more about compassion than adhering to rules (Luke 6:1-11 & Luke 13:10-17). This blog will reflect liberal Christian values of compassion, tolerance, mercy, charity, a thirst for knowledge & understanding, and, above all, love.

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Truth IS Truth

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In 2018, Rudolph Giuliani appeared on Meet The Press to explain why the president should not testify for special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of being trapped into a lie that could lead to a perjury charge. “Truth is truth,” Chuck Todd responded. “No, no, truth isn’t truth,” Giuliani said.

About a week ago, a good friend of mine posted on Facebook that, “Gen Z is so hopeless and depressed, and I think I've stumbled upon the answer..... Gen Z has no TRUTH. Everything in their lives has been subjective, temporary, or untrustworthy.”

Unlike most Facebook posts, this one stayed with me long after I’d logged off. While I agree with her sentiment, I don't think the upcoming generation is the first to be swept into moral subjectivity.

When I was in college, back in 1992, a fellow student explained, the holocaust was right for the German people therefore we shouldn't label participants as being “evil.” My, normally subdued, philosophy professor turned beet red as she explained that if morality was subjective enough to excuse the sadistic murder of 6 million Jews then there's no such thing as evil.

She was right. There's a line between what is good and what is evil; what is true and what is false; what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. The line is real, it exists.

Yet, we live in a society which embraces subjectivity to the point some new parents don't want to list a gender on their baby’s birth certificate . Don't get me wrong, as far as I’m concerned you can love whoever you want, but I'm sorry; if you're born with an “innie” you're a girl, if you're born with an “outtie” you're a boy. It's as objective as truth gets.

Granted, sometimes there are ambiguous gray areas in life. However, there are many black and white areas as well. Sometimes I think we tell ourselves a decision falls within a gray area, when we know it's wrong, as a way of justifying our actions. If an action is good though, we don't have to justify it.

I live by the idea that if an action helps someone it's good, if it hurts someone it's evil. It sounds overly simplistic, I know, but it works for me.

Truth IS truth.

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