Variable Truth?

One of the most common ideas that people have these days is that truth is a variable commodity and that two people can hold completely opposite views of a matter and both be correct.    As illogical as this premise is, you hear it expressed in statements like:

• I’m glad you have found your truth.
• This is my truth and you have your truth.
• Everyone has to find their own truth.
• That is true for you but it is not true for me, and that’s OK!

Statements such as these are heard most often in discussions of spiritual matters.  My wife and I have a good friend who claims to believe all of the following:

1. That she is a Christian
2. That she is a psychic healer
3. That the Bible is not totally reliable and she must pick and choose the parts that are true.  She is also able to glean spiritual truth from other sources to supplement the parts of the Bible she does believe.
4. That she will be reincarnated after death in this current life
5. That God is some kind of universal force present in all matter.
6. That there is no divine judgment
7. That sin is not something to be too concerned about.

Our friend believes all of these statements are true.  When we have  explored with her the possibility that some of these ideas are in direct conflict with each other and are mutually exclusive, she says that we have our truth and she has her truth.  In her mind, truth is actually just a matter of personal opinion and she believes she has the power to define the truth in her life.  Virtually all of the ‘truth’ she embraces is based on personal experience, personal opinion, what others have told her and what she wants the truth to be.  By her own admission, she has not read or seriously studied the Bible.  All of her opinions are clothed in a kind of new age psycho-babble language that she presents from an intellectual perch.  There is no objective standard of truth that exists for her and she makes spiritual decisions about truth based on what ‘feels’ right to her.  She believes all of this to be completely logical.

How many people do you know like our friend?  I’ll bet you know several and you hear these ideas expressed regularly.  The idea that people can define their own truth and that truth varies from person to person is a phenomenon of disconnected logic that millions of Americans embrace.