Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Ever heard of truthiness?
It was Webster's Word of the Year in 2006, meaning something might be true, sort of true, sometimes true. That's what passes for truth in a culture gone mad. It's more evidence of what Erwin Lutzer calls the eclipse of God. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, as your Eclipse of God series continues, we embark today on a virtual sea of irrationality.
Dave, you're absolutely right. As a matter of fact, the subtitle of that chapter is Telling the Truth in a World of Lies. And there I emphasize how it is that today's view of truth so shapes our modern generation, it really does explain why it is that when you send a child to university or college, they come back thinking differently than we think. But on my mind is also another chapter in this book.
It's entitled Nearer My God to Me. In other words, we have reshaped God, we have domesticated him, we have pared him down to manageable proportions. In this chapter, I discuss all of those who say this, I'm into spirituality, but no doctrine.
At the end of this message, I'm going to explain some feedback I received on this chapter. For now, let us listen. Well tonight, I'm going to speak to you on the topic of truth and not truth in us. There was a college student who remarked that truth can be anything as long as enough people believe it. He was echoing what is popular today, namely that truth does not have a fixed reference point. Truth is something that is fluid and it depends upon you to determine what is truth for you. Merriam-Webster oftentimes has a word for the year. In 2006, the word for the year with Webster's dictionary, the word was truthiness.
Truthiness means it might be true, it's sort of true, sometimes it's true, it could be false, but it could have truthiness. The word for 2022 was gaslighting. As you know, gaslighting has to do with the distortion of reality in such a way that you actually begin to think that you are insane, that you're not making any sense because gaslighting and those of you who live with a narcissist know that a narcissist can so twist reality that he makes you question your own sanity. And that's of course what our society is doing today. I want you to remember the words of George Orwell who said that the farther a society drifts from the truth, the more likely it is to hate those who proclaim it. Orwell in his novel 1984 goes on to tell the story of a man by the name of Winston. Winston is actually taken into a room and he is told that two plus two is equal to five, sometimes it's equal to three and sometimes it is equal to both. Winston has difficulty believing that as well we might expect. And so he is taken into a room called the Ministry of Love and there he is indoctrinated and if you know how Orwell's novel ends, scary, the last line is Winston ended up loving big brother. He had convinced himself that two plus two is malleable.
It can be five, it can be three, it can be both. I don't need to tell you that we are living today in a day of irrationality. I want to give you some examples. For example, if you say that children who grow up in a family where you have a mother and a father with stability do better in life, you will be told you are guilty of family supremacy. And saying that makes others who don't have that kind of a family feel bad. If you believe in strong borders like I do and that we should not allow people in the United States whom we do not know and that we should have legal immigration, you're told that you actually hate brown people. That's your problem. If you're pro-life, it's not because the fetus actually is a baby, which everyone has to admit that it is.
You are actually somebody who hates women. And in Princeton, they are beginning to teach that math does not have simply one answer. And there was an article that was written by a professor there who's expected to teach that, and it is an article against that silly idea. And it's entitled, there's no such thing as white math. Because he was being told that if you believe mathematics has only one answer, you must be a white supremacist.
You're a racist. Now, I want you to imagine that some Princeton graduates, they have a bank that's close to you, and they decide that they are going to have their bank in your community. And you say, well, I put in $1,000, and they say, well, that's your truth. Our truth is very different.
It's only 500. Can you imagine the confusion? No wonder this professor who came from Romania said that he feared this idea of social justice even more than he did communism, because he says at least the communists believe that two plus two is equal to four.
So that's where we have come. If you say that the European enlightenment and that Europe's culture is better or more advanced than other countries, you'll be told that you are indeed a white supremacist. Or if you stand for the flag and put your hand over the heart, you're probably going to be branded a nationalist. But there's one other thing I want to comment on, and that is transgenderism. If you are opposed to transgenderism, you are a transphobe. In other words, you fear transgender people. There was a grandmother who was talking about her grandson, who's about 21 years old, and he now wants to transition and become a girl.
I want to try to help you as parents and grandparents navigate this kind of a challenge. Just think for a moment. Let's suppose that this boy is born Bert, and now he wants to be called Betty. Now, if you are working for an organization and you're supposed to call people by their preferred name, I think it's okay if you call Bert Betty, because names are not gendered.
