I’m Following My Truth
The statement attached to this post is an incredibly widespread sentiment in today’s culture, and it is a huge reason why Gen Z has largely rejected Christianity, which promotes the notion of personal truth tailored to the preferences of the individual in favor of the truth. It’s usually used in a context where it’s meant to be empowering, like “it doesn’t matter what the haters say because I’m following my truth,” or “girl, never let anyone keep you from pursuing your dreams and following your truth.”
For the concept of “your truth and my truth” to be, well, true, necessitates the idea that what is reality for Person A is not necessarily reality for Person B. In other words, what’s true for me might not be true for you.
This does not make logical sense. Something is either true or it isn’t. If you woke up at 2:00 PM, you can’t hold the opinion that you actually woke up at 6:30 AM. If your friend accuses you of stealing his teddy bear-shaped honey graham cracker bites, and you passionately deny such an outrageous and unfair accusation, can you both be right? No. Only the person whose opinion lines up with the cold hard facts can be right.
It is worth noting that truth is different from opinion–people can have subjective preferences that differ from one another, and that happens all the time. Maybe I like vanilla ice cream best but you prefer chocolate. Neither of us is wrong because it’s based on individual tastes. Or, perhaps I think the most fulfilling career choice would be engineering, but you think the occupation that leads to true human flourishing is an exciting life spent as a receptionist in a dentist’s office. Again, are either of us incorrect here? You might say Michael Jordan is the greatest NBA player of all time, and I might favor LeBron James…I think you get the picture.
Right then. This is all well and good, but what does it have to do with Gen Z’s less-than-gangbusters enthusiasm for God? Glad you asked. This your-truth-my-truth discussion is pertinent because it is often the root of Gen Z’s mindset when they disregard the Gospel message. They may think that it’s great following Jesus works for some people, but personally, He just doesn’t fit into the plan they have laid out for their lives. They have their own truth to pursue, and followers of Jesus have theirs, but both paths are equally valid. Sounds reasonable enough, right?
I don’t think so. Both paths in life cannot be equally valid. One can be right and the other wrong, or I suppose both can be wrong, but they can’t both be worthwhile endeavors. They are diametrically opposed to each other. Jesus Christ made a lot of exclusive statements. He said “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). He went on to say that nobody comes to the Father–and by extension eternal life and abundant living–except through Him alone. Jesus Christ said that He was God in the flesh, here to seek and save the lost, and the only way to live an abundant life is to follow Him.
Scripture testifies to the fact that all have sinned, all are on their way to spiritual decay and later spiritual death, and all are in need of a savior to bring the forgiveness of their sins.
You see now that the person who rejects this message and the person who accepts it cannot both be correct. By virtue of what the Gospel says and what alternative lifestyles/philosophies/religions say, one has to be mistaken, and therefore both are not equally valid. Jesus wasn’t simply this great teacher that some can choose to follow if they so desire; He was either a liar or He was who He said He was. I will later discuss at length why I believe the latter is true, but for right now I am trying to establish the idea that such a thing as absolute–or objective–truth exists.
I cannot stress enough: truth is not subjective. It does not exist relative to the whims of the individual; rather, it exists and stands firm despite the whims of the individual. If someone were to disagree with this, I would not blame them. I said in another post that Gen Z has grown up in a culture of moral relativism, and I meant it. But even if someone were to disagree with what I just said, I promise you that in practice, they don’t actually.
As a general rule, I’m sure you believe some actions are better than others. Which is better, grabbing an old lady’s purse and smacking her in the face with it, or donating money to an organization that conducts research on a cancer cure?
Yes, this is a stupidly absurd example, but it nonetheless demonstrates my point. We all know the second option holds more moral value than the first. Everyone but the goofiest of philosophy majors would acknowledge this. The same principle applies to these instances: it is better to remain faithful to your wife than to cheat on her. It is better to feed your child than to let them starve. It is better to turn the wallet in at the police station instead of keeping it for yourself. It is better to let the pedestrians finish their trek down the crosswalk instead of mowing through them with your car.
Once we have agreed with these as objective statements, we must reject the philosophy of your-truth-my-truth because under its logic, one may say “I think murder and rape are bad, but I won’t tell you you’re wrong if you’re in favor of them! To each his own!” No, there is something deep within us, something powerful and innate, that helps us distinguish right from wrong. And though it is within us, we receive this standard for morality and goodness from something that is separate from us–something, or someone, outside of us. This is the law of God.
The law of God is written on the heart of every human. Gen Z is no exception, even amidst the culture of subjective morality and “do whatever feels right as long as you’re not hurting anyone else” in which we have been steeped from early teenhood onward. These things may do their best to pull us away from God, but His law remains a still, small voice in our soul, convicting and pruning. We can try to smother it. We can ignore it so frequently that it no longer feels like it’s there anymore. But we can never extinguish it.
I’ll put it this way: one of the biggest ways God draws us into relationship with Him so that our purpose may be fulfilled is by placing within us a knowledge of right and wrong. This law of what is good and bad is embedded inside us whether we believe in Him or not.
Romans 2:15 makes this evident, telling how those who are not yet believers “show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness.” It is this knowledge of God’s law that allows us to see how deeply short of His glory we fall–how much we have disobeyed and rebelled against Him. Without it, we would have no comprehension of the idea that we require a savior in the form of Jesus Christ so that we may be made right with God.
Do you see now why this mindset of subjective truth rather than an objective one set by God has been so spiritually devastating for Gen Z? It has allowed us to concoct any value system we wish, thereby making it impossible for us to live unethically, as we are living according to our personal definition of virtue.
This leads to a gargantuan feeling of emptiness, which unsurprisingly is something my generation suffers from a lot: emptiness, along with the persistent, nagging feeling that you are not all that you could be–this feeling that you are amounting to nothing, or at least nothing productive or worthwhile. The reason for this is because on some level, we are aware that our behavior is not aligning with God’s will. We are aware that we are disobeying Him and falling short of His glory.
I firmly believe this feeling is present within every member of Generation Z, even among the most adamantly atheistic and God-opposed individuals. It creates a sort of existential tension stemming from the innate knowledge that we could be living better…knowledge that we could toss aside the counterfeit truth we’re pursuing to pursue the genuine truth. In this way, the law of God written on Gen Z’s hearts beckons them into purposeful living. All they have to do is listen.
Before continuing, I must stop for a moment. The words I have just written are likely as grating as nails on a chalkboard for some readers. It would be foolish of me to assume there are no objections to what I just stated. Moreover, I can hear at least three major disagreements to the claims I’m making as I write this.
The first of these is if morality is divinely sourced from God, then why do we, on an individual and cross-cultural level, manage to adhere to such drastically different moral codes? You would think, if there were one Godly source from which we receive our morality, we would all be in agreement as to what is wicked and what is good.
The second of these is that it is far too simplistic and rigid to follow a God-established binary of right and wrong. The objector then may go on to say that if someone needs an invisible sky-daddy to tell them how to be a “good” person, then there’s no hope for that individual.
The last of these objections is that any semblance of unity we do have in our morality is instilled within us not in a spiritual sense but in an evolutionary or survival-based sense. This means that our moral values and ideas of truth come from an instinct to assimilate with everyone else so our “tribe,” so to speak, does not abandon us.
I understand these concerns, but I do not find them convincing and still adamantly maintain that Gen Z’s conscience is proof of God, His holiness, and His desire to draw us closer to Him. With that said, I will address the aforementioned objections one-by-one in the next post.
