After decades of pluralism and relativism being pushed in our culture, resulting in catchphrases like “I have to speak my own truth” and “What’s true for you isn’t what’s true for me,” it seems we’re finally arriving at the intended conclusion. Truth is subjective and arbitrary, and therefore nobody ever has to question themselves.

Any number of examples could be used. It happens every day. The most prominent recent one, of course, would be the Mueller Report. While the report essentially cleared President Trump of the supposed collusion with Russia, millions of people instantly concluded that the report was flawed, that it couldn’t possibly be true. Because truth is subjective, and because they wanted things to be a certain way, they were dead set on rejecting whatever conclusion was reached. (And, to be fair, had the decision gone the other way, there would have been millions of people with the same reaction for their side – “The report was wrong, regardless of what it says or what evidence it offers.”)

The same biases we bring to politics can follow us into religion as well. The religious world is packed with “fake news,” and it’s dangerously easy to process it through our preconceived biases rather than putting everything aside and siding with truth for truth’s sake. To do that, we’ll need 3 characteristics in our pursuit.

Finding truth takes determination. As Blaise Pascal (the man you probably know for Pascal’s Wager) once wrote, “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” In a world of fake news and innumerable perversions of the Gospel like legalism, moralism, the prosperity Gospel, cheap grace, and more, it’s incumbent upon each of us to be truth-seekers.

As much as each of them may be trying to present the truth, it’s not your preacher’s job, your news anchor’s job, your journalist’s job, or the Christian writer’s job to do the homework that falls to you and me in pursuing truth. The spirit of the Bereans should exist in each of us, not just taking anybody’s word without a second thought, but “searching the Scriptures daily to find out of these things were so” (Acts 17:11 NKJV).

Finding the truth takes objectivity. It’s almost impossible for us as human beings to be 100% objective and leave our feelings, our preconceptions, and our biases out of something. But, as much as we ever can, it’s our job to understand that truth exists as an entity separate from us and is there to be pursued and discovered. Wisdom and understanding are to be acquired, meaning they’re not innate (Proverbs 3:13; 4:5, 7). In other words, truth is truth whether I think so or not. So many falsehoods in the world today arise from personal feelings about a matter.

  • “Some women are upset that they aren’t allowed to preach, therefore it must be unbiblical to prohibit them.”
  • “Love is love. God wouldn’t want to keep two people who love each other from being married.”
  • “I can’t see how a loving God would let bad things happen.”

I don’t intend to get into those particular arguments in this article, but the point is that it’s easy to be motivated by feelings, yet feelings aren’t a substitute for truth. We can’t ever say that somebody doesn’t feel the way that they feel. But the way they feel has literally no bearing on truth. Sometimes our feelings line up with the truth, and sometimes they just don’t. Being a truth seeker means accepting this fact.

Finding the truth takes humility. Whereas those who are more progress/liberal are more likely to fall back on subjective feelings, those on the conservative side must guard against the arrogance of feeling our commitment to truth is unassailable. It’s incredibly easy to see where people who disagree with us aren’t being faithful to the truth, but far more difficult to see it in ourselves. There’s a reason Proverbs 3:5-7 twice makes the point that we aren’t to be our own guides – “Lean not on your own understanding” and “do not be wise in your own eyes.”

Truth seeking is ultimately humbling ourselves before God, the only Being who is 100% right 100% of the time. Without a mindset that says “I could be wrong” (and not the common “I could be wrong, but I know I’m not”) we’re making the assumption that we already know everything there is to know. Or, in other words, we personally have a monopoly on truth. This looks like:

  • Refusing to hear out another person’s reasons for believing what they believe, choosing instead to label them as dishonest or unintelligent.
  • “Mic drop” responses, like “Well clearly you haven’t read this verse or you wouldn’t believe that.”
  • Misrepresenting the other side’s arguments and beating up the straw man.

Truth seekers will humbly listen to people who hold opposing viewpoints. Instead of doing a “mic drop,” they ask how the person handles such verses within their belief system. They repeat the argument back to the other person, making sure they haven’t misunderstood their opponent. This doesn’t mean ultimately agreeing with the person or even granting their belief validity. It means caring enough about the truth to humbly admit somebody else might know something that we don’t.

I’m not pushing the embracing of false doctrine here or the idea that we abandon everything we believe. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s a call to put truth first in everything – in our Christianity, our politics, and everything else we do. And, to put truth first it takes the realization that we are biased people in a biased world, so being on the side of truth will take constant determination, objectivity, and humility.