Ep. 50: Knowing vs Understanding Truth

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, INDOUBT audio world, this is Andrew Marcus here, and listen, we’ve got a fantastic program for us today lots to dive into. We have Steve Kim, who’s our good friend of ours from Apologetics Canada. He’s going to be joining us today in studio, and we’re going to be talking about your truth, my truth, and listen, we hear this a lot in young people and culture today.

Well, that’s your truth, man. Or this is my truth. This is what I believe. Well, this is the reality. There’s only one truth. And so we’re going to dive into what truth is and how we can best engage in conversations when people bring this up.

We have Brendan as well, who is our ministry friend. He’s joining us. We hope you tune in and we hope you enjoy today’s program. God bless.

Well, we have Steve Kim all the way from Apologetics Canada. How are you doing, buddy?

Steve Kim:

Doing great.

Andrew Marcus:

This is awesome, man.

Steve Kim:

Good to be here. I’m back in the Promised Land where…

Andrew Marcus:

Come on.

Steve Kim:

It doesn’t freeze over.

Andrew Marcus:

Yes, yes. You’re away from Alberta. What is it freezing there right now?

Steve Kim:

Actually we’ve been having a really mild winter.

Andrew Marcus:

Okay.

Steve Kim:

Normally around this time as we’re recording this, normally around this time there’s snow on the ground and it doesn’t go above zero during the day, but it’s been almost like Vancouver. I’m like, “What?”

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, interesting.

Steve Kim:

So I’m going to enjoy it while I can.

Andrew Marcus:

Absolutely man. Talking about your truth, my truth. I’ve heard this many times from all kinds of people. We’re a young adults podcast and a lot of young people are wrestling with these realities of what the world is telling us, but it goes beyond just young adults.

This is a language and a theology that many people are hearing and talking about. And so when we hear this, where do you think this theology came from? This idea of like, hey, your truth is my truth. Your truth is your truth. My truth is my truth.

Steve Kim:

I think there are different streams of thought that went into this. Some people will, in the world of philosophy, might point to Immanuel Kant, and I mean, the guy was a Christian, but some of his philosophies were like, okay, there is the real world out there, but we can’t really know it directly.

It always comes mediated through our senses and those kinds of things. And so there is that idea that starts to develop there in philosophy where, okay, there’s the real world, but we can’t know it directly. And then as that thought starts to develop later, you have this, well, there’s only interpretations of what is real, what appears to us. And so all you have are these conflicting interpretations of reality rather than… So nobody really knows what’s real.

And then there’s the sort of other, more the religious side where it’s some of that influence from more Eastern philosophies like Hinduism. If you go to India, they’re very relativistic about it.

And a lot of people there are very comfortable with holding two or three, four different beliefs that are straight up contradictory, and they’re comfortable with that because they come at it with this notion of nobody has the full truth. Everybody has bits and pieces and so on and so forth.

Andrew Marcus:

Interesting. And it reminds me, talking about contradictions, the last episode we did with Buddhism.

Steve Kim:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

I just had one more question about it because maybe this is connected.

Steve Kim:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

But you talk about how when people are suffering, they’re supposed to go through that suffering, but we also want to do good deeds and help.

Steve Kim:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

How does that work if it’s like someone helps someone from suffering, but they’re supposed to suffer, then you’re interrupting.

Steve Kim:

Yeah, that’s a bit more on the Hinduism side of things, but yeah, one of the darker sides of karma… The reason we love karma is because, I think I said this last time, that it appeals to our sense of justice. So we love that.

But at the same time, if you take it to its logical conclusion, there’s no room for compassion because when somebody is suffering, that person is paying off the karmic debt, all the evil stuff you might say that he has done in past lives.

So if you’re suffering and I step in to help you, I’m actually getting in your way. I’m not doing you any favors.

Andrew Marcus:

So then how does that work? Like as far as… I know we’re kind of a little bit on that side tangent, but I’m just curious, how does that work if someone wants to do good deeds?

Steve Kim:

Well, you’re just going to have to…

Andrew Marcus:

But, you can’t.

Steve Kim:

Well, that’s a little bit difficult. I mean, it’s not that Hinduism has no room for compassion. I mean, obviously you want to do good, but it’s just going to have these, I mean, at least from my perspective, it’s going to have all these conflicts of interest, if you will.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, for sure.

