Doubt, Deepfakes, and Divine Truth

It’s getting harder and harder to know what’s true and real these days. A few weeks ago, my wife and I were watching TV when a commercial came on for a travel booking company. The actors looked a bit odd to me and seemed...not human. I commented that the actors were AI. My wife disagreed. She said, “No, I recognize that guy as playing in certain movies.” So, I went to the source of truth for most of us these days, Google. Turns out some of their commercials and actors are AI-generated. I was right….sort of.

The next week, we saw another commercial for the same company. This time, my wife told me she had looked it up. Apparently, most of their international ads use AI-generated people—but that one actor we saw was a real person. Who can keep up?! Is it real? Is it fake? It is hard to tell these days. AI is amazing when used properly and will scare you to death when in the wrong hands. 

Every day of our lives we are saturated with news, information, and data. We must have some sort of frame of reference to evaluate information against to determine if it is true or not. We have watched our culture over the past decade or two continue to promote truth as relative. Relative truth is the belief that truth changes based on an individual’s understanding of it. With relative truth, there are no absolutes and what may be true for you may not be true for me. Your truth can be your truth, and my truth can be my truth. But that’s not how truth works. 

For something to be true, it has to be absolute. It has to be the same for all people, in all ages, in all places, for all time. In other words, it has to be universally true for all people for all time. This means there has to be some sort of a standard we look to as our source of absolute truth, right? A standard being that which everything else is compared to or measured against. For those of us who are followers of Christ, we believe that standard of truth is God. Jesus made a very bold claim in John 14:6 claiming that he is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus could make this claim because He is God and truth originates from God's character.

Truth Originates from the Character of God

God is the standard of truth because of who He is:

God is Eternal

It is hard for us to get our minds wrapped around the eternality of God. We exist in time for a time and everything in our lives has a time component to it. But God is not bound by time. God created time but He exists outside of time because He is eternal. He always has been and He always will be.

Psalm 90:2

Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God.

The good news of the gospel is anchored in the eternality of God. It wouldn’t be good news if we were not eternally rescued from sin and separation from a holy God. What guarantees eternal life is the eternality of God.

God is Unchanging

In theological language, we would say that God is immutable. Immutable means unchanging over time but it also means unable to be changed. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8).

Malachi 3:6

6 “I am the Lord, and I do not change.

The one thing that seems to be constant in our world is change. People change, cultures change, times change, languages change, technologies change. Change is happening all around us every day, often at a speed that is not very comforting to us. But God does not change. I don’t know about you that brings a wealth of comfort and confidence to me every day. His mercies never cease. His promises never change. His truth never changes. Every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is absolute truth.

Psalm 146:3-6

3 Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there. 4 When they breathe their last, they return to the earth, and all their plans die with them. 5 But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God. 6 He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He keeps every promise forever.

God is Omniscient (All-Knowing)

Omniscient means having infinite knowledge. God has infinite knowledge of all people and all things. 

Hebrews 4:13

13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

This includes the motives of our own hearts. 

Psalm 139:1

O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. 2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. 3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. 4 You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.

Only God qualifies to be the source of truth because he is the same for all people in all ages, in all places, and for all time. He is eternal, he is unchanging, and he knows all things for all eternity. And He has made his truth known to us.

God Has Made Truth Known to Us

We know these truths about God because He has revealed them to us through His Word, His creation, and even through our own conscience. In Romans 1:19-20, Paul says what can be known about God is made evident to us. His eternal power and divine nature are seen in creation. We also instinctively know right from wrong because his moral law is written into our hearts. We have as it were a "truth gauge" about God and his moral law hard-wired into us by the Creator

Romans 1:18-20

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

The choice: Reject or Accept God as the Source of Truth

Winston Churchill once made a comment suspected to have been directed toward a prior Prime Minister of Britain. He said that the man “Occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.” Our world is full of people that stumble over the truth of who God is every day and they hastily pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing has happened. Even though our intricate bodies, the cosmos, and the beauty of this world scream to people daily that they are not here by chance. They choose to reject God as the source and standard for truth.

Even many believers are buying into the lies the world is feeding us about marriage, relationships, gender, identity, ethics, and morality because they don’t understand God’s truth and what God says about those subjects. Plain and simple, if you are not using the Bible and God himself as your standard of truth on these subjects, the world is deforming your mind. We were never called by God to be conformed to the world. We are called to be conformed to the image of Christ. Paul was clear when he said…

Romans 12:2

2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

What you put into your mind every day is what you ultimately become. And if God’s truth is what everything in your worldview conforms to, you are going to live by his truth. Why does it matter that we search out and live by the divine truth of God's word? Because this world we live in is under the influence of the evil one.

I John 5:19

19 We know that we are children of God and that 

the world around us is under the control of the evil one.

Anything that distorts the truth is an offense to God. It’s a sin. The denial of truth is the first step in committing any sin. If you are denying God’s truth, you are either doing it willingly or you are ignorant of God’s truth. The way we intentionally keep sin out of our lives is by basing our lives, our decisions, our thoughts, and our motives on God’s truth. This means you have to know God’s truth. And not just know it but understand it. Finally, you must acknowledge God as the source of truth and submit to Him. God's truth is found in the person of Jesus Christ. And it really all comes down to authority. Are you going to live your life for Christ and submit your will to His or are you going live by your own authority?