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,