Steve Kim:

Somebody needs to suffer, but you want to do good. But there may be other things where you’re doing good, where you’re not necessarily alleviating somebody’s suffering, right? So I don’t know, you want to just give a nice gift to somebody. I mean, that’s not necessarily alleviating somebody’s suffering. So there might be room there, but…

Andrew Marcus:

It’s interesting. I mean, going back to relativism or going back to just how easy it is to have contradict… Like everything, it’s just really hard to land anywhere, and it just causes so many young people just confusion and it’s chaotic.

I just saw a post on my Instagram of someone showing that Kim Kardashian won Man of the Year for GQ Magazine 2023. And I’m going to read you a couple of little things that it says on this because I just thought it was very interesting and crazy.

Steve Kim:

Wait, are you serious?

Andrew Marcus:

I’m not even kidding. And it shows her with a picture of a messed up, a raggedy suit with a bag of Cheetos.

Steve Kim:

Nice.

Andrew Marcus:

So first of all, that’s what…

Steve Kim:

Bag of Cheetos.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Love Cheetos.

Steve Kim:

Explain that one to me. What does bag of Cheetos have to do with manhood?

Andrew Marcus:

Being a man? We’re about to find out. We’re about to find as a man, I love Cheetos, but that’s about it. So it’s this raggedy picture. She’s having Cheetos, she’s standing by the water cooler. It’s like so ridiculous, raggedy.

But this is relativism. We’re going to be talking about this obviously today. Relativism the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context and are not absolute.

And so when we blur the lines and there’s no absolute, now we have someone with a bag of Cheetos and that just qualifies them as man of the year.

Steve Kim:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

I don’t understand. Wow, that’s just crazy.

Steve Kim:

Groundbreaking.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s crazy.

Steve Kim:

It’s inspiring. Or they would say it seems crazy to you, but it makes perfect sense to us. I mean, that’s sort of the relativist thinking. I find that people hold to relativism for different reasons.

See, when I was growing up, for those of you who didn’t know, I grew up in South Korea with lots of Buddhism around me and all that kind of stuff. And so in my family, we had this bit of a split. Some of us were Catholic, others were Buddhist. And so our sort of attitude, especially from the Buddhist side of my family was, well, basically you do you.

You believe what you believe. We believe what we believe, just kind of it’s all relative kind of thing. And so I find that there are a couple of reasons, a couple of motives behind that. One is they just want to be left alone. I don’t want to talk about this.

And it’s a roundabout way of saying that. Some other people, when I came to Canada, it’s even more diverse in terms of worldviews and whatnot. And I find that people here just generally want to be, yeah, there are some of that. I don’t want to really delve into this. I’m not interested in this. So it’s a way of pulling out of the conversation.

But then also you want to be respectful, right? Because people often identify themselves with what they believe. And so to sort of attack, even to use a stronger word or to question, to use a softer word, what somebody believes, you’re basically attacking or questioning that person.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, because their identity is in what they believe.

Steve Kim:

So yeah, I do find that there are a couple of different motives and a lot of young people when they say that and older people too, actually, there’s some of that there in the background.

Andrew Marcus:

I can see that being like a, Hey, we just know drama don’t offend anyone. We just want to-

Steve Kim:

Don’t rock the boat.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. So what happens when you go down that road though of your truth is yours. Mine’s mine. I mean, I understand the respectfulness of Canadians wanting to just, Hey, we want to be good. Where are the dangers when it gets into relativism or tribalism or what happens in that world?

Steve Kim:

Well, one problem is that when there is no sort of objective truth, and it’s just your truth, my truth, it does divide people. It becomes tribalistic.

Everything is supposed to be relative and equal, but the reality of it is it never stays equal for long. There will be power struggle. If everything is relative, there’s no absolute truth or objective truth. At the end, it’s going to turn into might make’s right.

And so I think that’s why we see in our culture right now, there’s a lot of this tribalistic back and forth, protests everywhere because it is boiling down to might makes right.

Whoever shouts the loudest, whoever is more aggressive about it, that’s the view that’s going to be exposed, and that’s the one that’s going to sort of sway the culture.

