Thinking in Christ — Issue 7

Truth Is Not a Preference

"Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth." (John 17:17)

A statement can wear the clothes of a fact while carrying only a feeling. "It rained yesterday" can be checked against what happened. "Rain is miserable" cannot be checked against anything but the speaker. The first says what is. The second says what is judged, preferred, or felt. The difference between them is not small, and it is not a trick of grammar. It is the difference between a claim that answers to reality and a claim that answers only to the one who made it.

Therefore learn the distinction, and learn it as real work. A fact is a statement that can be verified against what is, whether by observation, record, or witness. An opinion is a judgment, a preference, a value, or a feeling about what is. Facts can be wrong, and when they are wrong they can be corrected, because there is something outside the speaker against which they can be measured. Opinions cannot be corrected in the same way, because they report the speaker's own heart, and the heart will always agree with itself. To call an opinion a fact is to demand for a feeling the authority that belongs only to truth. To call a fact an opinion is to dismiss what is, because it is unwelcome.

So ask for the evidence behind a claim. Ask what was observed, what was recorded, what witness stands behind it. Ask in what context the statement was made, and how far it reaches. A claim about one instance does not settle a claim about all instances, and a statement quoted out of its context may say the opposite of what its speaker meant. Such questioning is not hostility. It is stewardship of the mind. The first case in a dispute sounds complete until it is questioned (Prov 18:17, paraphrase), and a claim that cannot survive the question "how do you know that?" was never a fact. It was a feeling, dressed for the courtroom.

Likewise, weigh the source. A witness with something to gain will shape the telling. A report passed through many hands will carry many hands' fingerprints. None of this is new, and none of it is a reason to despair of knowing anything. It is a reason to be careful about what is received as settled. Evidence corroborates. It confirms, it checks, it exposes the false report. But evidence is never the foundation on which faith stands. God's testimony about His Son stands first (1 John 5:9-10, paraphrase), and a mind that makes evidence its foundation will move its faith every time the evidence shifts, because it has built on what can be revised rather than on what cannot.

Yet here the deeper difficulty must be named, and it must not be softened. The confusion of fact and opinion is not usually an accident of poor technique. Often it is a refuge. An opinion called a fact gains authority it has not earned, and a fact called an opinion loses authority it cannot afford to lose. The heart loves this exchange, because it lets a person keep what he prefers while appearing to have proved it. The heart is deceitful above all things (Jer 17:9, paraphrase), and a deceitful heart loves language that deceives, because it lets the speaker seem to have stated what is while having committed to nothing but himself. The lie is older than any newspaper. The devil does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it (John 8:44, paraphrase). Every opinion dressed as fact follows that lineage, whether the speaker knows it or not.

Therefore there is no neutral sorting of facts from opinions. A mind can learn every technique in this lesson and still sort wrongly, because the sorter is not neutral. The mind is either conformed to this world or transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom 12:2, paraphrase). Apart from Christ, the understanding is darkened and alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase), and its most careful fact-checking will still serve a darkened end, because the mind doing the checking answers to itself. It will call its own opinions facts and God's facts opinions, and it will do so with perfect sincerity, because sincerity is a property of feelings, not of truth. A deceitful heart can be entirely sincere about the deceit it loves.

In Christ, every thought is taken captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5, paraphrase), and the distinction between fact and opinion becomes service rather than self-defense. The mind no longer needs its opinions to be facts, because it no longer needs to survive its own verdict. It can say, "This is what I judge," and then submit the judgment to the Word, which judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12, paraphrase). It can say, "This is what is," and then let the fact stand even when the fact costs it the argument. A captive mind can afford honesty, because its life is not staked on winning the sentence.

This brings the matter to Christ, where it must come. He is not merely a teacher of true things. He is the truth (John 14:6, paraphrase), and His Word is truth (John 17:17). Therefore truth is not a category the mind constructs, and it is not a preference the heart votes on. Truth is a Person, and His Word is the measure against which every claim is laid. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32). The freedom here is not the freedom to hold any opinion and call it equal. It is freedom from the need to dress opinions as facts, because the mind has found the place where facts are settled and opinions are judged.

So practice the distinction, and practice it under the Word. When a claim arrives, ask first whether it states what is or what is judged. Ask for the evidence, and weigh the witness, and check the context, and name the scope. Do all of this diligently, because a careless mind is not a faithful mind. Test all things, and hold firmly what is good (1 Thess 5:21, paraphrase). But never ask the technique to do what only the Word can do. A well-sorted opinion is still an opinion, and a well-evidenced fact is still not faith. Evidence corroborates; it does not found. The foundation is God's testimony about His Son, and the sorting of fact from opinion is sound only when the sorter has been taken captive by Him.

Let the distinction, then, do its true work and stop there. Let it expose the opinion dressed as fact. Let it protect the fact dismissed as opinion. Let it name the judgment for what it is, so the judgment can be submitted rather than enthroned. Let it receive correction from the Word, which alone is truth. For the mind that answers to itself will always confuse what it feels with what is, but the mind taken captive to Christ can tell the difference, because it has met the Truth, and the Truth has set it free.