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Time For Truth - Living Free in a World of Lies and HypeTime for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies and Hype 'What is truth? said jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer.' The battle for Truth occupies each generation. The problems in a post-modern world are intensified, because not only is there argument about what truth is, but whether such a thing as objective truth even exists. Os Guinness sets out the problem clearly. Although most of his illustrations are from America, those in the UK will be sufficiently aware of the O.J. Simpson trial and the Clinton indictment to follow the argument. He summarises what he is trying to do on page 80: 'I am deliberately underscoring the practical difficulties that grow out of the theoretical deficiencies of the new radical relativism. We can easily be cowed into submission by the force or fashion of new ideas without realising their disastrous practical consequences for ordinary life'. Although he uses academic language at times, he makes clear what radical relativism means. Those who can cope with reading Dr. Schaeffer will certainly cope with this. At some points I wanted further discussion. On p.18 he gives some examples of how it may be OK to lie sometimes. I was surprised he did not extend this to the genre of humorists. He uses Mark Twain as a bad example to follow. I myself would not expect humorists like Mark Twain to be exemplars of exact truth. As Twain said of Huckleberry Finn: 'There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.' The man who told the story of the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is hardly setting himself up as a serious historian any more than Spike Milligan does in his reminiscences of the war. Overall the book is strong on diagnosis but not so helpful on treatment. What do we do practically? We are all aware that what is debated in the university today, filters down into modern culture very quickly and becomes the norm without anyone realising it. A new attitude to truth is already into the press and indeed textbooks. No doubt it will be through the teachers into the schools soon and once there is very difficult to replace. Many have had the experience of how the old-fashioned liberal theology was still taught in RE long after the theologians had moved on. It is already too late to stop the attitude to truth filtering down from the academics to The Sun and becoming popular belief. Who are the readers of Guinness's book? Teachers and preachers I hope, so they may know what they are up against . . . on p.72 he quotes an old Irish saying. The Irish may well say it but the saying certainly goes back to the Apocrypha. 1 Esdras 4.42 says: 'Great is Truth and it prevails.' May this book play a part in helping that happen. John Marsh© Evangelicals Now - July 2000 |