Truth Walks Naked, Liars Wear Silk
In a culture of 'my truth', 'your truth', speak THE truth.
Although this piece is for anyone navigating this mad world, those who read and supported my article on Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) may find this a kind of sequel. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so now—or afterward. The order matters less than the contemplation.
comfort-culture christians, moralistic therapeutic deism, and some dante
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
We live in a strange, disjointed time. That may be putting it too lightly. Nothing seems to make sense. Lies glitter with allure while Truth is mocked as bigoted and judgmental.
There is no place for truth anymore in the ‘enlightened’ society of the West. She is a dying goddess in the age of falsity.
The ancient deity Truth provides what would be poison to some, and the antidote of all woes to another. With that malevolent spirit, Liar, the outcome is reversed: his draught brings immediate relief to the ill while over time, the cancer spreads secretly.
J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, in the second edition of Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, identify three fundamental laws of logic that any true statement must adhere to:
The Law of Identity
The Law of Noncontradiction
The Law of Excluded Middle1
Yet modern morality has been painted with the brushstrokes of postmodernism, relativism, and pragmatism—three philosophies that lean so heavily into subjectivity that they crumble under the weight of these logical laws. We have not ‘moved beyond antiquated notions of objective truth’; we have simply been tricked, by ignorance or by willful blindness, into swapping truth for falsehood and calling it "true" from a personal standpoint.
If you’ve followed Free to Be, you know the heart of this work: that every person might find lasting freedom in the cross and in what Christ accomplished for humanity.
Why, then, do these ‘isms’ matter? Why not simply live and let live, allowing each to pursue truth as they see fit? Because speaking the truth is what sets us free. Lies lock souls in cages meant for the skies. But lies only hold power if we choose to marry ourselves to them. Truth, even when painful, will illuminate every shadow—within and without. This is the gift of freedom of speech: to speak so that others may encounter transcendent Freedom.
Defining the ‘isms’
Before we press further, let’s define our terms, drawing from Jeff Myers and David A. Noebel’s Understanding the Times, and Moreland and Craig’s work.
Postmodernism claims there are no objective truths. All beliefs are filtered through personal background: education, culture, gender, experience. There is no grand narrative. No right or wrong. Only class struggle and individualized identity.
Relativism holds that truth exists only as it is accepted by an individual or group.
Pragmatism suggests that truth should be judged solely by its usefulness or outcomes, rather than any correspondence to reality.
All three culminate in a worldview steeped in subjectivity, the term I will use to encompass them moving forward.
Christian Postmodernism
There is also a branch of Postmodernism that tries to merge these ideas with Christianity. Christian Postmodernists argue for a "hermeneutics of infinitude" — since we are finite, we must be ‘humble’ in our claims to truth. They warn against what they call "Cartesian anxiety," the fear-driven need for absolute certainty.
But foundationalism, as Moreland and Craig defend it, isn’t about unyielding certainty. It’s about building justified beliefs from self-evident ones. If we embrace the Postmodern Christian idea that evidence is at odds with faith, we are left with the disintegration of theological clarity and the impossibility of meaningful dialogue.
Myers calls this “mak[ing] an idol out of our reluctance,” continuing on, “This is not humility—it is stubborn sinfulness…by claiming that we do not have access to reality as it is in itself but only as we interpret it, we set our interpretations—what we think Scripture means—and what we experience of God over who God has actually revealed himself to be in his Word and in the world. This is far from a humble thing.”2
Myers goes on to describe the devastating reality of a world where any theology is only held as high as personal interpretations. A world where spiritual formation is replaced by self-actualization, improving or reinventing the self as various life seasons demand. “…sin becomes redefined as the disruption of relationships. Our primary problem is not being spiritually dead because of our sin against God, but our incompetence in living in relationship with others.”3 He proposes the following solution in a Christian Postmodernist’s worldview: we need therapy, in all forms. There is no question of rescue or salvation from our destructive and chaotic end, but rather to follow Christ’s “moral example of how to live well with others.”4
Bad ideas have victims
Confucius once said, "When words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom."
