On January 1st, Oxford Dictionary revealed their chosen Word of the Year for 2016: post-truth.
Post-truth. Is this setting off any warning bells in your mind yet? Because it certainly is in mine.
Oxford goes on to define post-truth as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief".
What exactly does this mean, and why is it so significant that this, post-truth, was the word our society chose to represent 2016?
As Oxford points out, in this case the prefix "post" doesn't mean "after" (the word after-truth really wouldn't make much sense); rather, it "has a meaning more like ‘belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant’".
Yep. You heard that right.
Apparently truth is now irrelevant, and apparently society feels that this is what we ought to get out of 2016.
Post-truth, my dear friends, can otherwise be known as relativism. And relativism, to use Oxford's definition, is "the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute".
Did you catch that?
Knowledge, morality, and truth are not absolute. There are no black-and-white standards of right and wrong, there is no objective truth, and we cannot possibly know anything for certain. That's just crazy talk.
This is the world of relativism and post-truth, and according to Oxford, this is the world that we now live in.
As Christians, or just as generally rational human beings, we simply cannot accept this.
For one thing, post-truth is a rather silly concept in itself; even if we deem truth as being unimportant or irrelevant, that doesn't mean that there isn't any truth. Truth exists whether we want it to or not.
Imagine saying that a table doesn't exist-- or saying it doesn't have four legs, isn't made of wood-- because you feel it is unimportant or irrelevant. That's fine that you feel that way, but it doesn't change the fact that there is indeed a table, and it doesn't change the physical properties of the table either.
Furthermore, if everything is relative and there are no absolutes-- how on earth can people be so insistent that this is the truth?
What they're saying is that the truth is that there is no truth. Self-contradictory, much?
I think that what most people don't stop to consider is that a belief in relativism-- a claiming of post-truth as the definitive word in our society-- has serious ramifications on the way we live our lives, and on humanity as a whole.
If everyone is determining truth for themselves, since objective truth is evidently irrelevant, then what is the point in establishing laws in society? A criminal could argue that he killed an innocent person because that was what he felt was the right thing to do, and a society that truly embraces relativism doesn't have a solid argument against that. If truth is irrelevant, then an objective sense of right and wrong must also be irrelevant, and the analogy of the criminal is only the tip of the post-truth iceberg, so to speak.
It's a downhill slope that, frankly, I want no part of.
Thankfully, we can be confident in truth-- a Truth that saves, a Truth that brings healing and hope, a Truth that makes sense of this broken world we live in. With this Truth as our foundation, we can stand firm in the midst of a world that is falling to pieces. We can seek and find answers to life's perplexing questions of what is true and what is right. We can live our lives without worry or fear, because the Truth has set us free.
And we can define our own years and lives with much, much better words than post-truth.
Let's not get swept away in society's wave of relativism and post-truth.
Truth is important, regardless of what the world says, and it's up to us to step up and defend it.
"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
// Romans 12:2 (ESV)
"Guide me in your truth and teach me,for you are God my Savior,and my hope is in you all day long."// Psalm 25:5 (NIV) {emphasis mine}
