The Death of Truth

 In Blog, Charles Cavanaugh

Leaders and nations who have found certain people or people groups troublesome or a detriment to their personal or national agenda have been willing to do what is necessary to remove or neutralize them. Adolf Hitler saw the Jews as a problem and set out to completely remove them from German society.

On a less tragic level, people have done their best to eradicate pests such as rodents or insects: understandably so, since failure to do so may cause significant harm to property and even health.

Recent years have seen war on a “new” and more resilient “pest.” It is new to modernity and now post-modernity, but it is not new to history. This pest is not human, although it is carried by humans. Nor is it animal. This pest is ideological, and ideological pests are the most difficult to eradicate.

The present warfare is a war on truth. Truth, moral and ideological, is an inconvenient reality. Those who seek to live contrary to it cannot long ignore it. It will not go away voluntarily. So those who hate it seek to kill it. That explains Post-modernities efforts to do away with it.

The war on truth is not a new one, but it has had little obvious success in the United States until the Modern Era. French Rationalism and other forms of liberal European thought have gradually made their way across the Atlantic until they have been able to take hold and influence, not only the intellectual community, but the man and woman on the street as well. The advent of the Postmodern Era has placed us on the precipice of a time when an entire society rejects the once quaint notion of objective truth. We are witnessing political leaders ignore the laws that are detrimental to their particular agenda and deeming as true only those that are convenient. Arguments over original intent, orthodoxy, and other expressions of truth-based beliefs are becoming moot. Because if truth is dead, truth claims are irrelevant and heresy does not exist. Then truth is what one makes it to be.

This is the environment that is rapidly becoming the norm, and in such an environment, those who hold to truth are the enemy. Their voice must be minimized, rejected, and ultimately silenced. Tolerance is the new queen of virtues: tolerance that is for everyone except those who believe in final truth.

What does the future hold for a society intolerant of truth?

  1. Disorder: order is built on truth. Moral order, social order, religious order, and political order all exist when there is a foundation of truth. Without this foundation morality collapses, social relationships disintegrate, religion becomes meaningless, and politicians cease to be servant leaders and morph into manipulative slave masters.
  2. Disharmony: when morality collapses and social relationships dissolve, trust becomes an anachronism. It is no more than a wistful feeling, a sentimental remnant of an earlier age. And without trust, social harmony is impossible.
  3. Destruction: the deconstruction of truth and the dissolution of trust will ultimately lead to tyranny. Leaders will assume or presume upon the trust they cannot earn and will force their unwanted leadership upon unwilling subjects. With the foundation destroyed, the remnants of a once orderly society turn to rubble.

So what are our takeaways?

  1. Truth lives. While people will work to deconstruct truth, they cannot change its reality. The Rock of truth will have many ships crash upon it.
  2. God rules. “From Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things…” He installs and deposes all rulers. His purposes are accomplished. He cannot fail.
  3. History is linear. Some propose that history is mere repetition, a vicious cycle that grinds ruthlessly on. But history had a beginning and will have an end. Its end is sure and will come at the time appointed.

Until then, it is the blessed privilege of those who know the Sovereign to make Him known and watch Him invade the chaos of sin one soul at a time.

In the love of Christ,
Charles Cavanaugh

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