Joshua Claybourn has an excellent post about truth.
Let me see if I can add anything of value to his fine thoughts.
Repeating Josh's first point, a common misperception about witnessing is that Christians are said to be judgmental and arrogant by their witnessing. But is this so? If the Bible is true, as Christians claim it to be, this truth is not subject to human will. It's true whether or not we wish it to be. One of the claims of the Bible is that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. If this is true, then it isn't arrogant at all to tell others about it; true arrogance would be in keeping silent, as Jonah tried to do when God commanded him to go to Ninevah. Jonah didn't want to go, not because of fear, but because of his prejudice against the Ninevites. Of course, Jonah wound up preaching to the Ninevites, they repented and were saved. Jonah's preaching actually saved many lives (and even then Jonah was pretty slow understanding God's mercy).
Now about the search for truth: I used to think of truth as a journey. I used to be in a religious background that believed that the journey existed for its own sake. After a while, that stopped making sense to me, kindof like driving around in the countryside with no destination in mind. That's fun sometimes, but if you're trying to get somewhere, it won't work. Why is that important? Because eventually, we're all trying to get somewhere. It's the same feeling I confronted before: why am I here? what do I want to do with my life? is there any purpose to it all? Eventually we get tired of aimless driving and seek a destination. It doesn't do any good to pretend that a destination doesn't exist. You know you want to go somewhere, the only questions you have to answer then is "where do I want to go and how do I get there?" Christianity has unique answers to those questions.
Another notion about truth is that the New Testament describes spiritual truths apart from physical reality. That is not the way the Gospel is presented however. The writers of the New Testament claimed to present direct eyewitness testimony of Jesus' resurrection. This testimony is true or false. If true, the New Testament describes a Man who claimed to be God's Son, sent from heaven to accomplish our salvation if we believe in Him, or to be condemned if we reject Him. If false, the whole message is a lie, and it is pointless to believe any of it. There is no value in believing that Jesus was a good man with good ideas which we can believe in whether he existed or not. We are told to believe in Him.
Posted by joelfuhrmann at January 27, 2003 09:27 PM