Andrew Marcus:

Interesting. We see that a lot. That’s happening a lot. We have truth available to us. Let’s walk through what the Bible defines truth. When we did our last series last year on Buddhism and Mormonism and different faith backgrounds, we understood what they believe are their truths. But as Christians, what would the Bible tell us about truth? How would the Bible define truth?

Steve Kim:

Yeah, that’s a great question. Let me first get at it. I want to get to that question, but I want to come at it from way over here first. Yeah, do it. So truth, how does it work? We use that word a lot, but what does it even mean? So this is how truth works.

This is called the correspondence theory of truth. So basically the idea is, well, let’s do it this way. Why don’t you guys tell me something that is just blatantly not true?

Andrew Marcus:

Brendan has a wonderful mustache right now.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

Right? Yeah, yeah. It looks so good. I love the curls.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Thanks, man.

Steve Kim:

But that’s interesting what you did just now, right? So let’s think about this. How did that work just now? We said Brandon has this nice mustache, right? And we know, remember-

Andrew Marcus:

I love how you say mustache, by the way, way more elegant.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

The mustache. Mustache.

Andrew Marcus:

The mustache. Sorry. Now I actually, can believe that it has curls. It’s like Marcus’s.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

The curls gives me the-

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, come on. He had the best curls ever. He shaved it.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Dude, his curls were huge.

Andrew Marcus:

They were huge.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Yeah.

Steve Kim:

But it’s interesting. I mean we were all laughing about it because we can clearly see it’s not true. But then you did something really interesting, to see whether that’s true or not. What did you do? You just started feeling for it, right?

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Wait, did I? Is it gone?

Steve Kim:

Yeah.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Good.

Steve Kim:

And so that actually says a lot about how truth actually works, because a truth is a matching relationship between a thought or an idea or a statement. And then what actually is the case. If it matches, we call it true.

In this case, this statement, Brandon has a nice mustache. That statement doesn’t match what is actually the case. So we know that’s not true.

Andrew Marcus:

And then he fact-checked.

Steve Kim:

I fact-checked.

He fact checked. But then if Brandon were to actually have that, I hesitate to say mustache now. I’m a little self conscious. Have the hair up there on the upper lip.

And then that statement matches what actually is the case. And that’s true. So that’s the same thing. Now when it comes to different religious views or worldviews, really, I prefer to say worldviews because everybody has worldviews and religion really. I know religion is a really kind of a difficult concept to define. It’s notoriously difficult.

But I found this definition really helpful that religion is a take on reality. Religion is a take on reality. So Christians, we have our take on reality. Buddhists have their take on reality. Muslims have their take on reality, so on and so forth. A Buddhist will say, you actually don’t exist, and we’re caught in this cycle of reincarnation, samsara, and we need to detach from the world, cease to that sort of thing.

We all talked about that last year. And Christians of course will say, well, Jesus Christ is the son of God who came to save us from our sins, and now we are adopted into God’s spiritual family and we’re going to inherit his kingdom, so on and so forth. So it’s a take on reality. So the question is, does that take on reality actually match what is the case?

Now, then that starts to open up all kinds of doors. So that’s how truth works. So truth is by nature exclusive. If, if the Buddhist view of the world is true, then Christianity’s take on the world is false. It doesn’t match what actually is the case and vice versa.

Andrew Marcus:

So you’re saying there can only be one truth.

Steve Kim:

One truth.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s really hard for a lot of people probably to swallow.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Yeah, it’s so interesting you pitch that, which makes perfect sense.

Andrew Marcus:

Totally.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

But it’s so incredibly uncomfortable and pushed against

Steve Kim:

Uncomfortable, yeah.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

For many people.

Steve Kim:

It makes you sound arrogant. Totally. You have it right. I can understand that. But the reality of it is I have reasonable confidence that my worldview is true. Nobody knows things. There are very few things in the world that with a hundred percent certainty.

A lot of the times in my line of work, I might hear an atheist friend say, well, you say God exists, prove it. So my question immediately is, what do you mean by prove? Because if you are talking about it in terms of a hundred percent certainty, you’re not going to get that with most things. I mean, other than very few things like, I exist, or something like that.

