Have You Been Brainwashed?

Diametrically contrasting viewpoints from so-called (and often legitimate) experts in virtually every field relating to any subject are commonplace, with a plethora of analysts and interpretive gurus offering their take on what you should absolutely believe. The result leaves the average person in an exhausted, defeated heap of confusion, head in hands, thinking, “How can you know what is true?”

What Is Truth?

People should not feel historically unique. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor over the province of Judaea, was a highly capable individual who served under Emperor Tiberius. Presumably, he would have had access to many privileges in this capacity, including significant wealth, a comprehensive education, and highly influential political and social standing.

Yet with all that knowledge and experience, as he was looking at Jesus face-to-face, Pilate beheld truth incarnate within arm’s reach and failed the ultimate test. He revealed his impotent intellectual foundations with his question, “What is truth?” Jesus had just told him that he’d come to testify to the truth (in John 18:38).

I believe one of the main reasons people seem so flummoxed and off-balance today in their understanding of truth is that most of us used to think that we did know what the truth of the matter surrounding the core structures and institutions of life were (family, marriage, gender identity, education, work, headship, duty, the sanctity of life, etc.). When I was growing up, I often heard phrases like “Do the right thing,” “They should have known better,” and “Everybody knows wrong from right.” What changed?

Why Couldn’t Pilate Recognize Truth?

The fact is, Pilate’s rejection of the true God excluded him from seeing and knowing the truth, for the pantheon of Roman gods he likely acceded to could not provide a sufficient foundation for truth. Only by acknowledging the existence of the triune God of Scripture can even the concept of knowledge be exhaustively justified, and only by comparing our thoughts to God’s thoughts as revealed in his Word can we understand if we are even close to knowing whether what we believe is true or not.

Why? Because only the true God of the Bible knows everything, and only a being who knows everything can reveal the truth. If there is even one thing that God doesn’t know for certain, that one bit of knowledge could overturn the revelation of God’s Word as truth! Then you could never know anything for certain. That said, if anyone should ever conclude an opposition to God’s revelation, that conclusion should be automatically discarded as false.

What Happened to Our Understanding of Truth?

The further one’s thinking moves away from belief in God, the more unstable his rationale becomes. Of course, many now have no belief in God at all. But we know that “the fool says in his heart, there is no God” (Psalm 14:1). Atheistic thinking is foolish because it automatically dismisses the basis for truth—God.

Atheism attempts to explain all of existence through naturalistic processes, automatically excluding the concept of a supernatural creator a priori. They believe man is the starting point of reason. The humanist manifesto (the atheist’s written creed) states,

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. Humanism believes that man is part of nature and that he emerged as the result of a continuous process . . . As non-theists we begin with humans not God, nature not deity.1

They self-confess their starting point is from the created rather than the Creator, confirming God’s Romans 1:25:

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.

And even though there are many who would say they believe in God, many have allowed naturalistic philosophies to color their perception of who God is, thus stifling their understanding of truth.

The fact is, the amount of change we have observed in Western society over such a short period could not have happened by sheer accident. So why have so many abandoned the truth of God’s Word? Simply put, they abandoned truth when they accepted a new way of determining truth: science.

Science and Truth

A rather overused phrase today is the all too common: “Follow the science.” It seems more like a throwback to days gone past when the concept of science was held in far higher esteem by the general public, before science was political.

Interestingly, it was secularists who used the idea of science as truth to replace the Christian worldview in the West. Many scientists told generation after generation that the Bible’s account of origins was scientifically incorrect, as it indicated that God had created the world in six days only a few thousand years ago while science had supposedly proven the world had evolved over vast periods of time and could account for all of existence through purely naturalistic processes.

And this new fount of knowledge was then used to call into question not only matters surrounding the age of or the development of life on earth but also biblical values pertaining to ethics and morality as well. This was accomplished through the deceptive use of logical trickery known as equivocation. By lumping in historical science (which attempts to discover historical events by examining observable facts in the present) under the umbrella of operational science (which achieves results based on repeatable, observational experiments), many people concluded that informed guesses about the past were on par with repeatable conclusions demonstrated in the present.

The facts in a murder trial can be legitimately interpreted in a wide variety of ways, but this is not the same as concluding what temperature water boils . . . 

It should be obvious that the facts in a murder trial can be legitimately interpreted in a wide variety of ways (all of which could be completely wrong because no one actually saw the crime taking place, and we cannot repeat the experiment, so to speak), but this is not the same as concluding what temperature water boils at sea level through observational experiment.

There is no interpretive bias in the boiling of water. Regardless of the philosophical disposition of the researchers, all agree that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level. However, all interpretations involving historical science (particularly in the area of ultimate origins) are bound to be interpreted through some kind of biased lens on the part of the researcher.

For example, in a murder trial, the prosecutor will automatically interpret all facts through a lens attempting to prove the guilt of the accused, while the defense attorney automatically interprets the same facts as evidence proving their client’s innocence. The supposed facts don’t speak for themselves; they are spoken for.

