You've heard them . . . those declarations about about truth, God, and spirituality that dare you to question them.
The statements tend to fall into two opposite camps. Depending on who you’re talking to, they sound something like this:
That may be true for you, but it’s not for me.
Truth depends on the individual.
All religions teach basically the same thing.
Or this:
The Bible says it; I believe it; That settles it.
Jesus is the answer.
All you need to do is have faith.
Both are extremes of new-speak about truth that—if you take issue—will get you promptly labeled as either brainless or faithless.
Although spiritual correctness sounds really spiritual, it is seriously not correct.
The Questions Go with You
But why worry about this while pursuing a life of your dreams?
Because the “big questions” go with you wherever you wander.
Even if you don’t care to face them, they’re there, and eventually they’ll raise up and demand an answer. When they do, you’ll want to be ready, so your sense of purpose and direction don’t fall apart.
Even better, if you’re proactive in addressing the issues, you’ll discover a confidence for whatever you do that takes you farther, and helps you endure the trials longer, than you otherwise would.
So, let’s look at the problems with each extreme.
The True for You but Not for Me Incorrectness
This could also be called the “hey, everyone’s opinion is true” incorrectness.
Usually taken by people who want to be politically correct as well, the logical problems with this position are enormous.
To use an illustration: If you’re facing another person, the direction “left” to him is “right” to you. Left and right depend literally on your point of view. And it’s fine to base your grasp of directions between the two of you that way.
But if you want to get to Philadelphia from Atlanta, you better know which direction is north and which is south. If you think they’re interchangeable—or that they depend solely on an individual’s point of view—you might end up in Tallahassee.
You’ll even hear people at times make a tolerant-sounding statement like “there’s no such thing as absolute truth.” This is usually an attempt to make it feel okay to do or think whatever you want. Yet, the statement disproves itself.
“There’s no such thing as absolute truth” is a claim that there is at least one absolute truth—namely, that there is no absolute truth. The statement can’t be true because it says of itself that it’s not true. We’re left with the fact that absolute truth must exist.
The Blind Faith Incorrectness
The strange thing about this position is that it's usually assumed by those who claim to be strong believers in a personal God, and yet it is based on a worldview fostered by those who tend not to believe in God at all.
Behind the thinking is a false dichotomy between rational thought and faith. “Science” is often used as the opposite of faith. Apparently, science is thoroughly reasonable. Faith is not.
Faith is construed to require an illogical leap in order to believe something. Yet, that is conspicuously not the case.
Reason can lead us to a conclusion that something must be true even if we can’t fully explain or “see” what it is.
For instance, atoms were theorized long before the electron microscope made them visible. Logical observations led scientists to conclude that there must be something like atoms.
The most profound example of this is our own existence. There’s no reason for us and our universe to exist without outside input.
In fact, nothing should exist on its own—not cars, houses, tractors, dogs, or cats. Yet we observe that each of those things has somehow come into being.
We rightly observe that anything that has come together like a car had to have been designed and built by someone. No chance happening caused the parts to form and fall into place.
Likewise, the universe.
A similarly reasonable observation suggests that it was made [by someone]. Just because we can’t imagine how big or capable that someone would have to be in order to create the universe doesn’t justify not believing that someone did.
The universe is still a thing. And things get made by someone.
That’s logical. We deduce it because we’re rational observers, not because we have to take a leap of faith to arrive at the conclusion.
Where Do You Stand?
To align with either extreme is to drift along in your thoughts pretty much like everyone else, and that’s not a particularly good path to Different. You want to stand on your own—not the predilections of others—for every part of life.
A handful of my previous blog articles help with various approaches to grasping reality in order to support a confident life of Different. If you haven’t already, you might want to check these out:
Whatever you do, avoid the incorrectness.
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*Photo credit: Samantha Sophia on Unsplash.
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Next week:
More good things about taking the rewarding,
but not necessarily easy, path.
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