The truth about truth

This is No. 24 in the series. Please read my introduction and explanation here.

What’s the big deal? Why spend a whole month picking on the Catholic Church? Aren’t there more important issues of interest to more people that you should be focusing on? What did the Church ever do to you?

Well, I do feel that the Church did something to me, and I talked about that the other day. But this series is not about payback, it’s about promoting truth. Because truth matters and no truth matters more than truth about God.

It may seem like I’m just picking on the Catholic Church when other denominations have flaws and false teachings and Muslim ideology is spawning terrorists and atheism is on the rise. Am I doing more harm than good for the cause of truth by putting so much negative attention on a religious system that has a substantially greater deposit of truth than Islam or atheism?

I don’t believe so, and here’s why. If truth is held up as the standard and its supreme value is recognized and affirmed, then no matter what is being evaluated against it, truth is reinforced and even the unaddressed untruths are diminished. So that all truth claims are increasingly seen as requiring evaluation against the standard. If I was a former Muslim or atheist I would probably be spending a month’s worth of posts on Islam or atheism. As it is, Catholicism is where I came from and what I am most familiar with. So though I have written on the deficiencies and falsehoods in Islam and atheism as well, the Catholic Church is not above being examined by the light of truth, particularly since she makes such exclusive claims about it and has incredible influence in the world.

But also, because the Church has such influence and claims to be the one true church yet has compromised truth, in ways that are apparent even to the unbelieving watching world, a repudiation of her errors from within the Body of Christ can serve to elevate Christendom in the eyes of those who are yet outside it.

So who appointed me truth czar? (As you can see…I’m thinking the same things many of you are.) I don’t claim to have all the truth nor be free of error myself. But that’s okay ‘cause I’m not telling anyone they have to believe it. I’m simply stating my case for what I believe to be true…and false…and hoping the reader will evaluate it just like they evaluate any other truth claims. And if the most I’ve accomplished through this series is to motivate just one reader to care more about truth than tradition, to value God’s word over man’s word…it will have been well worth doing.

Truth IS a big deal. We expect and value it in every other area of our lives…our finances, healthcare, relationships, product advertising, politics, education. How could we even think of being unconcerned about it when it comes to our knowledge of the God of the universe and all the ways that impacts us? How can we refuse to care about truth in matters that affect our eternal destiny?

That just doesn’t make sense.