What is Truth?

Thursday and Friday I had the pleasure of attending a Guilford County Schools seminar on Paideia. Paideia is a way of teaching critical thinking through analyzation and discussion of a text. We began by practicing this with a text by a man named John Stuart Mill called "On Liberty of Thought and Discussion."

As I listened to the conversation, on authority and truth based on the text. The conversation seemed to determine that there was no truth. I asked my fellow teachers where they thought our authority came from if there was no truth? When I am in a conversation with people that I really don't agree with but don't feel as though I can speak my mind, I attempt to display my thoughts by asking questions so they can possibly figure out their own fallacies of thought. In my mind authority is based on the truth that there are those that are older and more qualified than us. It's based on the truth that God places some people over others. If there is no truth dictating authority than anyone can choose to not accept authority or not. Any kid in my class can decide that my authority isn't that which he wants to accept if there is no truth dictating who is in charge. My colleagues didn't see it that way. At all.

We began to further discuss the idea of truth and everyone seemed to reach a conclusion that we base our truth on personal experience, it is changeable, and that people have been wondering what truth was for years. I believe that there is truth and we can know it. If truth is based on personal experience than it is not truth. If truth can change than it is not truth. Truth is fact, constant. One of my colleagues brought up the example of Pilot asking Jesus the famous question, "What is truth?" He mentioned that Jesus never answered, as if to suggest that Jesus didn't know the answer either! In that moment I realized that when Pilot asked that question, he was staring Truth in the face because Jesus is the way, the Truth and the life. That's probably why Jesus didn't answer him, because if Pilot couldn't recognize Truth when it was standing there, what could He have said to show him?



currently watching: Golden Girls