When I was ten years old, I jumped off a building, convinced I could fly.
Every man has a story like this at some point in his life. You can blame it on the power of cartoons, the undeveloped male brain, or a glaring lapse in parental supervision, but somewhere along the way, I was sure I could achieve liftoff.
I carefully cut out cardboard wings, strapped them to my arms, and jumped off the roof of our garage with my little brother only a few seconds behind.
As you might expect, things didn’t exactly go as planned.
The laws of physics quickly turned against me, and I plummeted to the earth with all the grace and velocity of a bag of hammers. Iron Man, I was not.
I learned something that day that every man learns at some point in his life:
“Reality is what you run into when you’re wrong.”
It turns out that gravity cares very little whether you believe in it or not. You can decide it’s a myth, but that won’t do much to cushion the blow when it grabs hold of you.
And boy, it hurts when it does.
Reality is what you run into when you’re wrong.
Our world is built on laws. On hard reality. We understand this in the physical world; why not in the spiritual one?
Right now, we live in a world that doesn’t believe in truth. Everything is just opinion, and nothing is fact. We are living in what has been called the “post-truth era.”
That’s a problem for us as men. We’re made to lead, but how do you lead if you don’t know where you’re going? We’re made to build, but how do you build when the foundation keeps shifting? We’re made to protect, but how do you protect when you don’t even know what’s dangerous?
At the heart of our problem is how we talk about truth.
For thousands of years, we understood that truth is simply a statement that corresponds to reality. There is a real world, and truth is how we name it.
But today, instead of “the truth,” we’ve started talking about “my truth.” We say things like, “What’s true for you is true for you, but not for me,” or “That’s not my truth.”
In our culture, “truth” has become a stand-in word for “opinion” instead of a name for reality, and it’s one of the deep reasons we’re in such a mess together.
Where do we start?
You might be asking these days, “How do you find truth in a world that doesn’t even believe it exists?”
We start with the words of Jesus.
In our culture, “truth” has become a stand-in word for “opinion” instead of a name for reality, and it’s one of the deep reasons we’re in such a mess together.
In John 14, Jesus speaks with simple, earth-shaking confidence and clarity that our world so desperately needs right now. He says:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 NIV)
Notice how in each statement, Jesus uses “the” before the words “way,” “truth,” and “life.”
Jesus doesn’t say this is “my truth”—an opinion or an option that He believes in that you might like.
He says He is “the truth.”
Clear.
Resonant.
Definitive.
It’s an anchor dropped in a sea of relativism.
Jesus isn’t shy about saying, “There is a real spiritual world, and this is what it looks like.”
And if men want to actually find truth in a “post-truth” world, we must begin with two bold countercultural decisions Jesus is calling us to:
1. Accept that there is a real world and that we live inside it.
A truly brave man in today’s world accepts that truth is not up for negotiation and that our job is not to define it but to find it. We are not the game creators but characters inside it.
I will warn you in advance: People will call you narrow-minded and exclusive, look at you funny, and tell you you’re wrong. In the “post-truth” world, telling someone else how to live their lives is the cardinal sin. Yet it’s the first and fundamental step to actually finding who you are and learning how to live in harmony with how you were created.
Truth isn’t relative, and men will never find the meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in life they’re so desperate for until they realize this first.
There is nothing exclusive about being humble and sober enough to realize you didn’t make the world you find yourself in, and there must be someone or something bigger than you who did.
Truth isn’t relative, and men will never find the meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in life they’re so desperate for until they realize this first.
When you meet someone lost in the woods, there is nothing narrow-minded about telling them the path to get out. For thousands of years, we have known that truth is absolute and that the only compassionate and caring thing to do in a lost world is to be honest about it, regardless of how much it might ruffle feathers.
2. Accept that truth isn’t just an idea, but a Person.
Jesus has already revealed the answer to all of life’s greatest questions—and the answer is Him!
This is how you find truth in a “post-truth” world: courageously and counterculturally build your life around the teachings and example of Jesus.
The road to God, the road to joy, meaning, and purpose, and the road to peace inside your own soul leads directly through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
What’s amazing is that inside His bold statement, Jesus is actually giving us an invitation. He’s inviting us to find the three things every man is desperately searching for: direction, foundation, and fulfillment. Look again at His words:
“I am the way (direction),
the truth (foundation),
and the life (fulfillment).”
If you want to find the right way in this world, the truth, and live the rich and free life you know deep down inside you were created to live, it all begins with Jesus.
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