Facts, knowing, and mystery

How do we know something? Do we know it when we have all the facts? Or, is there a more significant knowing? For instance, I might have all the facts about lemonade, but that doesn’t mean I know what it’s like to drink lemonade. It doesn’t describe the purpose of lemonade or why I would want to drink it in the first place.

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Jesus Christ IS the Truth

We’ve been looking at how knowing facts does not necessarily mean we know the truth. As I said last time, truth, in the deepest sense, is when we not only know the facts but understand their meaning and significance.

One definition from the Oxford Dictionary says that truth is “That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.” The truth I’m talking about is how we know reality. This truth transcends human thoughts and reveals divine intentionality. And how we know divine intentionality is found in a Person—Jesus Christ.

When we’ve cut out our souls

Knowing facts does not necessarily mean that one knows truth. Truth can be found in beauty and art and even fiction, while lies can be forged from stainless steel facts.

In my last post I referenced a study by Pew Research that found that most people, especially young people, cannot discern between facts and opinion in the news. 

Can you discern factual from opinion statements?

I read an interesting article from Intellectual Takeout titled, “Pew: 3 in 4 Americans Have Trouble Discerning Between Fact and Opinion” by Anne Holmquist that I thought would be good for us to ponder.

A Pew study found that less than 20 percent of first-year college students are able to tell the difference between fact and opinion. That’s bad enough, but the adults didn’t fare much better. 

Girard and the trajectory of Scriptural revelation

Something I’ve said for a long time now is that you cannot properly understand the Bible without Jesus interpreting it for you. Yet, many Christians read the Bible indiscriminately, as if Jesus never happened. Historically, and even to this day, quoting the Old Testament to justify just about every questionable thing. 

Christianity: The Founding Murder in Reverse

I talked about what René Girard calls the “scapegoat mechanism” that’s alive and well in human beings last time. This insidious desire is at the bottom of what poisons everything. This time I would like to look at what he said about Christianity and how the Cross of Christ exposes scapegoating and reverses the founding murder. 

How human beings poison everything

My tongue is firmly in cheek here, playing off the subtitle of Christopher Hitchens’s book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, but I do want to make a point about this that I believe I can back up with empirical data.

Here’s my logic: There has been much evil done in human history. All of these atrocities involve human beings. Therefore, human beings poison everything.

You will no doubt object to this simplistic