The solution

 

Can truth be known? Can anything even be said to be true? Is what we perceive with our senses reality, or is it all illusion?

I’m reading a book that examines the dominant worldviews in the 21st century and several of them deny either the truth of reality, the objectivity of truth, or that truth can be known. I don’t see any evidence for the truth of these worldviews, but since for those who hold to them truth is either unreal, subjective, or unknowable, the lack of evidence is not a hindrance to their commitment to it.

In the Christian worldview, however, evidence is central, both as support for the truth of Christianity as well as in how Christianity best explains other evidence. Like the prevalence of evil in the world, and that which we see in ourselves. The guilt we feel over things we’ve done, even when those things are not condemned by society. The intuitive sense that there is a moral law or lawgiver to which and/or whom we are accountable.

Even more central to Christianity is Christ, not so much as the originator of the faith but as the substance of it. Because Christianity is not just a set of beliefs, it’s a solution…he’s the solution…to humanity’s most pressing problem – our separation from a holy God as a result of our unholy behavior.

Now, some deny that we have any such problem because they deny that there exists any such God. But isn’t it likely that for many of them the problem is the reason why they reject God? They don’t want to be accountable to a moral lawgiver. But doesn’t that imply that they recognize they have something to be accountable for?

So something is wrong with the world, and with us, and I think that every honest person who looks around and within has to recognize that. We intuitively know the lying, thievery, selfishness and greed…and that’s just what we find within…are counter to the way things are supposed to be. And if it’s true that there is a way things are supposed to be, then there is a standard of which we have fallen short. And if a standard then an intelligence who determined it for a purpose. To acknowledge a standard but deny the existence of an intelligent being who set it is effectually to deny the standard as well.

As I pointed out last week, if the standard is perfection then we’re all in trouble. But, as I indicated there, even apart from the special revelation we have in Scripture which supports it, it seems to be the only fair minimum standard. Either no standard at all or perfection. Anything in-between would lead to injustice.

So we are imperfect…marred, blemished, broken. Sub-standard. And the Perfect One looks at us with perfect love and says, I have made a way. I myself will suffer the heat and pressure to take away your flaws.

That’s what Jesus the God-Man did. His life, death, and resurrection are events in time which were ordained from eternity past and can change our eternity future. It’s the simplest and most incredibly complex solution to the situation we all find ourselves in.