I still remember the time when I taught a lesson to a group of young people about absolute truth. I was 19 or 20 years old at the time, and the church’s youth pastor allowed me to teach the middle school youth group one Wednesday evening.
One of the girls in the group (approximately 7th grade) blurted out her opinion during the lesson. It wasn’t a disruption; It wasn’t disrespectful. It was in response to a question I posed to the group. And she said:
“Something can be true for you and not true for me; something can be not true for me and true for you.”
I was shocked. I suppose I had heard that there were people who believed what this girl was saying, but I don’t think I’d ever met one in person before. As time went on, I would learn that this girl was not alone.
The problem with this view is a philosophical one. And it’s usually called the Law of Non-Contradiction. The idea is that something can’t be true with its opposite (or negation) also being true at the same time. For example, it cannot be simultaneously true that there is a cat on the back porch and that there is not a cat on the back porch.
Now, this is usually non-controversial. I’ve never met anyone who would fail to apply the Law of Non-Contradiction to math or science. In school, no matter how open-minded my teachers were, none of them ever claimed that 3+3 equals 6 andthat 3+3 also equals 7. I’ve also never seen a zoological situation where “dogs” were also “giraffes,” nor a chemistry class where the “protons” were also “electrons.” In fact, if there were teachers like that, I’m not sure what the point of quizzes or tests would be. It seems any answer would be unfalsifiable, and there would be A+’s all around. That is, unless an A+ is a C- to you. Come to think of it, in such a class, I suppose each kid would need to simply request the grade that is true for them.
As ridiculous as that last paragraph got toward the end there, I will point out that this kind of thinking has crept its way into religious beliefs, and even into churches. There are plenty of otherwise reasonable people who will claim that all religions are valid and equal paths to God.
There are people (even people who attend church and claim to be Christians!) who will say that Christianity and Buddhism are both true, and that it may be beneficial to go by both of them at the same time.
While this comes across as insane to many people, I believe there are several different factors (other than insanity) that might motivate people to say such things, and here are four of the big ones:
1) Conflict Avoidance
For example, I can imagine a group of Freemasons sitting around their lodge saying things like, “We don’t argue about religion here. All religions are equally valid paths to the same Supreme Being.” It seems to me that a big reason for saying this in that context would be to avoid disagreements among group members. And, yes, that policy will cause a conflict to be avoided… but that doesn’t make the claim true.
2) Compassion
This one is difficult for me to relate to, but it seems a sizeable group of people believe that using the label “false” on something that one of your friends believes in is somehow hateful or harmful to your friend. These past ten years, we’ve seen this practice all over America as some people refer to some of their male friends as “women” as long as those friends believe it and request it. However, for some reason, we don’t believe this extends to anorexia. If our very skinny friend believes that she is fat, no one believes it is compassionate to play along with her delusion. In fact, in that case, for some reason, we believe it is actually loving to tell her the truths that contradict her current beliefs.
3) Ignorance
In some cases, it could be that some people simply don’t know that Christianity teaches that there is a Creator God, and that Buddhism teaches that there is not a Creator God. Those things can’t both be true. But I suppose in some cases, a person could simply not know that the claims between Christianity and Buddhism are mutually exclusive.
4) It’s an Excuse to Not Commit One’s Life to God
I would imagine for some people, theoretically believing in all the “gods” (or all the religions) helps you to feel good about not committing to a particular God to whom you owe all your loyalty.
So, these reasons make a lot of emotional sense for many people, even if they don’t make logical sense.
The problem is that believing something for emotional reasons rather than logical reasons can be very costly. Imagine if your doctor says that you have cancer, and you simply wave it off by saying, “That’s only true from the doctor’s perspective. That’s not truth for me.” You may die earlier because of lack of medical intervention. Similarly, if your uncle is abusing your daughter, and you say, “Well, it’s true for her, but it’s not true for him” you may allow illegal activity to persist, and it may end up destroying your daughter’s life. Lastly, if you keep insisting that your Aunt’s Trudy’s practicing of Hinduism (or Atheism, etc.) is something that you should never breathe a word of contradiction about, you may be helping pave her way to hell.
It’s important to apply to Law of Non-Contradiction to all of the areas of our life, not simply the ones that we find emotionally convenient.