I mean, in philosophy we talk about these sorts of things where how can you prove that the world didn’t pop into existence five seconds ago with the appearance of age so that we have food in our stomach that we didn’t eat and it just popped into existence five seconds ago? Well, you can’t disprove that, but you also have no good reason to doubt that this world is actually older than five seconds, that sort of thing.

And so I’m reasonably confident that my view is true, but I’m not a hundred percent certain. I could be wrong, and everybody’s like that whether they realize it or not. And so sometimes I feel that it’s a little bit, maybe unfair is not the right word, but I think it misses the mark when people say, oh, you’re arrogant because you think your view is true.

But the reality is everybody thinks their view is true at some level, and that’s why we need to dialogue to hash out what’s going on here.

Andrew Marcus:

Man. Okay. So I wonder, we’ll get to the biblical what the Bible says about truth, but what are some words of wisdom or advice that for Christians to not sound arrogant?

Steve Kim:

Yeah, I mean, for one, I think we need to understand the difference between logical certainty and psychological certainty. Logical certainty is something like, well, two plus two equals, I mean, the answer is-

Andrew Marcus:

Easily five.

Steve Kim:

Yeah, I know, right? You’re draining all hope I have and faith I have in education.

But yeah, that’s a logical certainty. When you have two and two together, it has to be four. But that’s different from psychological certainty. Somebody can be psychologically super certain, like say a Christian can be super psychologically certain about her faith, but really when you actually examine what she believes, it might be a little bit more tenuous than that, right?

So it’s helpful. I mean you can be psychologically super certain, but when you are actually talking to somebody, just leave that room open, that possibility that you might actually be wrong.

All that you need is really have good reason to believe that what you believe is true. And so when you’re dialoguing, and then this is the really critical part, like I said last year on Buddhism, just you need to do a lot of listening, rather than just saying what you believe.

You actually want to investigate what that person believes, and that’s going to open up and actually try to understand it rather than just kind of listen to it so that you can use it as ammo to fire back. But you actually want to understand.

And often what I try to do is when somebody says something, I’ll try to paraphrase it and give it back to that person to make sure that I got it right. And I’ll ask, did I get that right? Is that a fair description of what you believe? Is that accurate? Because that person then feels heard.

That person feels like I actually am taking what he’s saying seriously. And if I’m wrong anywhere, he can actually correct me. So it is a benefit to me. But one thing that we need to keep in the back of our mind is that to understand something is not necessarily to accept that view.

So you don’t have to worry about, am I compromising my beliefs by entertaining these thoughts? No, you’re just trying to understand it.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. That’s a good word. That’s a good word. Okay, so what does the Bible say about truth?

Steve Kim:

Yeah, so earlier I said about how truth is this matching relationship between a thought idea or a statement and what actually is the case. And so what that means is this, what really is the case?

Or we might say reality is the thing that determines the truth, not the other way around. We can try to have this spiritual constipation and just try to make this real that Brendan actually has this mustache, but that’s not going to happen. It’s not really-

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Technically they’re hair follicles, aren’t they? You could make a case that I have a mustache right now.

Steve Kim:

So then that’s a matter of semantics. Right now we’re trying to define what a mustache is.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

It’s a bit of a reach, but that’s how people operate.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s how people operate.

Steve Kim:

Yeah, that’s true. And so, hey, that’s true.

Andrew Marcus:

I was going to say, is it?

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Prove one. Provide one example next.

Steve Kim:

So what determines truth there is what actually is the case rather than what we’re saying, what we’re thinking. So we can’t think or believe our way into making something true.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s interesting.

Steve Kim:

When we come to the Bible, what we see is a picture of reality where God actually creates the world. Again, just because I talked about Buddhism last year, this is an example that I often use. Buddhism teaches that all of this is an illusion, whereas Christianity teaches actually, God created the world and it is real and it is good.

And you can actually know reality. That’s how God built us. He built us in such a way that we can have right relationship with God with one another and with nature, God is a God of rationality, order, not of chaos and confusion, and he’s a God of love. So he has our best interest in mind. And according to that, we actually have the capacity to know him one another, have this loving relationship with everyone and steward his creation.

Now, what I love about Christianity though, that it goes beyond that. Even that truth is not mere correspondence between our thoughts and reality. It’s actually a living person, John 14:6, “Jesus, I am the way, the truth and the life.” So in Christianity, it goes beyond truth, goes beyond just mere information and mere data to a living person. And I think that actually fulfills a lot of this longing within our hearts.

