Conversation with Leaders: Dr. Jeff Myers on Truth That Changes Everything
How People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Crisis
This week our conversation is with Dr. Jeff Myers about his new book Truth Changes Everything: How People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Crisis. Dr. Myers (Ph.D., University of Denver) is president of Summit Ministries, a Colorado-based nonprofit organization that equips and supports the rising generation to embrace God's Truth and champion a biblical worldview. He’s one of America's most respected authorities on Christian worldview, apologetics and youth leadership development.
You compare and contrast in your book the capital T “Truth” viewpoint and the lower-case “truths” viewpoint. How are they different and why is that important?
The Capital-T Truth view says that Truth exists always, everywhere, even when we aren’t paying attention or are deceiving ourselves. The lower-case-t truths view says that truth cannot be known by us; all we have are “truths,” stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our experiences.
No matter who we are, we have to grapple with the question, “How do we find meaning in a fleeting life?” If capital T Truth doesn’t exist, then what we think of as real is merely a social construction. There’s no true north—no ground for knowing anything at all. No wonder people today are confused, not just about right and wrong, but about whether reality even exists.
People who adhere to the truths view are growing in number and influence. Why should that concern us?
We’ve reached the tipping point. A majority now believes that truth is up to the individual. Truth is not “out there” to be found; it is “in here” to be narrated. This is what most people, even Jesus followers, believe about truth. In such a world, the worst thing you can do is proclaim a truth. In fact, one study we did through Summit Ministries with the Barna Group found that self-identified Christian churchgoers under age 45 were four times as likely as older generations to agree that “if your belief offends someone or hurts their feelings, it is wrong.” Just 6 percent of young adults agreed that “moral truth is absolute.”
Let’s be clear about what this means. It does not mean that everyone now embraces a gauzy spirit of “live and let live.” Our age is as judgmental as any other. However, we’re judging against a shifting standard. We’re leaning on the Zeitgeist—the spirit of the age—rather than on Truth – as found in Jesus.
The result is fear. Up to 75 percent of the population says that they hold views they are unwilling to share, out of concern that they will be socially shamed or lose their jobs. Our drive to be nice and unoffensive has led to a place where fear, not faith, is winning first place in our hearts.
The majority of the book is about how Jesus followers have changed the world across eight spheres of culture. The understanding of science is one of them. At this moment in global history, faith is under attack often as antithetical to science. How do you address that in the book?
In the conflict over Truth, science ought to be a unifying force. Even those who deny that reality is knowable still occasionally spout slogans such as “Science is real!” when they find its conclusions acceptable to their worldview. But even though the scientific method is a great way of developing knowledge, it’s not the only way to know what is real.
Science is never pure. In fact, science involves the full embrace of failure as a means of gaining knowledge about the physical world. In 2011, researchers at Bayer looked at sixty-seven recent drug-discovery projects and found that 75 percent could not be replicated in their in-house laboratories. Only 11 percent of preclinical cancer research reports studied by reviewers could be validated.
Science was never intended to be the only, or even the most common, way that we know things. It was intended to foster a deep appreciation of God’s invisible nature in a way that leads to breakthroughs that help people flourish. According to historian and sociologist Rodney Stark, of the fifty-two active scientists who made the most significant contributions during the Scientific Revolution, only one was an atheist. Modern science did not rise in rebellion against God; it rose to applaud him.
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