You Don’t Get to Have Your Own Truth
Of late (although it is scarcely new), people have been tossing around phrases such as: “This is my truth,” or “This is true for me.” An opinion piece by William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal carried the title, “Justice Kennedy’s Bitter Truth” (June 30, 2015). The final paragraph concludes:
Welcome to Justice Kennedy’s world. Where upholding the Kennedy definition of liberty—the right to define your own truth—turns out to mean denying the same right to millions of Americans who define marriage and truth in a way different from his (A11).
The fact is that neither Justice Kennedy nor anyone else has the right to create his own reality; perhaps stating it in bold letters will help make the point:
NO ONE GETS TO DEFINE TRUTH ANY WAY HE SO DESIRES.
Why not? The answer is simple: The moment a person tries to make truth subjective, it ceases being truth. By its very nature, truth is objective. The minute someone begins to say my truth, he has personalized it, made it subjective, and claimed the ability to define words in any way he so chooses. Justice Kennedy and those who agree with him are just like Humpty Dumpty in the Lewis Carroll adventure, Alice in Wonderland. He said:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Who knew that we would end up with a bunch of Humpty Dumpties on the Supreme Court? They redefine words to mean what they want them to mean. But truth is not and cannot be subjective.
Suppose a “court” of mathematicians were defining the number 3. Traditionalists insisted that 3 refers to three individual units added together. “Why, you can’t impose that definition on everyone,” the majority rules. “Some may overlook one unit and conclude that the sum is 2.” “Yes,” adds another one, “and don’t forget the possibility that one of the units is counted twice, thus making 4.” “Exactly!” a trio of compassionate women chimes in. “We can’t allow old rigid definitions of the past to make people feel bad. The definition of 3 must be expanded to include 2 and 4.” Now just imagine how this kind of subjective truth would work with banks. How would we like it if, when we deposit $300, they only credit us with $200? How well is this subjective truth idea going to work in the face of reality?
Definitions
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the word truth is defined thus:
1. Conformity to knowledge, fact, actuality, or logic. 2. Fidelity to an original standard. 3. Reality; actuality. 4. A statement proven to be or accepted as true. 5. Sincerity; integrity, honesty….
Synonyms: truth, veracity, verity, verisimilitude, candor, frankness. These nouns name qualities of being in accordance with reality. Truth is most commonly used to mean correspondence with facts or what actually occurred… (1378).
The reader will notice that there is not one ounce of subjective feelings anywhere in these definitions. No room exists for my truth and your truth. What is the fact of the matter? What is the reality of the situation? What is the original standard? As it pertains to marriage, no one (especially anyone on the Supreme Court) has any excuse to be ignorant of the origin of marriage. All who have read as far as Genesis 2 in the Bible know that marriage came from God. What can anyone do to discredit this passage (Gen. 2:18-24)?
1. Opponents of marriage being between a man and a woman can say, “We don’t believe the Bible is from God.” This approach is fraught with difficulties—not the least of which is that it denies the evidence as well as truth itself. The Bible is unlike any other religious book, including those that may claim to be inspired. It is historically documented to have been written over a period of 1600 years by various authors. The Hebrew Old Testament was translated into the Greek (the Septuagint) between 275 and 250 B.C. Thus every prophecy concerning Christ was recorded and made available to the whole world more than 300 years before its fulfillment. No one can ignore this prominent proof of the Bible’s inspiration with impunity.
2. Some may assert that Adam and Eve are just symbols of apes becoming fully human (or some such tripe as that). But Jesus referred to them as individuals who were male and female in the beginning, not evolved apes after millions of years of development. In Genesis, God created the world in six literal days and rested on the seventh (Ex. 20:8-11; 31:14-17)—subjective math interpretations notwithstanding. Without exception, all Bible writers consider Genesis 1-2 literal—not symbolic.
3. No alternative explanation to the origin of marriage in Genesis states with clarity how it came about in every culture around the world. Thus, those who reject reality on this subject are “without excuse”; they simply reject it and want it to be otherwise.
