How does one recognize truth?

 Do you ever struggle with feeling like what you have believed your whole life might actually be false? Have you had one of those moments where someone presents the best argument you’ve ever heard and suddenly you aren’t entirely sure of your position anymore? For one, I think it is an entirely normal thing to experience and something to be embraced instead of worried about or pushed away… but I’ll talk about that later. My real question is, in that moment, what do you do? How do you become re-convinced of what you knew before or choose to abandon that knowledge for a new line of thinking?

This week I learned a lot about truth, and what’s even better I learned about how to find truth both in a secular sense and theologically. As a student of Brigham Young University - Idaho I have the absolute blessing of being able to attend classes focused on developing my spiritual education as well as my secular learning. As luck would have it, my religion class was also focused on learning about the family, and this week specifically about how to recognize truth when it comes to the development of the families God would have us develop/establish. In this post I would love to address both ways of finding truth (secularly in regards to social sciences and research, and theologically in regards to my personal beliefs as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).

First, let’s talk about truth in regards to social science research. In my opinion, it seems incredibly difficult to perform research without some kind of bias affecting the results or conclusions of the data. Maybe that is my own personal bias speaking ;) Lack of bias is essential for an honest and accurate interpretation of data. Many times when we form a hypothesis about a situation, we seem to only accept the information or data that supports the hypothesis that we have established. While it is always nice to have information or data that supports our ideas, it cannot come at the cost of seeing the other perspective that may contain the truth as well. What better way to learn something than to have an incorrect assumption corrected?

Another tricky thing about social science is that human beings are incredibly difficult to measure and far from consistent from person to person or even situation to situation.  For instance, how do we measure the love that one person has for another individual? Better yet, how do we measure love in general? Sadly there isn’t a measuring cup for human emotions that has been created to help us collect accurate data (at least that I know of). Instead, we have to rely on the reposts of others about what they are experiencing (referred to as “self-reporting”). These come with their own slew of problems but give us at least something to start and work with. 

Last note on the social sciences side of things: If you are willing to make the claim of having truth, you must also be willing to have others test what you have found to see if it is indeed the truth. We live in a society that loves to poke holes and submarine things that individuals don’t personally agree with. No one has cornered the market of all truth and thus it is important to have some kind of confirmation instead of simply practicing blind faith. However, this can be done in friendly and not destructive ways. One personal thought on this: I believe that everyone has the right to express their own thoughts and opinions. One of my favorite tenets of my faith states that “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.” (Articles of Faith 1:11). I do not think that it is acceptable to force, coerce or frighten others into believing what you believe, or to verbally or emotionally attack those that disagree with what you believe. Loren C. Dunn, in speaking as a representative of Jesus Christ once said: “today we live in times of conflict, dissent, differences of opinion, changes,counter changes, disagreements. There is no need for us, perhaps more than ever before, to reach within ourselves and allow the qualities of mutual respect, mingled with charity and forgiveness; to influence our actions with one another; to be able to disagree without becoming disagreeable; to lower our voices ad build on common ground with the realization that once the storm has passed, we will still have to live with one another.” We cannot expect to find the truth if we never listen to the thoughts and beliefs of others.

Moving away from the secular world of discovering truth, I just want to mention a few things about finding theological truth, eternal, never ending kind of truth. I am so grateful for a God that allows me to be continually developing and deepening my understanding of his ways and teachings. I develop my understanding of eternal truth in a way that can be replicated by anyone, anywhere in the world. There are three lenses by which we look at information: is taught repeatedly in books of scripture, is it taught repeatedly by the Lord’s prophets and apostles and finally is it confirmed within ourselves by the Spirit of God? I mention these because I am also of the belief that these lenses can be applied to the things that I and anyone else learn secularly as well. 

I know that the world is full of confusing thoughts, beliefs, and contradicting truths. I know for myself I have often struggled with feeling as though I will never know the truth. However this past week of learning has given me some hope as to the things I can improve in my journey of discovering truth. I hope this has sparked some thoughts in you as well. Have a phenomenal time learning the truth and I will see you next week! 

-Grace