I am not knowing

A friend mentioned to me this morning his distress over the death of civil discourse in our country.  People can no longer discuss the merit of an idea, the conduct of a person, or any other topic whatsoever without hostilities breaking out. 

What has happened that two individuals can no longer construct and assess arguments on a particular topic without volcanic emotion?  Might I suggest that this should come as no surprise in a post-modern and now a post-Christian era?  For example, I read a little blurb earlier in the week. In it, the author tried to argue against those who used truth as a weapon and indicted those who failed to embrace or comprehend the simplest truths.  Then he regurgitated this hairball:

"...you cannot possibly know if any absolute truths exist, because we simply cannot be absolutely certain. Yes, I firmly believe this postulate that we can never know for certain anything."

If I cannot know that absolute truth exists, why pursue it?  If I did pursue it and found it, how would I know that it was indeed absolute truth?  This recent phenomenon, the idea that there is no truth or that absolute truth cannot be known, puts man in the position of beast.  If I can know nothing for certain, as this teen and many lettered university professors assert, then why should I not eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow I die (Isaiah 22:13, 1 Corinthians 15:32)?  And if I can know nothing for certain, why should you and I bandy arguments about?  What a waste of breath and time!

This know-nothing attitude has murdered logic and rhetoric.  If you don't like my position, you're stupid!  What a moron.  Oh, yeah, you're one of them born-agains.  If people had a modicum of education, they would understand why evolution is brilliant and global warming a fact.  Um, excuse me, do you have any support for anything you are saying, or will you merely assault my character and my identity?

I wish this were merely true outside the church, but such no-nothingness has infected the Body of Christ as well.  Listen to the author's next statement:

"This is the beauty of life, where faith has to step in, lead us, and strengthen us when we are faint of heart."

Francis Schaeffer referred to this as an upper-story leap of faith.  If we can't know anything certain about our current plane of existence, we're going to jump into the realm of illogic and unreason and hope something will be there to encourage my soul.  As the Church has jettisoned the word of God, it has abandoned the only source of objective truth it had.  Today faith and religion is true as long as it is true for you. 

On the contrary, biblical faith is a foundational and fundamental trust in a God who has proven himself over and over to his creatures.  Biblical faith is the child who will leap from the side of the pool into daddy's arms because a) the child knows his father, b) the child has seen his daddy catch him and take care of him many times before, and c) the child applies those facts forward by trusting his daddy to catch him when he leaps.  It's not an irrational leap into the abyss but an absolute trust in the One who is there.

How important is knowing things certainly?  Paul said, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" (1 Cor. 15:17)  Whoa.  He anchors our hope as Christians in the FACT that Jesus has been raised.  He says that very thing two verses later, "But in fact Christ has been raised..." (1 Cor. 15:20).

So serious were the apostles about this that John wrote at the end of the first century, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13).  God himself emphasized evidence throughout Ezekiel where over and over again the fulfillment of prophecy would show Israel and others that he is who he said he is.  "Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord" (Ezek. 37:14).  Jesus described eternal life as knowing God the Father and God the Son (John 17:3).

How, though, can I be certain about anything in this world?  If I begin with myself, I cannot be certain of anything for how would I know if my faculties were revealing things to me as they truly are?  Perhaps our world is nothing more than a snow globe in the mind of an autistic child as depicted on television's St. Elsewhere.  The only way we can be certain is if someone with an objective perspective conveys to us what reality is.  And someone has.  That someone in fact created the cosmos and each of us as individual masterpieces. 

That Someone is God.

His revealed word, the Bible, provides man with his only sure reference in the cosmos.  While the grass will wither, the flowers will fade, and the North Star may supernova, God's word will remain forever (Isaiah 40:8).  It's no wonder the psalmist declared that God's revealed truth was a lamp to his feet and a light to his path (Psalm 119:105).

The blurber concludes:

This is the journey of life; searching for truth, finding the path to our chosen truth, and watching in prayer as the path unfold before our eyes...We pray that we have chosen to follow the right truth and hope that we haven’t wasted our short life on meaningless treks.

There it is, the maxim of the 21st century.  "Whatever is true for you."  Such a starting point will continue to lead to deteriorating discourse because we begin from two different planets, one anchored in created reality and revealed truth and the other knotted in the wastelands of sin and self.  Pilate shrugged his shoulders asking "What is truth?" and then proceeded to walk away from Truth incarnate and have him crucified.