Three Questions

Here are three questions.  They are simple, easy to understand questions.  They are not so simple and easy to answer.  If you feel adventuresome this Monday morning, take a moment to pause and consider your own answer to each of them before reading my thoughts.

The questions are:

What is true?

What is real?

What has value?


The order of the questions is important - we can hardly establish what is real or has value if we don’t know what is true.

So, how did you do?  Were you able to answer each question in a way that satisfied your curious mind?

It isn’t easy, is it?  That first question, “What is true?” is especially difficult.  We live in a pluralistic society that embraces a variety of sources of authority.  In our western culture, the weightiest source of authority is science and technology.  It is easy to see why:  the contributions of these two areas of study are overwhelming our ability to assimilate the data.  Mysteries about the makeup of our natural world, the cause of disease, and what is “out there” are being answered.  We can control and manipulate processes and organisms and conditions like never before.  We can verify and nullify hypothesis at an unprecedented rate.  But does this explosion of information equate an understanding of what is true?  Or is just observations about what is true?

As valuable as this data accumulation and analysis is, it is limited to that which is empirically observational.  In other words, we must be able - in some way - to see and measure what is happening.  That is fine for data in the physical, material world but what about data in the non-physical world - the realm of ethics, morals, and even emotions and belief systems?

If we struggle to answer, “What is true?” we will also struggle to answer, “What is real?”  Is the Easter Bunny real?  Santa Claus?  Unicorns?  I believe the general consensus is that none of these is real.  How do we know?  Well, they are material beings and therefore should be observable and measurable.  To date, though, there is no empirical data to validate their existence.  They don’t exist.  They aren’t real.

That brings us to the final question - “What has value?”  On one hand, the answer to this question will fluctuate greatly because it is a matter of personal taste and interpretation.  What has value to me (a motorcycle) may not have value to you (you may see a “donor-cycle”).  But let’s contextualize the question in light of the first two questions about what is true and what is real.  IF we can answer those two questions, will they not inform us of what has value?

If we understand that truth and reality are not limited to the empirical (there is something beyond the material, temporal world), then the nature of that truth and reality will influence what I understand to be of value.  Our challenge, though, is to be certain that there IS a non-material, eternal reality out there.  How can we possibly know that?  (Is your brain starting to hurt a bit?  That’s OK - pause here to refill your coffee cup.)

Fortunately, there is a bridge between the perspectives of material vs. non-material.  We can know about the unobservable because of an observable reality that is well documented.  It is a moment in human space-time history known as The Resurrection.

“Ha ha,” the skeptic will chuckle.  “You are using non-empirical mythology to create an artificial connection to the ‘real’ world.”  

Not so.  Yes, the source of our knowledge of the resurrection is the Bible.  But if we use the standards of science, the empirical processes of textual analysis and criticism, we must - as most textual experts will attest - accept that the Bible is an historical document.  There are tens of thousands of textual fragments that validate the historicity of the Bible as a historical document.  The question is not whether or not we have a reputable source of information, the question is whether or not we are going to accept the contents of that historical document as valid.

This is where philosophical worlds collide.  There is no question the historical evidence of the text plainly asserts the truth, reality, and value of the resurrection.  What are we going to do with that?  Option “A” is to dismiss it because we are going to dismiss the historicity of the documentation surrounding this supernatural event.  This means we also have to go against centuries of science that establishes the validity of ancient texts - not just the Bible, but also texts like Homer’s “The Iliad” or the “Code of Hammurabi.”  If we accept their historicity by scientific analysis, then we must also accept the historicity of the Bible.

Option “B” is that we can accept the facts as presented in an authenticated historical document.

Somehow, we find that hard to do.  Despite the overwhelming historical evidence and validation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the majority choose to dismiss it.  Why?  Because to accept this as truth, as real, and as having value also means we are acknowledging the reality of a God to whom we must be reconciled.  We must acknowledge that this reconciliation must be on God’s terms.  It means we must embrace the truth, reality, and value of faith.  

If Jesus rose from the dead, then everything we thought we knew about what is true, what is real, and what has value changes.

He did.  It does.  How then, are we going to answer the three questions?  It is worth getting yet another cup of coffee and thinking about that . . .

Graham Bulmer
Lead Pastor
graham@q50community.com
Graham and Sharon Bulmer bring many years of pastoral, teaching, leadership development and administrative experience to the Q50 Community Church plant. They served in Latin America as missionaries for almost 15 years, and have pastored here in Canada.