What is truth? This deceptively simple question has puzzled humanity since the beginning. Pilate famously asked this very question of Jesus before the crowd just prior to the crucifixion (Jn. 18:38 ESV).

In every culture, across every age, people have sought to understand what it means for something to be true. In our modern world, where information is abundant and perspectives are diverse, the quest for truth becomes even more vital and complex.

My work at Praxis Circle centers on understanding and developing worldviews to renew a free and good society. Our goal is to accomplish this by promoting open dialogue around life’s biggest questions in a way that respects the inherent dignity of every human being.

Understanding worldviews involves grappling with how each worldview regards truth and then with what different individuals and cultures hold as true. By examining truth, we can better understand the underlying principles that shape various worldviews, allowing for more meaningful and constructive dialogue. In this way, the pursuit of truth not only clarifies our own perspectives, it also fosters greater empathy and insight into the diverse ways others see the world.

Why is this so important for Christians? Evangelical author Nancy Pearcey in her book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity nails the underlying issue currently plaguing Christians in the Western world. Essentially, she argues that Christians with the majority worldview have allowed themselves to be argued into a corner. Self-imposed helplessness and irrelevancy have been the result. Pearcey argues,

The purpose of worldview studies is nothing less than to liberate Christianity from its cultural captivity, unleashing its power to transform the world. Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an option; it is part of their necessary survival equipment.

So back to our opening question: What is truth? How can we know what is true and what is not?

No Truth Without a Bit of Faith

Until the early 1800s, the West viewed the search for truth as an obvious human good, if not one of the most important goals of life. Since at least the 1960s, however, in America’s elite institutions, truth has been under all-out assault. If you believe that truth is important, then you should learn to defend it.

A good place to start is by learning as much foundational knowledge about truth as possible. One’s position on truth is the first building block of worldview. To some, truth is a presupposition used without much thought; to others, it’s a conscious choice firmly and confidently held; to still others, it’s one flexibly employed to maximize benefits situationally or to serve other important goals, like toleration or increasing wealth, power, and domination (or all of the above).

Regardless of the position one takes on truth, there is something we all have in common: Everyone takes a stand on truth just in living. Faith to act is a must. After all, no human being has God’s perspective on all reality.

Defining Our Terms

Before we move on to the importance of faith to truth or relativism, I wish to provide some definitional comments to better frame the issue.

One definition of truth that kicks the can down the road is one of the options offered by the Merriam-Webster dictionary: “a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true.” An idea is true if it is in accordance with reality, accepted definitions, or accepted concepts.

Within these constraints, a tight proposition cannot be true and false at the same time, though loose propositions can be parsed into their true or false elements. Of course, confidence in any one proposition can vary depending on the situation, individual, or group. One accepts a fact, claim, or belief as true only with high confidence, and probability often influences making a judgment.

Truth does not vary according to any individual’s or group’s feeling, opinion, or even existence. As writer Flannery O’Connor once said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” A traditional view of truth dictates that it unfolds with time but becomes locked in historical fact with each passing second. If human language is involved, then a true claim would be in accordance with reality and accepted definitions or concepts.

Not to play dodgeball myself: I define truth as a judgment on reality made by one or more persons. True judgments can be instantaneous or mediated on endlessly. Truth becomes a belief, unconscious or conscious, where possible “verdicts” are either true, false, unknown, or uncertain. 

We establish truth in running from a grizzly bear that jumps us on the trail (futile as it is), or by speaking to God once blinded and knocked by him from our horse.

To be clear, true things are very real (God, for example), but we only come to believe they are true by making up our mind (making a judgment) that they are so. Truth informs all human choices, whether or not premeditated. It is easy to understand why people can look at the same information and come to very different conclusions.

What Shapes Our Understanding of Truth

Let’s turn back to why we inherently need to rely on an element of faith to believe in truth. Knowingly or not, many people derive confidence in the reality of being thanks to a famous observation from Renes Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” 

But we have to have faith when it comes to asserting whether actual “being” (or “reality”) exists beyond our own consciousness because there is genuine disagreement over whether that “being” (if any) outside ourselves is all consciousness, all matter, some kind of combination of the two, or an illusion, random or managed.

This argument dates back to ancient times, and it’s no closer to being solved today. Many philosophers argue it cannot be solved, absent a God who verifies truth to us and negotiates the “qualia” issue, separating all conscious creatures. It is atheistic, materialistic science today that perhaps makes the strongest truth claims for itself. 

Nonetheless, advanced science produces evidence that matter is both particle and wave and perhaps two places at once, with no measurements of certainty possible—at best, only probabilities. Similarly, as human experience finds limits looking upward toward outer space, our astrophysicists offer mostly specialized, esoteric theories. 

We must agree: Even science produces little total certainty.

When human beings with consciousness and memory exist together in space over significant periods of time, they create stories to reason about their world. They create concepts, metaphors, and fictional stories, as well, to better deal with and explain their lives and existence. Human beings seem somehow programmed to look for meaning and purpose, exhibiting a natural sense of teleology.

For Christians, the leap of faith to truth is found through belief in a person: Jesus Christ. “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice,” he tells Pilate in John 18 (ESV). It’s in response to this statement that Pilate asks the core question that opened our discussion: “What is truth?”

No matter our beliefs, we’re all building our worldviews via truth, including a thoughtful position on truth itself. We can change our worldviews if that’s where truth leads us. It is difficult to be 100% certain about being, perception, or agreement, and judgment can take us in many directions. We need to respect other’s right to choose and choices.

Pilate couldn’t make sense of what Jesus was saying as he washed his hands of truth on that most fateful day, but Jesus’ invitation to understand truth as he reveals it remains available to all: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth with set you free” (Jn. 8:31-32 ESV).

Our journey here leaves us right where Christ left Pilate: “What is truth?” It’s up to you and each of us to choose. We must choose together.

Yet today, unlike Pilate, on this side of Easter morning we can know for sure: In one person, Truth stands right before us. 

Editor’s Note: Excerpt adapted from What is Truth? A Primer on Exploring Foundations of Knowledge in Worldview Analysis by Douglas Monroe, available to download for free here.