Both lawyers have a pre-conceived bias (or way of looking at and interpreting the evidence) before they even take the case. And the fact is, many a guilty-as-charged person has been exonerated with the discovery of new information. Did the truth change? No, because historical science cannot guarantee absolute truth. Meanwhile, water still boils at the same temperature.

When Facts Aren’t Facts

And this is what we consistently see in all areas of historical science. Take the issue of attempting to determine the age of the earth. Here is a quote from a cave specialist describing the interpretive nature of dating Carlsbad Caverns, a cave system in the US containing many stalactites and stalagmites, which were at one time interpreted by evolutionists as having formed over many thousands of years:

From 1924 to 1988, there was a visitor’s sign above the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns that said Carlsbad was at least 260 million years old. In 1988, the sign was changed to read 7 to 10 million years old. Then, for a little while, the sign read that it was 2 million years old. Now the sign is gone.2

Scientists gathered new data over time and updated their estimations. Updates are fine, for they are the way science should work. But which date was factual—260, 7-10, or 2 million years old?

Another example is from Professor Claus Rolfs of Ruhr University, commenting on the accuracy and reliability of the assumptions built into radiometric dating methods. When commenting on the issue of nuclear properties decaying at constant rates in order to determine the dates of various rock samples, he said,

When I was studying physics, my teachers said nuclear properties are independent of the environment - you can put nuclei in the oven or the freezer, or any chemical environment, and the nuclear properties will stay the same. That is not true anymore.3

That’s Not True Anymore

You see, we need to understand that historical science is certainly not absolute. Man’s conclusions about the past are not facts. It’s man’s word versus God’s Word. And just like Professor Rolfs’ conclusion regarding nuclear decay rates, of almost everything people previously knew to be true in society, the culture now says, “That is not true any more.”

• You see, previously, we knew that marriage was the union of a man and a woman, but that is not true anymore.
• We knew there were only two genders, but that is not true anymore.
• We knew human life was precious, no matter what side of the womb it’s on, but that is not true anymore.
• We knew clothing was a covering for sin and shame, but that is not true anymore.

If you ask the average university student in Canada whether they can know anything for certain, the majority will tell you (with certainty) that they cannot.

Correct Thinking

By definition, God cannot make mistakes, and his ways are far above and beyond our ways. His thoughts are perfect, and ours, clouded and plagued by sin, are not.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8–9)

However, the Lord implores us to conform our will to his will by renewing our minds so that we can know his will and walk in it, thinking God’s thoughts and precepts after him.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

And this does not mean that God’s people should all assemble into some kind of mind-numbing mass, all chanting and marching in unison. God has created incredible diversity in people, with differing talents, personalities, and propensities that can serve in harmony while maintaining individuality.

As a practical and spiritual matter, we all need each other and are incomplete as Christ’s body without one another. But bodies are meant to work in unison for a common purpose. As Christ’s ambassadors, we should all strive to think or act in ways that aren’t contrary to God’s thoughts.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27) [Emphasis mine.]

A “Gold Standard”

To spot counterfeit currency, professionals need a standard to reference. Without a true, unchanging representation of what is right (a genuine bill or coin), how could someone know what is wrong?

Some counterfeiters are clever and come very close to the original. But ultimately, they make mistakes. However, there is another way they could be even more effective. If the counterfeiters could replace the original with a fake of their own making, attempts to evaluate genuine currency would fail.

Truth Requires Absolutes

Without absolutes, there can be no truth. Like our counterfeiting analogy, absolutes provide a standard from which a person can gauge truth.

Replacing the True History of the World

To understand the current chaos in the world, one needs to see the situation at a foundational level. Over time, secular-minded people replaced the real history in Genesis with a counterfeit history and slowly dismantled what everyone knew as truth.

If the story of evolution is true, then there can be an innumerable number of genders. If we are just evolved pond scum, why not get rid of the inconvenient, whether unborn babies or people with disabilities? Marriage can be whatever we define it to be because we are the standard for truth, not God.

And now the culture has gone mad, trying to find a standard for truth within an ideology that cannot provide one.

Have You Been Brainwashed?

So how can we know whether you have been brainwashed or not? To know the answer to that question, first you have to have an absolute standard to compare your thoughts to. And I don’t just mean a made-up, arbitrary standard, but an objective truth that transcends man’s opinion. And having done so, if you discover that what you think and believe does not match that standard, then you will know you have been negatively influenced.

Do you believe the world is millions of years old? Do you believe dinosaurs died out long before man existed? Do you think we have evolved from ape-like creatures? Do you think Noah’s flood is just a made-up story? If so, it’s not because of the Word of God, but the counterfeit history taught by the world based on man’s fallible interpretations of origins.

Cling to the Truth

Ultimately, we will all fail to understand everything around us with pure clarity, and have all been deceived at some point in our thinking. However, it is in the knowledge that God’s Word is true from beginning to end and the striving to compare what we believe in accordance with that truth that provides us with the ability to ever attain it. As Philippians 4:8 tells us,

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.