Subjective Truth

No. 8 - 02nd October 2016

I’m thinking of what I was saying last week about the truth. We’ve got a grey cat that has just spent the last week at the vets because of an operation that ruptured and got infected. The fact that she’s a grey cat is absolutely true. Anyone can come and look at her and see that her fur is completely grey. However, when I tell you that she’s a beautiful, grey cat, then we run into trouble. I think she’s beautiful, but you might not. You might hate cats. So when I call her beautiful, that’s a different kind of truth. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” as they say. What’s true for me is not necessarily true for you.

Now that’s fine, as long as we understand that these are two different kinds of truth and don’t confuse the two. During the run up to the Brexit referendum, a lot of politicians were using the same information about the economy and coming up with completely different answers. That’s because their answers were based on their own, very subjective view of how it was all going to turn out. But it still didn’t stop them from talking as though it was the absolute truth. I don’t know about you, but that left me very confused, because I didn’t know who to believe. There was a lot of personal opinion being presented as the truth, and that’s really not a good idea. Because, you’re then left with having to judge the truth based on the character of the politician rather than on the facts. And sad to say, most people have already made up their minds about the character of politicians.

Now, let’s take this a step further. What happens when we start talking about God? What happens when people mix the real facts with their own subjective ideas? Well, rather like the politicians, we then have to judge what is true based on the character of the person who’s speaking, and I don’t mean me. Next week I’d like to talk about a man who was speaking some very hard truths, and I’d like to put them to the test… I’ll see you then. No, that’s not true. I’ll speak to you then.