This I Believe About Truth

Society today says truth is relative. That means that whatever people decide is true then becomes truth for them. So, everybody’s ideas – whatever truth people have defined – are completely equal and equally valid. Everybody is right, and nobody is wrong, even when people believe the exact opposite things. It is, they suppose, a form of tolerance and completely nonjudgmental. As Christians, though, we know that truth is objective and absolute. Truth is a Person: the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who love the truth will love Him. Those who hate the truth will not. This week’s blog is a little different. This week, I’m asking for your help. I have written an essay on truth that I’m planning to use as my example for a “This I Believe” project for my senior high school English class. I am asking you to read my short essay and pray over it. Please ask for God’s anointing so it will touch the students and teachers who read it.  

This I Believe by Angela G

I believe that there is a such thing as absolute truth. That means that on a given issue when people believe opposite things, somebody is right and somebody is wrong. There may be no way to tell at the moment who is who, but that doesn’t mean that everybody is right just because objective reality can’t be proven in the moment. Contradictory beliefs can’t both be right, and therefore, absolute truth exists.

The Story

A few years ago, a dress broke the internet. For days, social media talked about little else. What color was the dress? Was it white and gold or blue and black? People were losing their minds over it. How could the exact same picture be viewed so differently? Even worse, some of the same people who saw the photograph as white and gold one day were dismayed to find that it was blue and black the very next time they looked. What in the world was going on, and what was the actual color of the dress?

The dress, according to those who stood in the very same room with it, was actually blue and black. Through a series of polls, it was discovered that the amount of time a person spent in sunlight determined how much the person assumed light and shadows. Morning/day people saw the dress as white and gold because they mentally subtracted short wavelength light. It’s all very complicated, but the point is that after days and days of hysterical comments, not-so-scientific polls, and memes and jokes, the dress still and always was the very same color it was when the picture was taken: blue and black. There was a right answer and a wrong answer to the question of its color no matter how people’s perceptions said otherwise. Absolute truth exists.

Why It Matters

But why does it matter? What is the big deal if some want to say that they see things one way and some want to say they see things another way? Why can’t everybody be right? And, why does it drive me crazy when people say, “That is true for you but not for me”? I think it is because I love the truth. The truth sets me free to be able to measure my actions against what is reality instead of what is delusion. It’s like the difference between building your house on a foundation of sand versus a foundation of rock. Perceptions might shift and slide, but when something is true, it never changes. It just is. And then I can make my decisions from there.

Absolute truth does exist whether we can know it in a moment or not. Even if people might not be able to access the answers immediately or even in this life, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Truth is truth no matter what people think, and when you find it, you can stop looking. There is a comfort there.

Please Pray

Thank you for taking the time to read my essay and ponder the ideas. I’m planning to present this to the three other teachers who work with me to use as an example to show kids how to write their own “This I Believe” essays. Please pray that the other teachers will use my essay as their example and that all the teachers and students who read it will come closer to knowing and loving Truth. In my lesson, I also included a link to the song This I Believe by Ed Sheeran for the kids to listen to. Please pray that they click, listen, and consider the gospel. Thank you!

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