Sermon Tone Analysis

*Sunday April 22, 2007  *

*Sermon:**/ “True For You, But Not For Me”/*

*Richard Rioux*

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/“Y//ou will know the *truth*, and the *truth* will set you free.”/

(John 8:32)

 

/“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the *truth* and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.’”/ (John 14:6)

 

 

In the critically acclaimed 1992 movie /A Few Good Men/, there is a dramatic courtroom scene in which Tom Cruise, who plays a brash Navy lawyer assigned to defend two Marines accused of killing a fellow soldier but who contend that they were acting under orders, is questioning Jack Nicholson, who plays the Marine colonel in charge.

Tom’s character accuses Jack’s character of ordering a disciplinary procedure known as a “Code Red”:

 

Tom: “Colonel, did you order the Code Red?”

Judge: “You don’t have to answer that question.”

Jack: “I’ll answer the question.

You want answers?”

Tom: “I think I’m entitled to them!”

Jack: “You want answers?!!”

Tom: “I WANT THE TRUTH!!!”

Jack: “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!”

 

Jack Nicholson might as well have been yelling at all of North America because it seems that a lot of people today in our post-modern society have a really hard time “handling the truth”.

On the one hand, we demand truth in almost every area of our lives.

We demand the truth from our spouse; we demand the truth from our children; we demand the truth from our doctor, our pharmacist, and our financial adviser; we demand the truth from our politicians; we demand the truth from our teachers; we demand the truth from our pastor.

We expect the truth when we read a reference book or history book.

And we also assume the truth when we’re watching a news program or reading a newspaper.

On the other hand, despite our unwavering demand for truth in all those areas of our lives, there are a lot of people today who aren’t really interested in truth when it comes to morality and religion.

“/Truth/ is in the eye of the beholder.”

they’ll say, or, “That’s just your /opinion/.”,

or again, “Whatever works for you.”

The popular saying is: /“That might be true for you, but it’s not true for me.”/

This is known as /relativism.

/In today’s society, we are told that truth is relative – that there no such thing as /absolute /truth.

Even though most people intuitively know that absolute truth exist and conduct their lives with that understanding, to the intellectual elite dominating our universities and media, this idea that truth is relative is considered enlightened and progressive.

We are told that a /fact/ can be true for one person yet at the same time not true for another.

The very idea of absolute truth is considered naïve and outdated.

In this modern age of /tolerance /and /pluralism/ truth all too often becomes a casualty.

Relativism claims that what we believe to be knowledge – what we believe is a firm grasp on truth and reality – is only an /opinion./

Relativists brazenly claim that objective, universal truth simply doesn’t exist.

Only opinions exist.

In his book /The Closing of the American Mind, /the late professor Allan Bloom said, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely sure of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”

In 1991, a survey taken by the /Barna Research Group /in the US found that 66 % of American adults didn’t believe that absolute truth exists.

Specifically, they agreed that there is “no such thing as absolute truth; two people could define truth in totally conflicting ways, but both could still be correct.”

When polled again in 1994, a staggering 72% of American adults – almost 3 out of 4 – affirmed some kind of relativism.

George Gallup once said, “It’s not that Americans no longer believe anything.

It’s that they believe everything.”

But why do so many people reject the idea of absolute, objective, truth, especially when it comes to God, the Scriptures, or morality?

Could it be that they simply don’t want to be held accountable to any moral standards, or to have to answer to someone greater than themselves?

Perhaps Augustine was right when he said that we love the truth when it enlightens us, but we hate it when it convicts us.

The Emperor Napoleon once remarked, “There are some men who are capable of believing everything /but/ the Bible.”

There are many who have a hard time believing the Bible, yet their capacities for believing anything and everything that opposes the Bible are enormous.

Maybe they /can’t/ handle the truth.

Although relativism has intermittently appeared and reappeared throughout our history, it’s dominance of a culture is new.

As Christians, we are well aware of how this relativistic view of truth has soured society’s attitude toward Christianity and its truth claims.

Today, Christianity is increasingly pushed aside by the universities, the media, and politics.

Rather than having a major voice in public life, Christianity has been relegated to the private and the personal.

Rather than being a matter of truth, it’s all just opinion.

What is truth?

Webster’s Dictionary defines truth as:

1)      the quality of being in accordance with experience, facts, or reality

2)      conformity with fact; correctness; accuracy

3)      an established or verified fact, principle, etc

 

Contrary to what is being taught in schools and promoted in today’s secular society, truth is /not/ relative but absolute.

If something is true, it’s true for all people, at all times, in all places.

All truth claims are absolute, narrow, and exclusive.

And all truth claims exclude their opposites – even religious truths.

Truth deals in reality and facts, not opinions.

As Bernard Baruch once said, “Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”

Facts do not cease to exist just because they are rejected or ignored.

Truth is still truth even if you don’t believe it.

Mark Twain once stated, “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

Here are a few “truths” (i.e.

facts) about truth:

Ø Truth is /discovered /not invented.

It exists independent of anyone’s knowledge of it.

(Gravity existed prior to Newton’s discovery.)

Ø Truth is transcultural; if something is true, it is true for all people, in all places, at all times (2+2=4 is true for everyone, everywhere, at every time).

Ø Truth is unchanging; only our /beliefs/ about truth change.

(When we started believing the earth was round instead of flat, the /truth/ about the earth didn’t change, only our /belief/ about the earth changed.)

Ø Truth is not affected by the attitude of the one professing it.

(An arrogant person does not make the truth he professes false.

A humble person does not make the error he professes true.)

Ø Truth is not relative but absolute.

All truths are absolute truths.

Even truths that /appear/ to be relative are really absolute.

(If Richard says, “It feels really warm in here today”, his statement may /appear/ to be a “relative truth”, but in fact it is /absolutely true/ for everyone, everywhere that Richard feels warm.)

In a survey of American health, it was learned that 40 percent of overweight men thought they looked fine and “felt they were at about the right weight.”

In contrast, 29 percent of women who were /not/ overweight “felt they needed to lose pounds to achieve a healthy body weight.”

Both groups were operating under the /perception/ of truth rather than truth itself.

Such thinking leads to erroneous behaviour.

There is a vast difference between truth, and the *perception* of truth.

Abraham Lincoln once used a very clever ploy to teach some people about truth.

They had come to him with a decision that was based on suppositions rather than truth.

After hearing their logic, Lincoln asked, “How many legs would a sheep have if you called its tail a leg?” “Five!” they answered.

The President responded, “No, it would only have four legs.

Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”

Beliefs are not to be /equated/ with truth or reality; rather, they are to /conform/ to truth or reality.

Simply believing something to be true – regardless of how strongly or sincerely you believe it – does /not/ make it true.

A person can be totally sincere about what he or she believes, yet be sincerely deceived.

(Someone can sincerely believe the world is flat, but that only makes that person sincerely mistaken.)

A belief cannot change a fact, no matter how sincerely it is held.

Reality is what it is whether you agree on it or not.

There is an ancient Hindu parable that is often used by relativist to illustrate their relativistic viewpoint: the parable of the six blind men and the elephant.

The men –blind from birth – are asked to touch the elephant before them and try to guess what it is.