“Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness speaks deceitfully.” Proverbs 12:17
God gave us facts, empirical evidence about reality though wisdom which we get from him and our interactions with reality. Until recently first hand evidence, empirical facts were all that were necessary to investigate or understand a part of our culture and the physical world.
Evidence and facts have become counter-culture to our culture that now evolves around feelings and "or truth".
You see where we are? If everyone, including Christians deny an absolute truth then no one is right and we have chaos.
One of the Ten Commandments refers to how we are to be witnesses: Exodus 20:6 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
First of all we are to keep God's commandments. Exodus 23:1-2 23:1 “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. 2 You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice,"
Our culture in general has grown more illiterate, diluted by the shallow content of media among other things. The biblical illiteracy of Christians is common now which helps explain some of our ignorance about wisdom and truth.
In being reflective about our lives as we should be daily are we reliable witnesses? Are we basing our witness, our opinion about anything on reliable evidence or people?
I am still amazed at the people, many proclaiming their faith in Christ that will argue incessantly that the recent Presidential election was stolen despite evidence to the contrary. They talk about the evidence that it was widely fraudulent but can never produce evidence as the conspirators have hidden it and on and on we go.
This fantasy narrative is based on feelings and "I believe" or they are pretty sure. Watch the commercial below it makes my point.
Video from Rocket Mortgage
"Pretty Sure" vs Certain? As we can see from this Rocket Mortgage commercial "pretty sure" is not factual or certain yet many people have now bought into 'pretty sure" or a "feeling" with no facts or wisdom.
But you see people even Christians have been so secularized they are more concerned about "belonging" than God's Wisdom or truth. Common sense of Facts no longer exists. Even as I write this I am sure some will react by making declarations the past presidential election as stolen based on nothing more than hearsay, yet they are willing to accept it as fact.
Even educated people seem to fall for the lies. After the Capitol Insurrection in which 5 people died, "230 Wheaton College staff and faculty have released a statement condemning the attack at the U.S. Capitol, specifically highlighting the “vicious lies, deplorable violence, white supremacy” and “blasphemous abuses of Christian symbols” that were on display in the insurrection. The influential Christian college outside of Chicago is among the first significant evangelical institutions to explicitly condemn the Christian Nationalist presence at the attempted insurrection in Washington D.C." from the article: Wheaton Faculty Have Released A Statement Condemning ‘Abuses Of Christian Symbols” At The Capitol
How can you and me contribute t making truth valuable once again? First we must be consistent in our daily relationship with Christ, prayer, confession and repentance, reading scripture. We can wean ourselves off the news and politics and focus on God and our community. At the level of higher education, we must return to honoring God’s creation by investing in the rigorous study of the sciences/social sciences as part of Christian learning and education. Churches and schools can encourage the training of more empirical scientists/social scientists/educators, instead of only theologians and philosophers.
If we do not return to being a culture that cares about the truth in our words, sentences and narratives in relation to nature and society we inhabit it will indeed be to late for America.