The limits of proof

“Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what He did [raising Lazarus from the dead], believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done” (John 11:45-46).

I wonder if the apostles were shocked to observe this turn of events, to realize that even incontrovertible proof is no guarantee of winning people over.

We see in the incident of the raising of a dead man named Lazarus that it divided witnesses into two camps as far apart from each other as east from west. There were those for whom this most astonishing feat ever performed by a man clinched the deal and convinced them that Jesus’ claims about Himself were true. But there were the others for whom even ironclad proof was to no avail. It is not that they didn’t understand what had happened to Lazarus; it is that they understood and yet dug in their heels to reject truth.

The book that changed my life in the early 1970s was The God Who Is There. Within those pages, on an airplane returning from Europe, I read Francis Schaeffer’s analysis of what has happened to truth in the course of European history. The book opens with the statement: “The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth.” I was chilled inwardly by his diagram of “the line of despair,” drawn with alarming precision at about 1890 in Europe and 1935 in the United States, in which Schaeffer posits that thinking since those dates is by and large conducted by men below the line of despair.

It is not possible within this short column to unpack all of Schaeffer’s reasoning, but suffice it to say that due to man’s rebellion against God in the areas of philosophy, psychology, and the arts, he has inadvertently undercut from himself the very basis for speaking and holding to truth. Man finds himself still having to think and to make true-or-false statements about things but with no real warrant for doing so. This leads to relativism and mysticism and all kinds of nonsense and mischief.

And may I add grief, on the part of the remnant (consistent Christians) who still hold to real truth—as I wonder if Jesus and the apostles felt grief in their day by the baffling rejection of plain evidence on the part of those who, rather than being won to Jesus after Lazarus’ raising, went off to report Jesus to the religious leaders.

I feel this grief in a personal way when the ironclad proof of evil behind the doors of Planned Parenthood (what was long suspected but that no one had the “goods” on) is manifested in undercover videos, so that the God-fearing man rejoices that justice will finally be done—only to find that the government does not care about the truth and has decided to continue financial support to the organization. I feel this grief in a personal way when a candidate for the presidency is caught lying time after time and it makes no difference to her supporters.

We are, as Francis Schaeffer said, operating in a time when our neighbors’ conversations take place below the line of despair, in an age where truth has perished in the marketplace and relativism reigns. And if this was so in 1968 when he wrote the book, it is all the more so now.