The Truth?????

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The Truth?????
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• John 146
• "I am the way, the truth, and the life"

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• Psalm 119160 
• The very essence of your words is truth all
  your just regulations will stand forever.

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• Isaiah 114-6 
• He will give justice to the poor and make fair
  decisions for the exploited.
• The earth will shake at the force of his word,
  and one breath from his mouth will destroy the
  wicked.
• He will wear righteousness like a belt and truth
  like an undergarment.

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• John 1
• In the beginning the Word already existed.The
  Word was with God,
• and the Word was God
• Colossians 115-19 
• Christ is the visible image of the invisible
  God.He existed before anything was created and
  is supreme over all creation,For God in all his
  fullness was pleased to live in Christ,

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• John 1717 
• Make them holy by your truth teach them your
  word, which is truth.
• John 1526 
• But I will send you the Advocatethe Spirit of
  truth. He will come to you from the Father and
  will testify all about me.

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How important is truth?

• Worldview

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• Matthew 724-27 
• Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows
  it is wise, like a person who builds a house on
  solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and
  the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against
  that house, it wont collapse because it is built
  on bedrock.

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• But anyone who hears my teaching and doesnt
  obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a
  house on sand. When the rains and floods come
  and the winds beat against that house, it will
  collapse with a mighty crash.

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Jesus as the foundation-ROCK

• Colossians 23 
• In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom
  and knowledge

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Materialism/Darwin as a Foundation-SAND
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• John 1837-38
• Pilate said, So you are a king?
• Jesus responded, You say I am a king. Actually,
  I was born and came into the world to testify to
  the truth. All who love the truth recognize that
  what I say is true.
• What is truth? Pilate asked. Then he went out
  again to the people and told them, He is not
  guilty of any crime.

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•    From the belief that a creator made human life
  and that human life was made with design and
  purpose, proceeds the ancillary belief that human
  life is, therefore, distinct. Consequently, not
  only is all human life equal in value, but also,
  all human life is unique from and more important
  than other life. Thus, man must be a good steward
  of the world in which he is placed. Therefore,
  more is expected from man than from any other
  being in creation.

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• Darwin changed that view, asserting that man
  actually was not very special after all. As he
  explained, (m)an in his arrogance thinks himself
  a great work, worthy of the interposition of a
  deity. More humble and, I believe, true, to
  consider him created from animals

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•       Today, the belief that man is in any way
  different from, or superior to, other animal
  species is known as speciesism,. Peter Singer,
  a founder of PETA (People for the Ethical
  Treatment of Animals) calls speciesism a form of
  prejudice, immoral and indefensible in the same
  way that discrimination on the basis of race is
  immoral and indefensible. Just as a racist
  considers those from another race as inferior, a
  speciesist considers those from another species
  as inferior.

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• Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily
  be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is
  entirely a dependant being. a state of dependance
  will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the
  will of him on whom he depends, as the rule of
  his conduct . . . . And consequently, as man
  depends absolutely upon his maker for every
  thing, it is necessary that he should in all
  points conform to his Maker's will.

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• This law of nature, being dictated by God
  himself, is of course superior in obligation to
  any other. It is binding over all the globe, in
  all countries, and at all times no human laws
  are of any validity, if contrary to this and
  such of them as are valid derive all their force,
  and all their authority, mediately or
  immediately, from this original.

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•       Leading legal theorists who acknowledged
  their debt to Darwin's ideas quickly interjected
  into the legal arena (and, therefore, throughout
  society and culture) a new approach that rejected
  transcendent values. For example, Justice
  Benjamin Cardozo (1870-1938) declared that law
  must no longer work from pre-established truths
  of universal and inflexible validity because
  principles must vary with changing
  circumstances, (and) must be declared to be
  essentially relativistic.

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• Legal educator Roscoe Pound (1870-1964) similarly
  advocated that legal principles are not
  absolute, but are relative to time and place
  because nature did not mean to antiquity what
  it means to us who are under the influence of the
  idea of evolution.

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• Objective standards for morality were therefore
  replaced by new values that, according to Justice
  Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935), would now be
  based on (t)he felt necessities of the time, the
  prevalent moral and political theories . . .
  (and) the prejudices which judges share with
  their fellowmen.

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• Quite simply, under the non-theistic paradigm,
  transcendent, immutable values do not exist
  because, as explained by Singer, they draw on
  presuppositions-religious, moral,
  metaphysical--that are now obsolete.

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• Very simply, the belief in a creator to whom man
  was answerable produced in man a self-restraint
  and instilled in society an expectation of
  individual accountability. However, today it has
  become an acceptable thesis in many quarters that
  man is not accountable for his behavior and also
  that he is not even responsible for it.

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Four Caveats

• Man is finite, God is infinite
• Man is created in the image of God-therefore even
  secular philosophers, artists, novelists can
  perceive and reflect truth
• The image of God in man has been marred by sin
  therefore we are all capable of being misled by
  our human nature
• Satan deliberately tries to mislead and
  distort-often very creatively

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• Ephesians 415 
• Instead, we will speak the truth in love,
  growing in every way more and more like Christ,
  who is the head of his body, the church.
• 1 Peter 315-16 
• Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of
  your life. And if someone asks about your
  Christian hope, always be ready to explain it.
  But do this in a gentle and respectful way

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• Ephesians 414 
• Then we will no longer be immature like
  children. We wont be tossed and blown about by
  every wind of new teaching. We will not be
  influenced when people try to trick us with lies
  so clever they sound like the truth.

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• Which of these should characterize us?
• arrogance feeble pride disdain indecisive
  contempt irresolute derision vacillating
  condescension ridicule mocking faltering
  contempt sarcasm biting

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• Courage
• humility

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The only way?

• What about Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, etc?