But what you can't do as a Christian is to call Bert a she, when in point of fact, he is a he. So in order to help us think through this, I'm going to spend a moment here. Let's suppose your grandson comes home or your child comes home from school and says, mom and dad, I think I'm trans. The first thing that you have to do is to listen to them. Oftentimes young people object to us being too quick to judge them without having heard their story.
So you listen. But then what you have to do is you have to help this child to see that self perception is not always an accurate gauge as to who you are. You can go to a psych ward and you can find people there who believe that they are Napoleon. As a matter of fact, I heard one story about a man who said, I'm Napoleon and the guy next to him said, who told you you were Napoleon? He said, God told me I was Napoleon. And the other guy said, no, I didn't. Self perception sometimes is wrong.
Let me give you an even better illustration. Let's suppose a young woman has anorexia. She looks in the mirror and believes that she is overweight when in point of fact she's starving herself to death. Her self perception is incorrect.
And I read one writer who said, if she wants to perceive herself as being overweight and eating too much, we shouldn't interfere with that because only she knows who she really is. A man who's 52 years old and this is a true story, identifies as a six year old girl. So he plays with dolls.
Now let's think about that for a moment. Does he have a body problem or does he have a mind problem? Of course he has a mind problem.
He doesn't have a body problem. It's his mind that is reordered. It is his mind that is confused. So you have to help young people understand that. Then the other thing is you have to back up and ask yourself this question.
Help them to understand the long term consequences of what they are contemplating. Let's suppose that Bert becomes a girl and is Betty. Normally girls are attracted to young men and young men are attracted to girls. That's the way God made it. Now when you become Betty, is a boy going to fall in love with you because you are after all a girl?
I don't think so. And the confusion of genders means that there would just be a same sex relationship. And so what you do have to do is to help them to understand your decision has some long term consequences that are very, very serious.
As a matter of fact, if you have surgery, you'll never be a biological parent. We're talking about a nation that has lost its way and you take young people today, they are shown pornography and school and so forth as they understand it and as happens in our school system. And they become guilty and they're told you shouldn't be guilty because after all this is normal.
I could go into detail as to what's happening in Illinois. And they feel that sense of guilt and they think, you know, the answer to my depression and guilt is I must be trans. So we must warn this generation that they are headed in a very disastrous direction and what it is is a mind problem and not a body problem.
Now what I'd like to do is to spend the next few moments and time is slipping away all too quickly. I want to spend the next few moments about talking the way in which truth is viewed in our society and especially in our colleges and universities. There are those who say that there's no such thing as absolute truth. Well of course they contradict themselves when they say that.
I have to tell you this story. When I was a pastor many years ago, there was a young woman in church who said, you know, I'm sitting next to a boy in class who has written a one page paper on why there is no truth. I said, show me the paper. So I read the paper and I wrote a two sentence response. I said, number one, if there's no such thing as truth, you have certainly written one page full of lies.
That's for openers. But furthermore, I said, every time you speak, we will know in advance that you are not speaking truth. She gave him the answer.
He never said a word to her for the whole semester. And thank God for his consistency because there are tons of people out there who would believe that there's no such thing as truth and then go on talking as if they have the truth. Now, what happens in our society today regarding truth? Regarding history, what we must understand that Karl Marx believed that truth was actually a tool for interest groups to hang on to power.
So when it comes to such things as the study of history, what you have today is people studying history and trying to find out and you've heard the word deconstruction. They are deconstructing the text to try to find out what hidden messages of power and a grab for power the writer might have had. So the question is not what does the text say? And in saying that, what does the text say? That isn't really the issue. The issue is what does it mean for me?
What hidden meanings do I see in this document which cannot be taken at face value? Because after all, history is a tool to increase your self-esteem. It is not a tool to try to find out. You know, we used to in America have arguments as to what the facts are regarding history. That isn't the issue anymore. The issue is what does it mean for me? And there is no real objective reference point or facts that can be uncovered.
So that's where we are today and it really becomes a means of self-esteem. You're not supposed to tell students that they are wrong. I'm quoting here from a handbook that says, don't tell a student he's wrong because you're going to do him psychological harm.
He can't handle it. So here are some alternatives. Why don't you say, oh hum. Wait, that's a thought. That's one possibility. That's one idea. That's another way to look at it.
