It can fairly be said that we are currently living in the twilight of truth. We live in a world of half-truths, manipulation and deceit which has made truth hard to find. This is interesting given that our Christian heritage once provided a culture of valuing truth. Fortunately, some in society have retained enough memory of Christian morality to not abandon the concept of truth entirely. In fact, it can be said that our current secular society is parasitic on its Christian heritage for its claims of tolerance and justice… whilst simultaneously undermining these ideals by promoting meaninglessness, moral laxity and lack of absolutes. This is a pity because the best that secularism can offer society is a list of rubbery rules that lack any real concept of ‘right.’

As the West free-falls away from its Christian heritage, it still retains some subconscious knowledge of the Christian ideals that have underpinned its legal system, its hospitals, its education and its legal system. This Christian culture is still vaguely present in people’s psyche but is all but invisible to them because they have swam in it for so many centuries — just like a fish swimming in water doesn’t know it is wet. In reality, most people in the West can’t conceive of truth, or good, or have a concept of value without instinctively drawing on their Christian heritage. Despite their excursion into postmodern ideals of relativism and the scorning of meta-narratives such as the Bible, most people in the West do not fully appreciate the level to which they are still influenced by the values of its once Christian culture.

But now, society is marching into a future without Christianity, it does not know the significance of where it is going. What will a future without God-guaranteed values look like?

The indications so far are not promising.

If the best prediction of the future is the past, then we should have real concerns. Societies that have cast off Christian values almost inevitably collapse into some sort of abusive totalitarianism that dehumanizes and devalues people. It has consigned millions to starve to death in its pursuit of communist collective ideology; it has murdered people in gas chambers, and littered “killing fields” with bones in Cambodia. At a societal level, history teaches us that humanism inevitably transmutes to inhumanism despite the ideals of its secular opinion leaders and philosophers.

Despite this, the West is now blindly stumbling towards an atheistic future, banning Jesus from its schools, from its politics, and from its laws on sexual morality and marriage. Forgive me if I am not optimistic about this. It is difficult not to feel a little bleak as a new generation emerges that does not its identity or what it is that guarantees worth and hope.

So, what does this mean?

It means this: There is an urgent need for our nation to repent, to discover its true purpose, true value, true meaning and true hope. It is time to again look seriously at the claims of Jesus. Jesus said:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6).

I reckon that’s motive enough for you and I to check out who Jesus is and what his message of hope was.

And it is significant that you can check it out. Why? Because Christianity is evidenced based. It centres on Christ Jesus, a man whom even non-Christian historians in the first century, such as Tacitus and Josephus, wrote about.

So the Christian hope is not just wishful thinking. It is not a philosophical analgesic someone dreamed up to make them feel better in the face of the inevitability of death. It has at its heart, the love of God, the initiative of God and the presence of God amongst us as Jesus.

Christian hope is therefore a future certainty grounded in the reality of Jesus.

There is not much hope without the truth of God, is there? The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, popularised the idea that “God is dead” and attacked all doctrines which he considered to drain life’s “expansive energies.” (This probably helped explain why he went mad he died – probably of syphilis in 1900.) Without God, his “life expanding” comments didn’t amount to much. He said:

“In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.”

So, when you are tired of the deceits of humankind and feel ready to embrace truth, check out the hope that Jesus’ death on the cross has won for you.