Truth

By Jonas Brenneman

July 1, 2025

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). —Jesus

What is truth? This question has been asked many times throughout the histo-ry of humanity, and each time it’s asked, it’s a question that deserves at least an attempt to discover the mean-ing of it.

A dictionary will give the definition something along the lines of “being in accordance with the actual state or con-dition of something.” However, the abstract and precise nature of such a definition leaves us wanting a more practical way of understanding it.

One of the reasons we struggle with the question of truth is how we perceive things. We as humans gather infor-mation about the world around us through our senses. We see, we smell, we touch. Our senses are constantly taking in information, and we process it to gain an understanding of the world we live in. Even non-physical concepts are put in terms of the senses so that we can understand, or “make sense” of them. I can say that time is passing by or time is moving slowly, but time is not a physical object that I can see or feel passing by. I accept that it is, but to help me understand and talk about it, I use words that relate to the senses be-cause that is how I process information about my world. The topic of truth is challenging to describe because it is an abstract thing, so we have to find ways to talk about it to make “sense” of it.

Another problem we face in our pursuit of truth is our lack of information. We rarely have all of the information on any subject. Often, we are forced to draw conclusions or make the best guess we can because we can’t get all the information we need. Doctors run into this problem constantly when they have a patient who has symptoms that are not common. But it’s not just doc-tors. Everyone experiences this. What time do I leave for work to get through traffic? Will my car last another year? How will I have enough money for rent next month? So often we make the best guesses we can, but we never have all the information to know with absolute certainty.

Truth can seem elusive since we are limited by how we gather and process information, and by not having nearly enough information. How can we pur-sue truth in a meaningful way where we can objectively say something is true? How do we prevent the subjectivity that comes with every person having a slightly or radically different perspec-tive from the next person? Sometimes it feels like that moment when you’re sitting in a car at a red light and you look over at the vehicle next to you, and you know that either you are mov-ing or the other vehicle is moving, but you don’t know which one.

Truth is the way things are, regardless of how we perceive them to be. The reality of something exists regardless of my right or wrong perception of it. How we perceive things might be weak and often hindered, but that does not change their existence or substance. When I hear the wind pass through the leaves of a tree, I could think that the tree is making the sound, and even per-haps be convinced that the tree is talk-ing or breathing. My perception of the tree is not going to change the reality of the tree or what is causing the sound. Whatever the tree and the wind are, and whatever interaction they have, exists in reality, regardless of my perception.

Jesus made a very interesting claim on the subject of truth. He says that He is truth, not just that He knows all truth, but that He is truth. If we apply the ar-gument that I just made about truth, then Jesus is reality. This is what the Apostle Paul thought too, when he wrote this about Jesus: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or pow-ers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Col 1:16-17). Reality, then, is an outflow and held together by the primary reality, or truth, that is Jesus.

How is this relevant to us, and how does this help us in the pursuit of truth? If we genuinely want to see reality as it is, we must see it from Jesus’ perspec-tive. We have to see humans as He sees them. We have to see the world from His perspective as much as possible. This is obviously difficult, since we are still limited in the way we perceive re-ality. Another way to approach this is by allowing ourselves to pursue truth and knowing that the more we under-stand reality, the more we are seeing it from Jesus’ perspective. If we allow ourselves to follow truth where it will take us, then, eventually we will end up with Jesus. If I hear the wind in the tree, and I seek the reality of it, then it will lead me not only to the cause of the sound, but the cause of the material that made the sound, and the one who made the material that made the sound.

There is still a question that remains: how does truth set us free? I think one of the great weaknesses of humans is how easily we are deceived. We believe something that does not correspond to reality, and the biggest problem is that we don’t know that we are deceived. We think what we believe is true. Scammers and marketers take ad-vantage of this by convincing us of something that may turn out to be the opposite. Deception can very easily hold us captive. Many people are con-vinced that drugs will make them hap-py or likable, when in truth, the drugs are destroying them. When they can finally see the truth, they can be set free. The more we discover truth, the more we are set free from deception and are living in reality as it actually exists. And the more acquainted we become with the One who is truth, the more we see reality as it actually is, and the more we are free to live in that real-ity.