Truth is becoming an increasingly rare commodity in our world. Former US President Barack Obama certainly thinks so. In a speech in July 2018 celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday, Obama took the opportunity to warn against a dire trajectory in world politics. The very idea of truth is being thrown out the window, and in its place, raw power is taking over. Obama identifies various factors. “Censorship and state control of media is on the rise.” Social media has become a tool for “promoting hatred and paranoia and propaganda and conspiracy theories”. People aren’t interested in reasoned debate; we simply “surround ourselves with opinions that validate what we already believe.” And because of this, nobody is calling politicians to account for their lies: Unfortunately, too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth. People just make stuff up, … We see the utter loss of shame among political leaders where they’re caught in a lie, and they just double down, and they lie some more. Politicians have always lied, but it used to be if you caught them lying, they’d be like, “Oh, man.” Now they just keep on lying.Barack Obama, “Obama’s South Africa speech, annotated”, The Washington Post (ed. Eugene Scott, 17 July 2018) This is Obama’s take on the world. Truth is dying. And this situation may well have serious consequences for us all: in fact, it may destroy democracy itself. Obama’s warnings ring true, don’t they? Unfortunately, it’s hard to see what can be done about it. After all, for at least half a century in schools and universities throughout the West, the idea of “objective truth” has been relentlessly dismantled and ridiculed. Generations have been taught that there are really no objective standards of right and wrong that apply to everyone. This idea has had its day. Truth is an individual thing. What’s true for me is different from what’s true for you. This is why there’s something a little strange about hearing a twenty-first century thinker and leader such as Obama talking about the loss of objective truth, almost as if it’s a new thing that’s happened since he left office. The idea isn’t new. But Obama is right, because there is something new. This loss of objective truth has permeated so far that it’s now starting to have serious consequences for the way we run our society. The students of the postmodernists have grown up and become majority voters and world leaders. They’ve learnt their lessons well, and they’re now running the world, with social media as the perfect tool for running it. They’ve learnt that there’s no such thing as objective truth. That means, logically, that there’s no such thing as a lie. The voters simply listen to the leaders they like to hear, and the leaders understand that their words are simply tools to achieve their goals of power and influence. Power, not truth, wins the day each time. The gospel of Jesus Christ stands in stark contrast to this situation. The gospel is itself a claim to objective truth. And it’s a truth that stands above us all. It’s a truth that humbles us, disciplines us, and severely limits our designs on power. We are all held accountable to this truth. And we can hold others accountable to the same truth. It’s not that there’s one truth for me, and another truth for you. There is a truth for us all. This means, of course, that there are lies. And Christians, says Paul,