Or I hear you. And then there are 12 other possible suggestions that you should use, but don't tell him he's wrong because if he is, if he's told that he might have to find a safe place where he can go and lick the wounds of his unappreciated victimhood. So what you have to do is you have to see that history is really a psychological experience for him to elevate his self-esteem and find out who has oppressed him and what groups are the oppressors and what ones are the oppressed. And that's where things have happened in history. Now, what about speech codes? Michigan State University has a speech code. They discourage words such as tribe, minorities, America. Yeah, don't use America because you give the impression of supremacy. So don't use the word America.
And religious imagery during Christmas and Easter must be decoded. So don't say Merry Christmas or something like that. Say, you know, have a good spring break, etc.
It goes on and gives details. I have another university where it says don't use the word freshman. Freshman? No, no, that's toxic. So don't use the word freshman. And it goes on to say that if there's a barbershop in your area, don't say that he takes in walk-ins because after all, you might offend those who can't walk.
There are people who are in wheelchairs. Now, parents, grandparents, adults in the room, figure out what is happening. Is the intention to elevate the discussion? Of course not. The intention is to silence the discussion. You have no idea what is appropriate.
Can you go into a restaurant and still ask for a menu? Nobody knows. Maybe we should ask for a woman you. Who knows? Maybe by next week, that's the new speech code.
Can women have a manicure? I don't know. Sounds toxic to me. Folks, the intention is to silence speech. So nobody knows what is appropriate and what is appropriate today may be wrong tomorrow.
That's the whole point. And then I could go on to talk about truth in the media. And in my book, No Reason to Hide, I have a chapter on how language is used in the whole business of propaganda, which always has been an interest of mine.
The purpose of propaganda is to so shape people's view of reality that even when confronted with a mountain of evidence, they will not change their minds. I don't want to get into the controversy of the vaccine, so I will stay out of it except to enter it very briefly. Probably most of you are vaxxed. Some of you are strongly unvaxxed. But I think we would all have to agree that the vaccine promises did not live up to expectations.
I think we can agree to that. And you know, there are those who always say, well, you know, it's a conspiracy if you're against it. There's such a thing as a fantasy conspiracy, but there's also such things as a factual conspiracy. And we must be aware of that.
An economist in England said something very interesting for you to keep in the back of your mind in the future. He said, data, data, if tortured long enough will confess to anything. Those of you who study data know that numbers can be twisted. They can be made to say things. Things that are not true.
So be very, very careful. Get information from many different sources, but move on. Now religion. In 1993, I attended the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. 5,000 delegates from all over the world come together to try to see if they can unify the religions of the world. The first night the man stood up and said, I want you to think of a wheel. And the spokes represent the various religions, but we all agree on the hub, which he defined as the clear blue of sky.
And in that hub, we all agree. This of course is nonsense. He also said, hang on to your chair.
Pretend that you are hanging on so tightly that if you didn't hang on, you'd go through the roof. And now he said, let go. Nothing happened, did it? He said, take your most cherished doctrine and just give it up and you'll find that nothing will happen.
So that's where we are today. The whole idea that truth no longer has objectivity. Truth is something that is malleable and you can have many different truths even though they are contradictory. What I'd like to do now is to give you a biblical view of truth. Number one, biblically, God is the source of all truth. It says in the book of Exodus that God is gracious, long suffering, abounding in loving kindness and truth.
God is the standard. The Bible says in the book of Deuteronomy that he is the God of truth. And in the Psalms, thou has redeemed to me.
Oh God of truth. So we have truth to the extent that we understand God's opinion. Well, my friends in my book entitled The Eclipse of God, I go on from there explaining more about biblical truth, but actually in another chapter entitled Nearer My God to Me, I received this feedback from this sentence. I write, if I want to improve my unholy life, I begin by believing in a God who tolerates unholiness without rebuking me. I'm willing to be helped but not transformed. I want a God who helps me manage my confusion and emptiness without making me repent of my sins. Someone who read the manuscript in advance said that that's the best summary he can think of of those who say I'm into spirituality, but not into doctrine.
Can you imagine twisting truth to that point? Well, for a gift of any amount, we're making my book available. It's entitled The Eclipse of God.
Hope that you have a pen or pencil because here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com. Do that right now. RTWOffer .com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337.
That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. The idea of absolute truth has gone the way of the dodo. The people who say it's dead are the same people who proclaim their truth as the ultimate truth.
The fallout is a pervasive destruction of our society. Next time, join us for more truth about truthiness. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
