Truth – It's a Fact

Truth simply is. Truth doesn’t come undone because someone disagrees with it, and truth doesn’t become false because someone says it’s false. We now know that the Earth is round; people used to think it was flat. Did their misinformed opinion change the truth? Did the Earth stop being round and become flat because people said it was flat? No. They were just plain wrong. Period. End of story.

Now some people might say that the physical world has its facts but that the moral, spiritual, philosophical world doesn’t. But it does. It has to. There either is a God or there isn’t. And if He exists, He either loves us or hates us. He either created us or He didn’t. There either is a true, absolute moral standard or there isn’t. If this weren’t the case -- if there were no moral, spiritual, philosophical facts -- then all of life would be a crapshoot – no one would ever have the right to question another’s actions or accuse them of wrongdoing, for there could be no true wrongdoing, only a difference of opinion. I know that some people like to say and believe that each person “defines his own truth.” But that’s an intellectually-dishonest possibility. We are each human; we each live on the same planet in the same universe under the same natural laws; we each enter the world in the same fashion (physical birth) and leave the world in the same fashion (physical death). How, then, can you say that your truth is different than mine? Your experience is different, yes; your way of interpreting the evidence may be different, sure. But if you interpret things wrongly, you have not changed the truth. You are just plain wrong. Period. End of story.

Cracking the Code

I agree that some of the reaction to both the movie and book versions of “The DaVinci Code” are overreactions. Yet some of it is not.

In this age of sound bites and half-truths (we used to call them lies), the American public, for all it’s potential, has grown lazy and ignorant. People tend to believe everything they see on TV, everything they read in the papers; they do little, if any, research for themselves. This is why, if you go by only what you see in the mainstream media, you likely think that not a single good thing has happened in Iraq during the last three years. But I digress.

Consider, for example, the issue of evolution. I work at a newspaper, and I can tell you with 100% confidence that every story on archaeology written by The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times is written with the built-in assumption that evolution is a proven fact, as concrete as the sidewalks under pedestrians’ feet. A judge in this country has even ruled that science textbooks can’t even have a simple one-paragraph disclaimer reminding readers that evolution is a theory. And to correct a colleague, the evolution assumption of these news stories is not the product of individuals quoted in the stories (although it’s true that the quotees are always – I repeat: ALWAYS – in favor of evolution). No, the assumption is the product of the reporters; each and every one of them engages in bad journalism by first presuming a theory to be fact, then writing that “fact” into the story, and never – I repeat: NEVER – including opposing viewpoints.

Or consider abortion. How many stories do you ever read in the newspaper about women who had abortions and now suffer because of it? Who experience deep shame and regret? Who would tell others to avoid making the same mistake ... that is, if anyone from the mainstream media would actually take the time to interview them? But no. All you hear about are the glories of abortion, as trumpeted by Planned Parenthood and other such propaganda machines.

So how does this relate to “The DaVinci Code”? Well, I’ll give you a local example, which probably is true in your area, as well: Walk into the neighborhood Barnes & Noble bookstore and you can observe three noteworthy things: A large table full of DaVinci Code products (some of these, I concede, are anti-DaVinci Code, thought not most); an entire rack of anti-Biblical Jesus books on audio (conveniently located next to the checkout line); and the distinct absence of any strong up-front showing by orthodox Christian products (for these, you need to go to a far corner of the store, where other customers likely won’t be bothered by any proselytizing). And what stories make the papers? Ones about Magdalene theology, abusive priests, and the heretical Gospel of Judas; none, for example, about the great efforts by Christian child-assist groups Compassion International, WorldVision, and Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse.

But the DaVinci Code’s Sir Leigh Teabing may have said it best – and hung himself, as well as his author – when he said (my paraphrase), “The mind sees what it wants to see.” I’ve come to the following conclusion: Those who want to believe the true (Biblical) account of Jesus will believe, no matter how much junk is thrown at them, and those who don’t want to believe will never believe, even if all such controversial material was kept hidden from them, even if Jesus Himself stood in front of them, in the flesh. These people will always have a ready excuse.

So in the end, I say: Bring all the junk into the Light. The Bible, God’s Word, says that it will stand forever and everything else (including all false doctrines) will pass away, and that the products of darkness cannot survive long once exposed to the Light. So let’s have a discussion about this particular doctrine (Magdalene theology, the Gnostic gospels, etc.). After all, it’s not often these days that we get to talk legally about Jesus on such a large public stage.

DaVinci DeCeit

The May 5 Kennebec Journal illustrates the hoopla surrounding “The DaVinci Code.” A column by Jim Brunelle makes an interesting point. So does a KJ editorial – if, in fact, this editorial is an honest assessment of the situation, and I’m not sure that it is. The editorial states, essentially, that those who have genuine faith will never be shaken from it, and I agree. But there’s a problem hidden in there. To paraphrase a colleague, only the most naïve would believe the claims found in “The DaVinci Code,” or let those claims sway them from the truth about Jesus Christ – but the sad fact is that there are many people in today’s America who actually are that naïve when it comes to the Bible and what it says about Jesus. We now have at least two generations in this country that, unlike previous American generations, were not raised on the Bible. They don’t experience the Bible in school; they don’t experience it in church – either because they go to liberal churches that distort the Bible or don’t even crack it open, or because they don’t go to church at all; and they are increasingly experiencing less and less of it in the public realm because of the rampant Jesusphobia that is running amuck in our country. Hence, the editorial, when stating that there’s no cause for alarm from such things as “The DaVinci Code,” is speaking either from the viewpoint of uninformed naivety, or with the deliberate intent of leading people farther down the slippery slope away from truth.

Homo Creativus

Evolution. It’s all around us ... right? Well, look again.

Observe your fellow homo sapiens, and it won’t take long to discover that we are a creative breed. We’re always making things, inventing things, improving things (this last one, I admit, is in many cases debatable, but I trust that you get the point). In other words, the products of human ingenuity are made, not evolved – they didn’t get there on their own; we made them and put them there. Take a look around you: roads, street signs, traffic lights, buildings, houses, bridges, dams, governments, entertainment – these things did not evolve in the Darwinian sense of the word. Whenever any one of us looks at any of these objects, we know that they didn’t get there on their own; we know that somebody put them there. If evolution were true, then, wouldn’t it be the driving force in all of existence, not just part of existence? Wouldn’t it effect not only the nonhuman realm, but the human realm as well (i.e., the products of our hands)? I believe so, but this is clearly not the case; we don’t evolve things, we make them. Why is that?

According to the Bible, humans – and only humans – are made in God’s image. And since God is creative, therefore we are creative. You see in humans a real creativity, a real spark of life, that no other breed has. Take a look at the rest of the natural world. Ants build colonies, yes; beavers build dams and bees build hives. But they’ve been building them the same way for thousands of years, as long as they have existed. They don’t change. Why? Because they’re programmed, because they have no free will – because they’re not made in God’s image. They’re beautiful yes, but still different. Humans, on the other hand, have progressed, in many ways, over time: we have better technology than what we had 500 or 1000 years ago; we have more dependable means of transportation, faster forms of communication, improved medical care. If evolution were true, why then isn’t there at least one other creature, out of the millions that exist in the world, with a level of intelligence comparable to ours? Why are we the only species with a real creativity, a real spark of life? And consider the full implication of evolution being true, if it were: there would either be no God, or else He would be just as much a product of evolution as we, and therefore as fallible as we, and therefore really not of much use. And there would also be no true, absolute moral standard, which brings me back to a previous argument – none of us would have the right to define anything as right or wrong, good or bad, and we should consider any form of government to be both a farce and an oppressive thing.