We tend to look at history with romanticized hindsight. But freedom always disappears in the wake of rejected reality. Look at the persecution of Christians, the deaths of saints, Roe v. Wade, the legalization of gay marriage, the rewriting of history and the rampant anger and cynicism online.
Truth came—and still comes—but the darkness in our hearts and minds is not easily dispelled. Reason and faith feel like ashamed, dismissed generals, leaving their armies in the hands of enemy forces.
“…the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”5
C.S. Lewis, in his wartime talks later compiled into Mere Christianity, warned: “Religion involves a series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false. If false, one set of actions follows. If true, another entirely.”
When falsity replaces truth, there are personal and universal consequences. Governments crumble. Churches fracture. Art is hollowed. Work becomes soulless. Even grocery shopping feels like stepping into an ideological minefield. Our pursuit of tolerance and open-mindedness has burned down every refuge.
Consider Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, the reigning textbook in many schools. Zinn wrote, “The Constitution... serves the interests of a wealthy elite...” and described patriotism as a tool for manipulation. Whether his claims hold water is beside the point. His work lacks grounding in fact, relying instead on subjective bias and ideological fervor.
"Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out," Chesterton once quipped.
Truth wanders about, desiring to heal all who would receive her cooling touch. But close on her heels, Liar whispers, his foul breath upon the breeze, seeking whom he may deceive. Liar is the antagonist of Truth, the personal servant of Satan, whom Christ names the Father of Lies. For many, Truth’s gracious healing will not be received; rather, they will willingly shrink from her touch, because it feels as a brand of hot iron upon their flimsy and ontologically light frame.
Those few who would walk through the narrow gate, the potent draught would be as an Elixir of Life to their being. It is this elixir which they will drink from in times of uncertainty, in their painful ailments of the soul. It is, rather, just like the Water of Life offered to the woman at the well by Christ Himself. In my study of the gospel of John and 1 John, many statements are made by Jesus of His being the bread, the light, the life, the way. In 1 John, Jesus is described by John to be the truth, and we are to abide in Him.
The fractured self
Subjectivity dismantles universals, but it also shatters the individual. Weight is just a number. Personhood is a choice. Billions of lives spin in chaos because we’ve made identity a variable.
Kenneth Gergen writes about the disorienting effect of modern life: we wear so many masks that we forget who we are. Our personalities are performances. The self is endlessly fragmented.6
Even our very appetites for life are no longer our own—they’re being shaped, redirected, pampered, or mocked by the lives of others endlessly paraded online. From outfits and date nights to weddings, handbags, children, homes, and vacations, we’re expected to adopt entire lifestyles or risk fading into obscurity in this relentlessly public digital age. Everything should be curated to match our desires, crafted to fulfill our deepest dreams—but hold on, what are those dreams? Do we even remember what they once were? Or have we forgotten them entirely, lost beneath the noise of everyone else’s?
The issue isn’t subjectivity anymore
So what, then, is the real issue? Subjectivity, for all its subtlety, is a cunning parasite. It latches on, burrows deep, and while doing so, undergoes a transformation. It cannot remain merely subjective for long; left in that state, it would inevitably self-destruct. No—subjectivity evolves. It must. And we have, tragically, evolved right along with it. We now lie in the very bed we so fiercely insisted on making.
The true adversary? You’ve likely sensed it from the opening lines of this essay: Bold Lies. Brazen, shameless falsehoods have become our formidable foe. Subjectivity was only ever the courier, the vehicle by which we fled from the unforgiving glare of truth into the custom-crafted hell we now inhabit. In Paradise Lost, Milton’s Lucifer—the radiant Morning Star—declares, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”7 That, too, would have been our fate, had it not been interrupted by the miracle of the Incarnation.
The Liar has always been our enemy. But now, more than ever, he sheds the subtlety of disguise. True, he still occasionally dons the deceptive brilliance of an “angel of light” to ensnare the gullible (I explore this more deeply in my pieces on demons and the unseen realm8). Yet increasingly, he appears unmasked: grinning straight into our faces, tapping our shoulders, goading us into unthinkable acts against one another, against creation itself—delighting in our defiance, laughing in the face of God.
