Can We Really Know?
When I was first starting in Student Ministry, the big danger everyone was talking about was the idea of Relative Truth and Postmodern thinking. My argument was that if we can all make our own truth or make truth fit what we need it to depending on the circumstances, then nothing is really true. Relative truth undercuts our foundation for interacting with the world with confidence.
As with many philosophical ideas we might be able to track through the course of history, elements of radical viewpoints tend to become ingrained in the thinking of a culture and gradually become considered to be universally accepted truths as they develop and are passed from generation to generation.
What was once radical and unbelievable becomes generally assumed to be true.
The black and white binary approach to values and truth that may have been more accepted in the early parts of the 20th century has gradually slipped into something else in American culture. Our younger generations value a more nuanced approach to truth claims than their grandparents. They want to explore the story and collaborate to discover together rather than to be told what is true without explanation.
The truth of this movement was nailed home for me when I asked our students during our last Big Questions night, “Can we know what is really true, and if so, how?” The overwhelming majority of our students answered that we can’t know truth for sure. One student even responded that someone else’s truth might be different from my own.
It was expected, but still distressing.
For the last 20 years one of my priorities in my ministry strategy has been to help students explore and confirm what they believe with the goal of shaping their worldview. It’s an inside-out approach to helping students grow into resilient disciples.
The first two questions I learned in worldview formation were:
-Why is there something rather than nothing? (Supernatural vs. Materialist Cosmology)
-Can we know what is really true, and if so, how? (Absolute vs. Relative Epistemology)
This whole school year in our student ministry has been an exploration of some of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith and how they work in everyday life.
We asked 2 questions:
-What does the Bible say about this idea?
-How does this affect how I live in my daily experience?
The Postmodern philosophy of Relative Truth has been firmly implanted in our culture, so we must move beyond the “It’s true because it’s in the Bible” mindset. The approach of “It’s in the Bible because it’s true” will get way more traction with our younger generations and lead to deeper opportunities to demonstrate the truth of Scripture.
We must do more than tell our students that God exists, that He is good, and that He wants what is best for their lives. We must demonstrate these ideas by putting into action the principles we find in Scripture and putting on display for them exactly how what Scripture teaches leads to human flourishing. This is how they will experience the truths we want to teach them.
And this is how we can invite them into the beautiful, joy-filled, complicated, difficult, nuanced story of following our Creator God.
As with many philosophical ideas we might be able to track through the course of history, elements of radical viewpoints tend to become ingrained in the thinking of a culture and gradually become considered to be universally accepted truths as they develop and are passed from generation to generation.
What was once radical and unbelievable becomes generally assumed to be true.
The black and white binary approach to values and truth that may have been more accepted in the early parts of the 20th century has gradually slipped into something else in American culture. Our younger generations value a more nuanced approach to truth claims than their grandparents. They want to explore the story and collaborate to discover together rather than to be told what is true without explanation.
The truth of this movement was nailed home for me when I asked our students during our last Big Questions night, “Can we know what is really true, and if so, how?” The overwhelming majority of our students answered that we can’t know truth for sure. One student even responded that someone else’s truth might be different from my own.
It was expected, but still distressing.
For the last 20 years one of my priorities in my ministry strategy has been to help students explore and confirm what they believe with the goal of shaping their worldview. It’s an inside-out approach to helping students grow into resilient disciples.
The first two questions I learned in worldview formation were:
-Why is there something rather than nothing? (Supernatural vs. Materialist Cosmology)
-Can we know what is really true, and if so, how? (Absolute vs. Relative Epistemology)
This whole school year in our student ministry has been an exploration of some of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith and how they work in everyday life.
We asked 2 questions:
-What does the Bible say about this idea?
-How does this affect how I live in my daily experience?
The Postmodern philosophy of Relative Truth has been firmly implanted in our culture, so we must move beyond the “It’s true because it’s in the Bible” mindset. The approach of “It’s in the Bible because it’s true” will get way more traction with our younger generations and lead to deeper opportunities to demonstrate the truth of Scripture.
We must do more than tell our students that God exists, that He is good, and that He wants what is best for their lives. We must demonstrate these ideas by putting into action the principles we find in Scripture and putting on display for them exactly how what Scripture teaches leads to human flourishing. This is how they will experience the truths we want to teach them.
And this is how we can invite them into the beautiful, joy-filled, complicated, difficult, nuanced story of following our Creator God.
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