#116 | Truth Became Negotiable in Public Life

Podcast Version:

Throughout history, Western civilization has lived by basic societal norms. Norms that provide order. Establish guideposts. Enable society to function properly. Allow it to survive and flourish.

But it often seems in today’s America that our societal norms are being shattered. The guideposts are being removed. Order is being uprooted. Basic functionality is being lost. And, as a result, we can’t help but feel like our very survival and future prosperity are at risk.

Today, instead of following established societal norms—truth as we have always known it—everything is being questioned. Indeed, many so-called leaders in America today can no longer even define what a woman is. They posit—with a straight face—that men can become women and women can become men. And that there aren’t just two genders, but rather six . . . or 72 . . . or 130 . . . or some other oddball number. Forget Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” We now know better. Or so we think.

Where is all of this coming from?

Fundamentally, it comes from a rejection of all that is foundational—both to America and to human life itself. At its core, it comes from a rejection of God.

The foundational words in the Declaration of Independence invoked the right of a free people “to assume among the powers of the earth, separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” “[A]ppealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,” our Founding Fathers declared:

We hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator

with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our Founders understood that there are certain ancient, absolute truths on which our society is—and must be—morally anchored. Self-evident truths. Immutable truths that derive from our Creator. Truths that establish a basic morality governing all of humankind. Truths that undergird the social order. Truths that define right and wrong, that comprise the very foundation of our society and of the rule of law that governs it.

Our Founding Fathers established a society premised on—indeed, dependent on—a respect for these basic principles of morality. Principles comprised of absolute truths that are not subject to redefinition according to our personal desires.

James Madison declared that the “belief in a God Allpowerful wise & good, is so essential to the moral order of the world & to the happiness of man.” John Hancock extolled “the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state.”

Robert Morris, the “Financier of the Revolution”—one of only two men (the other being Roger Sherman) to sign all three of America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution—wrote a Circular to the Governors of the States on July 25, 1781, stating:

I am determined Justice shall be the rule of my conduct as far as the measure of abilities which the Almighty has been pleased to bestow shall enable me to distinguish between right and wrong.

And James Wilson, who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and became a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, wrote in his Lectures on Law that the “will of God” is “the supreme law,” and that without the “intuitive truths” of morality, we lack “any conception of the distinction between right and wrong.”

The secular forces now running rampant in American society lack these “intuitive truths” of morality because they refuse to acknowledge the ultimate authority of God. They reject the inherent limitations of their own authority to redefine right and wrong. And they refuse to accept that the “will of God” is “the supreme law” that must govern our conduct.

Merriam-Webster defines “truth” as “(1) the body of real things, events, and facts: actuality; (2) the state of being the case: fact; (3) a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality.”

But it then offers an alternative: “someone’s truth.” “Someone’s truth,” according to Cambridge, means “someone’s own personal situation or feelings, or the truth as someone personally sees it.”

This notion that “truth” might be adaptable according to how someone might personally see it is fundamentally at odds with Merriam-Webster’s “transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality.” And it is fundamentally at odds with our Founding Fathers’ overarching vision for our nation.

Mankind has been trying to create its own version of truth since the dawn of time. God placed Adam and Eve in an earthly paradise with but one command: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” [Genesis 2: 17.]

But the tranquility of the Garden of Eden was shattered when Eve listened to the serpent’s words, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” [Genesis 3:4-5.]

Listening to the serpent was mankind’s first foray into redefining truth. Making “truth” adaptable to how we personally wish to view it. Replacing God’s absolute truth with our own relative truth.

Even Thomas Jefferson—the principal author of the Declaration of Independence—was not immune to these forces. As a man of the Enlightenment, Jefferson was an “intellectual” who came to exalt reason as the supreme arbiter of truth. A conflicted Christian who rejected certain aspects of his faith because he could not reason his way to understanding them. In doing so, he arrogantly refused to accept the inherent limitations of the human condition, our innate inability to rationally achieve a celestial level of discernment. Even though it was God who gave us the ability to reason in the first place.

What we are seeing in America today is the modern-day version of Adam and Eve’s original sin. It reflects a rejection of a Creator in favor of an illusion that we are self-creators. That we have god-like autonomy. That we can appoint ourselves as the determiners of truth. That we arrogantly can replace unquestioned fundamental truth with notions of relative truth that are unbounded by any transcendent moral order. That are unanchored by the very pillars—religion, morality, and virtue—that George Washington declared to be the “indispensable supports” of our society.

This excessive individualism goes beyond anything our Founding Fathers envisioned. And it runs counter to their fundamental views in establishing America. Indeed, it converts our God-given individual rights into a self-declared autonomous right to play God. And it constitutes a rejection—not an embrace—of the “self-evident” truths proclaimed by the Founders. Even worse, it presents mankind with the ability to once again undermine God’s truth. To create a new and synthetic culture devoid of God’s absolute truth.

So, how do we live in our modern-day world of “relative truth”?

Here’s Wilson’s answer:

How shall we, in particular instances, learn the dictates of our duty, and make, with accuracy, the proper distinction between right and wrong; in other words, how shall we, in particular cases, discover the will of God? We discover it by our conscience, by our reason, and by the Holy Scriptures. The law of nature and the law of revelation are both divine: they flow, though in different channels, from the same adorable source. It is, indeed, preposterous to separate them from each other. The object of both is—to discover the will of God—and both are necessary for the accomplishment of that end.

A wise Solomon cautioned in the Book of Proverbs that “every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.” Proverbs 21:2. And “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” Proverbs 14:12.

As we go forth in this world of “relative truth,” let us heed the words of Isaiah and Moses, of Solomon and Paul, and or our great American Founding Fathers.

Let us govern our own behavior with the intuitive truths of morality that are found in the supreme law of God. Let us always search for that “transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality,” remembering that there is an absolute truth, God’s truth. And that God’s truth is more than just a feeling or a belief system. It’s a person. In the words of Jesus: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” [John 14:6.]

And let us insist that others in our society—including our modern-day political leaders—do the same.

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