Andrew Marcus:

All right, so what role does the Bible attribute to personal experiences in shaping one’s understanding of truth and how does that relate to this broader concept of objective truth?

Steve Kim:

Yeah, that’s a great question. What I love about that question is there’s two things. There’s truth and there’s understanding the truth.

And I think there’s a lot there because it is one thing to know a proposition, it’s another thing to actually understand it and actually have some appreciation for it. So I think of Job, for example, right? Job is famous for, he’s really a symbol of suffering, but he’s more than that. He is not just a symbol of suffering, he actually comes out on the other end.

So if you were to ask Job at the beginning of the book and say, job is God good, what do you think he’ll say, right? Yeah, of course he’s good. In fact, the accuser or the enemy comes along and that’s his challenge to God. God says, have you considered my servant Job? He’s a righteous guy. And Satan’s like, ah, you make things too easy for him. Let me have Adam. And then God gives him permission to actually bring suffering.

So with all the, if the enemy is right, God has been really good to him, made life easy for him. So if you were to ask Joe, is God good? He would’ve said, yeah, he’s good. But then he goes through all that suffering, his entire family is dead.

And then the one remaining family member, his wife is chastising him and just not a very good support. And his friends come and I think his friends did one thing right. The first thing they did was to sit with him and just weep in silence. And I think, but then they go on to theologize and you must have done something. Wrong job. I’m like, no he didn’t.

Andrew Marcus:

They did a great job until they opened their mouth.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Just sit down and shuddy.

Steve Kim:

So Job is constantly, right, I want an audience with God. Why is he doing this to me? And then God shows up. What does he do? He doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions. And he’s like, where were you? He just shows up and his majesty is enough to shut Job’s mouth.

But now he has understanding because he says, I am so sorry, Lord. I spoken to something that I had no knowledge of and things like that. And God’s like, I’m not done with you yet.

And he goes on further. But it’s interesting. At the end, God is angry with the friends who were theologizing and said, go to my righteous servant Job. He’s the righteous one. He’s going to make a sacrifice for you. You guys spoke into things with ignorance and he’s, he’s angry with them.

But having said all of that, all of that to say at the end of the book, if you were to ask Job is God good, he’ll say, yes, the answer will be the same, but his understanding of that proposition will be completely different.

And so there is something about, yes, there is truth there. I mean, it doesn’t change the fact that God is good, but what does that mean? And that’s where our experiences can really speak into things. And we could say much the same about the Book of Psalms, right?

Because really unique about the book of Psalm is that whereas all the other books in the Bible, God is the main character. And this book is all about the human response to who God is and what God does. And so I think there is something really important to be said about personal experiences that shape our understanding of the truth.

Andrew Marcus:

And do you think there’s some dangers when people lean more towards personal experience?

Steve Kim:

I guess it depends on what we mean by lean on our personal experiences. I remember I was having this conversation on Facebook years ago. I had a friend from Bible school and she says something and I, about her experiences, and I responded to it in a certain way, and a third one joined in, this guy who was actually quite angry with me.

He was like, you can’t tell her that her experiences are wrong. And I was like, okay, well I apologize. I’m sorry if I caused any offense. And then later I kind of sat back and thought about it. I’m just like, no, that’s not right at all.

Experiences can’t be wrong. Experiences aren’t the sort of thing that can be right or wrong. Experiences just are, experiences just are. But what can be right or wrong is what you make of your experiences. Right.

Andrew Marcus:

Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining us in the program today. All the best. We’re really grateful for your ministry.

Steve Kim:

Well, thanks for having me. It was great.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcasts. We hope you enjoyed it today.

Feel free to check out Indoubt.ca we have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.

Well, hey INDOUBT listeners, I want to let you know about something that’s very exciting, Dr. John Neufeld from Back to the Bible, Canada released a new book called In All Things, and it’s all about God’s providence, his meticulous sovereignty in our lives, fantastic resource for you, especially during these times.

And so for the month of January, if you go to Indoubt.ca, you can get a copy at a discounted price, $5 or the ebook for free. Go to Indoubt.ca and get your copy today.