The Search For Truth

godshadow.jpgI have long since strug­gled with my role in the search for truth. I often won­der whether truth is even a fea­si­ble con­cept to be grasped, and dur­ing this time I resorted to rel­a­tivism to explain what I per­ceived to be a futile effort. After all, why keep search­ing for absolute, foun­da­tional truth when such an item does not even exist? I was bro­ken, con­fused, and I was left hope­less in a search for what appeared to be noth­ing. Thank­fully this was only short-lived. I found the most con­so­la­tion in the work of Rene Descartes. While some of his obser­va­tions were ten­u­ous, his desire to elim­i­nate dead dog­mas from his con­scious­ness inspired me to do the same.

“Sev­eral years have now passed since I first real­ized how numer­ous were the false opin­ions that in my youth I had taken to be true, and thus how doubt­ful were all those that I had sub­se­quently built upon them. And thus I real­ized that once in my life I had to raze every­thing to the ground and begin again from the orig­i­nal foun­da­tion, if I wanted to estab­lish any­thing firm and last­ing the the sci­ences.“1

From mod­el­ing Rene’s pur­suit, I then learned of what it meant to have an exis­tence in such a mas­sive uni­verse. The study of prob­a­bil­ity the­ory con­cern­ing the exis­tence of life led me to shy away from such nat­u­ral­is­tic con­clu­sions. Slowly, my exis­ten­tial under­stand­ing of man and his pur­pose was erod­ing away. It was then left to answer if “God” was a per­sonal or inper­sonal force; was he out to get us or was he for us; and also whether he had any desire to relate to us in a under­stand­able form.

The Search For A Per­sonal Creator

The con­cepts under­ly­ing Deism (that God started the uni­verse but has since had no involve­ment) seemed irrel­e­vant at best and hor­rific at worst. Why would God cre­ate us only to leave us to our own devices? It seemed incom­pat­i­ble with sound rea­son, and I real­ize it was a posi­tion often accepted out of neces­sity by sci­en­tists or other skep­tics who couldn’t explain their cos­mol­ogy any other way but admit­ted to a designer.

The idea of God as a per­sonal force (con­tra Bud­dhism, Dao­ism, and other East­ern thought) found the most appeal to my philo­soph­i­cal con­clu­sions. The God appar­ent in monothe­ism seemed the most log­i­cal and intu­itive (with the premise that the exis­tence of God is intu­itive [Rom 1:18–20]). Only the God of Chris­tian­ity appeared to answer the ques­tions I had loom­ing in my mind. To real­ize that God desired not only to make him­self known but also known in a per­sonal way is a very intrigu­ing and com­pelling thought.

The Con­tin­ued Search For Truth

While abbre­vi­ated, the search for truth I con­tinue to strug­gle with. My friend, Aaron Shafo­val­off, said one of the most provoca­tive things I’ve ever heard (Chris­t­ian or non-Christian). Para­phrased, he said that if some­one pre­sented him a log­i­cal, rea­son­able proof that Chris­tian­ity is false the he would hope he would have the intel­lec­tual hon­esty to aban­don it. I was taken a back to hear such a claim! But the resound­ing truth of the state­ment pro­pelled me to con­tinue search­ing for truth.

The Bible doesn’t not start with an proof of God’s exis­tence per se, but through­out the Bible God’s exis­tence is defended through mir­a­cles, prophecy, and self-revelation. One needs only to read the account of the Exo­dus, con­quest of Canaan, res­cue from exile, and most impor­tantly the sac­ri­fice of Jesus the Mes­siah. Jesus gave mir­a­cles, apol­o­gised from the Old Tes­ta­ment of him­self, and even appeared evi­den­tially to his fol­low­ers as a proof of his exis­tence (which Paul uses as a defense of the res­ur­rec­tion in 1 Cor 15). It seems as though God wants us to search for him and wor­ship him in spirit and truth.

“‘Come now, and let us rea­son together,’ Says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are as scar­let, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crim­son, They will be like wool.’” (Isa 1:18)

  1. Descartes, René, and Don­ald Cress. Med­i­ta­tions on First Phi­los­o­phy. Indi­anapo­lis: Hack­ett Pub. Co, 1993. pg. 17 [Back]