Yeah, a lot of people are doing that these days. But here’s the problem: Is your truth THE truth?
Take a look at many of the thousands of affirmations floated around these days. People take an old concept and put a more subjective, self-oriented twist on it.
Today’s affirmation is an example of that. Used to be when a person spoke, we all assumed that he or she simply believed what they uttered. They “spoke what they believed.” But now, I’m speaking “my truth” as if truth itself is a personal or social construct that can change depending on… whatever.
if truth isn’t about you, what is it?
Many years ago, during my first year in college, my logic instructor asked this cynical question: “What is truth? The Bible says, ‘You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.’ But what is truth?”
He asked that question several times during the semester. I guess he asked it because it was a course in logic and we had lectures on truth, validity, fallacies, and all that logic stuff.
He never did answer his own question. Nobody else did either.
I wished I had an answer for him at the time. Here is the answer I would give him right now if he was alive:
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Jesus Christ, to his disciple Thomas – John 14:6
TRUTH is not a belief, it’s not a feeling, and it’s not subject to change depending on the prevailing social mores or personal opinions. Truth, real truth, is a person, a MAN, or rather, the perfect man, God in the flesh, Jesus the Christ, the only begotten Son of the living Creator.
This is why the Lord Jesus is called the “Word of God,” because He is Truth, with a capital T, as there is no falsehood and no darkness in Him. Everything He does is truth, and everything He says is true and right.
Ultimate truth is what God is, what God does, what God says, especially in the person of Jesus Christ.
truth to the Christian
Nowadays, though, a belief is my truth, which gives the impression that truth is as subjective and malleable as a belief.
Of course, if we believe something, we believe it to be true. That’s rational. But there’s a fine and important distinction between truth and what we believe is true.
As a Christian, I believe the Bible is true and everything it touches on is true. But the Bible is not MY truth. I can hold onto it as truth, but I cannot be truth. I cannot claim it as my truth because I am not truth, nor is the Bible my doing. Do you see the difference? Very subtle, but so are most worldly affirmations.
Even if what I believe or speak is true, it did not come from me, but from the One who died for me. Jesus Himself said that He did not speak of Himself, but He spoke what He was given by His Father.
What I believe to be true, and what truth is, those are two distinct concepts.
Affirming Jesus
No Christian says, “I speak my truth!” because it acknowledges that every person has their own “truth.”
The ultimate problem with today’s affirmation is that it conflates truth with belief. It equates and confuses the two. Speaking your “truth” sets YOU up as the ultimate authority for your life, while Jesus Christ is our ultimate authority. He is the very embodiment of truth.
You have your own beliefs, but you do not have your own truths.
It ends up being a crazy logical fallacy to say that we all have our own truths, and yet we define truth as something that’s true, even when opposing truths cannot, by nature, coexist. It becomes a self-defeating exercise.