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TranscriptOver the last several decades our culture has moved from valuing fact to valuing experience. Along with this has come the relativization of truth, especially religious or spiritual truth. We see some examples of this in the commercials that are on TV and the internet today. Often times the commercials for a product don’t even show that product; they tell you nothing about that product.What they are showing you is some type of positive experience or something that’s funny and the hope of course is that this memory associates with the product, because the brand or the product name is on the screen at the same time you’re having this positive encounter with the media. Then, when you go to the store, you think more positively of that product due to that previous association. What the commercials aren’t telling us a lot of times is that “such and such” works better than some other product or how much it works better or why it works better. Because today we’re much more moved by experience than we used to be but back in the 50’s and the 60’s. Back then, commercials were more likely to discuss the merits of a product, like “This certain cleaner cleans ____ percent better than some other cleaner”. A lot of times this was presented by someone in a white lab coat or someone dressed like a scientist. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that this wasn’t also an appeal to experience. But, there was a different consideration, at least facts were attempted to be presented and it was the facts that were compelling. Now, we see that things are much more targeted at experience. This doesn’t just affect commercials, it doesn’t just affect media, it has also come to affect how people view the most important type of truth which is religious truth. Often times today you might tell someone that, “Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. No man comes to the Father but by him,” like John says. That person might say, “Well, that’s true for you,” they’re not going to say, “No, that’s wrong,” depending on the person. They’re going to say, “That’s true for you.” What do you do with that? And, what’s behind that statement? Behind that statement is what’s called a subjective view of truth. Now, you’ll notice that the heart of the word subjective is “subject” and a subjective truth is a truth about a subject, or a person. This is a truth about that person, that person believes that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven… for them. Since subjective truth is about a person, there can be as many different “truths” as there are people to believe them. Something could be wrong for you but right for me in the same circumstances or something could be right for you and wrong for me. “Jesus might not be the only way to heaven for you but maybe he just is for me.” At least that’s the type of reasoning that takes place when you view truth subjectively. Now, the other type or view of truth would be objective truth and just like subjective has subject as the main part of its word, objective has “object” as the main part of its word. An objective truth is a truth that is grounded in a thing or an object. All of this sounds really stuffy and philosophical and it is philosophical but I hope you see, based on where we started this conversation, that at the heart of objections to the gospel, a lot of times our philosophical ideas, even if the person doesn’t recognize that they’re doing philosophy or doing it poorly. Nonetheless philosophy flows through and undergirds all of the thought that is out there today and by understanding a little bit about philosophy we can know better how to approach people with the gospel and deal with their objections.Subjective truth is truth grounded in a subject, it’s about how someone feels; it’s what they think that’s all that m…