The consequences of rejecting a classical understanding of truth have been devastating destruction on a cultural and spiritual scale. The unraveling of the family unit. The erosion of free speech. The fragmentation of the church. All swept away under the tide of so-called progress. Children are handed a thousand liberties in the name of self-expression, but these freedoms often become tools of self-harm. We are sold a dream of self-actualization, but it ends in spiritual decay, feeding a harvest of anxiety that knows no bounds.
To embrace these lies—these synthetic truths, these polished deceptions—is to cling to something lethal.
Beauty is rebelling
But beauty cannot lose. Not in the end.
It fights in secret and in the open. Fights in the hearts of men and women who still have hope for a brighter tomorrow. She fights. In poetry and paint, in symphonies and sunsets. She takes back what darkness stole.
The outcome of blatant lies is also the great overwhelming truth and goodness of beauty, and it can transform us as a society and as individuals. There is no stopping this force, it will ravage the darkness and bring order to chaos.
The arts are beginning to be taken back from the Enemy’s camp, are being renewed from long misuse, or dusted off by being thrust away as the pragmatists would do. Writing, reading, painting, theater, there is great light in these vessels both of human self-expression and worship for the great Creator of all.
Nature shouts its praises, rejoices in the face of all defeat. The skies and seas, deserts and mountains, cannot be silenced as they sing for their Maker.
Looking at the so-called subjective beliefs, it may seem as if this system could lead to anarchy if it were to abide strictly by its propositions. Yet, the real results of this belief system cannot actually be done by its theories because we all must live by logic and truth, not by disordered (and thus non-existent) arguments. Even the postmodernists, open-minded progressives, and rather boring pragmatists cannot help but defend their lies and heinously oppose the truth and all who would stand up for it. Thus, what follows is not anarchy but a dysfunctional, prideful, and colorless society where hate and contempt are the Newspeak of our age.
Truth costs lives; lies cost souls
Our spiritual limbs may grow weary in the face of tall mountains called False Belief and Rampant Lies. But the gospel, the Good News, gives us wings to mount on as eagles, hooves like the gazelle.
As Cacciaguida urged Dante to write, so are we urged to defend the truth, either through argumentation, gentle questioning, or, as many too often forget, by simply being as we ought to be. Living in accordance with our natures as they were created to be in the garden: fruitful, humble of spirit, stewards of the daily and the extraordinary. Detached wanderers in a foreign land, joyfully carrying our earthly burdens because they cannot be as heavy as they would be if we did not have Christ, if there was no hope of eternally giving them up in Heaven’s sweet embrace.
Some desire the truth, some really are seeking. Others, not. Do not throw pearls before pigs. Knowledge becomes wisdom only for those who desire Solomon’s request.
Where truth and empathy meet, peace is possible. There will always be scoffers. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, Swift once sang. But there are many clinging to falsehood not out of malice, but pain. Truth can be brutal, especially when it shatters the only raft keeping someone afloat.
We must speak truth, yes. But we must carry compassion in our hands while we do.
Because truth isn’t just an intellectual problem.
It’s a heart problem.
And hearts need healing more than they need lectures.
So speak the truth. But do it in love.
The world is dark.
But the Light still shines.
Here is the longer quote detailing what each law stands for: “Moreover, an absolute truth conforms to the three fundamental laws of logic, which are themselves absolute truths. Consider some declarative proposition, P, say, Two is an even number. The law of identity says that P is identical to itself and different from other things, say, Q Grass is green. The law of noncontradiction says that P cannot be both true and false in the same sense at the same time. The law of excluded middle says that P is either true or false; or, put somewhat differently, either P is true or its negation, not-P, is true. Note carefully that these three laws say nothing about one’s ability to verify the truth of P. For example, a colorblind person may not know whether Q above is true or false. The law of excluded middle says that Q is one or the other; it says nothing about people’s ability to discover which is correct.”
Myers and Noebel, p. 165-6
ibid.
ibid.
John 3:19
Myers and Noebel, p. 290
Milton, Paradise Lost, Modern Library Ed., p. 24