Ethics and Truth in Religion - Essay Sample

Introduction

Jesus approach to truth in this week's passage is that of boldness and perceiving truth as the only way out through any circumstance, however hard. Jesus presents truth as that of a narrow path without many options. According to Jesus, all the truth needed is present in the word of God. When Satan tempts Jesus asking him to turn stones into bread, Jesus responds by a truth that man does not have to live on bread alone but by every word that comes from God (Mathew 4:1-11). Satan is a liar who wants to tempt Jesus by using lies, but he does not succeed since Jesus knows the better truth from the word of God and uses it to challenge him to the point where he gives up and leaves. The approach used by Jesus is helpful to me in ethical issues as a Christian moral worker. With growing civilizations, many are the things that come up which are not morally and ethically correct, but the world will want to make them look okay. Using Jesus approach to judge everything by the word of God before endorsing will be of great help.

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A post-truth approach I witnessed was in one prominent insurance company that needed members to elect their leader. One of the vying candidates used the post-truth approach to get the majority of members supporting. There was one culture in the organization which in real sense was not good for business, the lowering of insurance premiums for big investors as a way of bribing them into insuring with the company. The candidate used this one subject to get to the emotions of people and gave his best in pointing out why they needed to lower premiums for the big investors since most of the members were for it. In the end, as was expected, he won. With him in office, policies had to change to allow some people to pay lower premiums to get into the business. In the end, it was a failing business because as much as they had many prominent investors, the profit generated dropped by a significant margin and was a loss to the organization.

The basis of objective truth is an unbiased claim. When an individual gives up the objective truth, it means that the guiding factor will become the subjective truth which focuses on the preferences, cultural and religious beliefs of an individual to approve something as being true. It will significantly affect the well-being of society as it makes people blind to the reality of what is happening since everyone is sticking to what they think is true. It will also promote deep division in the society as perceptions about things will be on a narrow view of either being right or wrong. People may not always really know what is best for themselves. The reason is that many times there is clouding of our judgment with factors that do not reflect our true identity.

One approach I will use to manage truth from the video is first by acknowledging that there are many possible explanations to different ideas that we perceive as truth, but at the end, there is always one truth that stands out. I will use the video analogy of a mathematics teacher asking a question and getting many answers and in the end justifying why he thinks only one provided answer is the right one (Brett Kunkle, 2014). For instance, if approached with the question of whether the government should do away with female genital mutilation yet it is a rite of passage for specific communities and the only way of identification with one's community. In answering this question, I will start by first affirming its traditional role and then giving my evidence including the risk of infection, painful sex and difficulties in birth as severe consequences and therefore I would support the government in abolishing such traditions that do not value humanity.

References

Brett Kunkle. (2014, November 12). Is Jesus the Only Way? [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iibH_heEfa8&feature=youtu.be

The Holy Bible. (2011). New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan House.