The Journey of Truth as Tourism

This month we continue to respond to the excellent articles being posted on the Lausanne Global Conversation site about pluralism and the struggle to understand truth. This is a key topic and was the focus of our book - Through the River.

Today we want to highlight one of the official responses to the article by Krish Kandiah who serves as executive director of Churches in Mission for the UK Evangelical Alliance. What I love about the response is the use of the analogy of tourism to talk about our truth journey. This ties in so well with our analogy of going through the river of relativism as people interact with truth.

In this response the author challenges us in two key ways:

1. There is a challenge not to be "tactless tourists" that simply ignore what those searching for truth are going through and demand that they understand truth the way we do. Here is a quote that I love, "The tactless approach to pluralism can lead the church to retreat into arrogant absolutism." This is so true. What we have seen as we have studied the way people view truth is that many fight away the uncertainty of relativism through arrogance. This is easy to understand because people are trying to reduce the uncertainty around them but it is a huge mistake because it makes Christianity so irrelevant to the larger community who is struggling with truth.

2. There is also a challenge not to be "reluctant tourists" that cower in the face of the pluralistic approach all around us. In our book we call the "reluctant tourists" the "island dwellers." They live out in the river of relativism on sandy islands where there is truth but it is completely personal. Unfortunately most believers in the West live in this world of personal truth where there are no bridges to others. I agree with this great quote from that section, "A fast-food message cannot compare to the nourishment offered by a local flavoursome organic church." What a powerful way to combat the idea that truth can no longer be anything but personal. In our book we talk about a third way that is very compatible with how this article approaches the subject. We talk about a humble approach to truth that is derived in relationship to God and in community with believers.

Our prayer is that this global conversation hosted by Lausanne will be a catalyst to bring that kind of truth discussion to the forefront.