The Cause And Consequences of Subjectivism
When people refuse to acknowledge the truth, it not only allows them to redefine truth; it affords everyone else the same opportunity. First, the motives for desiring subjective truth must be truthfully examined. It will not involve examining fifty possibilities. There is essentially one—and only one reason—why people reject truth: They want to practice some kind of immorality. This is neither an idle observation nor an oversimplification. Jesus plainly declared the reason to His brothers nearly 2,000 years ago:
The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil (John 7:7).
Why do people reject the truth concerning homosexuality that is found in the Bible? They do so because they want to either commit the sin themselves or justify those who practice it. No one can read Genesis 19 or Romans 1 and not understand that homosexuality is sin. To then advocate that two perverted individuals should be allowed to marry is a further desperate attempt to legitimize what is already sinful. Such is preposterous!
It is not unlike King Nebuchadnezzar (who should have known better) authorizing a gold image to be constructed; that in itself violated the Law of God. But then he commanded everyone to worship it, and when some failed to do so, he was willing to punish them (Dan. 3) with death. One lesson to be learned here is that anyone failing to conform to what is politically (and legally) correct can be (and should be, according to the ungodly) punished. People reject the light because it exposes their sins, and they resent it. Again, Jesus made this principle easy to comprehend:
And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed (John 3:19-20).
The forces of evil may never admit to this reality, but Jesus was absolutely correct. What are the consequences of subjectivism? First of all, truth is sentenced to death. It cannot be allowed to thrive; it must be minimized, challenged, and quashed. With truth out of the way, the forces of evil gain confidence and quickly move to other areas of unrighteousness.
Opponents of objective truth think they have vanquished the foe; they do not realize that they have created a problem just as bad, perhaps worse, than the one they had when they were battling objective truth. They won the right to redefine sin as righteousness; the problem is that everyone else can have a crack at creating their own reality, also. With marriage now meaning nearly anything, the door is opened for polygamy, group marriage, or anything else.
In fact, enabled followers may become more creative and versatile than the leaders of the rebellion ever imagined; they may take it upon themselves to condemn those who led everyone into this territory. For example, marriage might undergo a few more definition changes—marriage between just two people might become illegal, should polygamists become the majority. Mere couples (of any kind) might be prohibited from tying the knot. No, that’s not a prediction, but it would certainly be ironic. Without a standard, anything is possible.
The larger and more likely consequence is that, once one concept is twisted and mangled to mean something that was never intended, every other precept becomes vulnerable, also. Some words come to mean their exact opposite. The “fairness” doctrine entirely lacked impartiality. It was an attempt to control things. The same can be said of “income redistribution”; what it actually means is to take from people who have worked hard to get ahead (perhaps, 80 hours or more a week) and giving it to those who are lazy and incompetent.
All of the Humpty Dumpties who are redefining words should fall off the wall to their destruction. They are already cracked. They have rejected the only objective source of truth—God and His Word—and are stumbling in the darkness, trying to feel out their own way so that they can lead others (the blind leading the blind). Once objective truth is abandoned, anything becomes possible. Anyone can come along with one of the weirdest and most unsupported ideas, but he must be given credence since all ideas are subjective and therefore equal—even if they contradict one another.
For this reason people do not get to have their own truth; the result is chaos. As Brother Warren pointed out in his debates with atheists, with a subjective morality, abortion is both right and wrong. Without an objective source for morality—one that is above and outside of man—every view becomes true. If God is removed from the picture, then being for or against abortion is a matter of opinion, and both opinions must have the same weight. They must both be correct, which most sane individuals know cannot be the case. A view of morality, specifically defined (which is no longer allowed) cannot lead to contradiction. But subjective morality does, thus proving it has no validity.
The Supreme Court is not the first to redefine words. College professors, politicians, and even religious leaders have been doing so for a long time; the court is just the latest to try its hand at it. People expect law to be logical, however, and that’s where the damage is really done. Most people know that university elites can be wacky, and we have seen religious leaders dodge what some Bible verses say because it contradicts their theology, but citizens still believe that justice should be logical and impartial (hence, the blindfold representing justice). When the court determines they will decide cases based on emotion and popularity instead of truth, law, and legal precedents, it is a sad day for the nation. However, despite their decision, it remains the case that no individual (and no group) gets to have his own truth.