The world faces many problems going into the year 2026. We could talk about Artificial Intelligence and the profound implications it holds for humanity. As the new year begins, a lot of people are wondering how long they will have their jobs. AI reshapes individual human minds and will inevitably restructure human societies. Changes in employment, privacy, how we think, and the structure of our society are already underway, but we’ve seen only the beginning.
We could talk about the moral deserts our nations have become, or the turn toward socialism and the catastrophes that inevitably follow such a turn. We could talk about the growing danger of war as nations arm themselves at an alarming rate, or about young minds atrophying before streams of thoughtless, violent, and never-ending games and pornography. Then there is the war on males, particularly boys, and the war on females, particularly girls.
These represent only a few of the imminent dangers facing our society and much of the world. Integral to all these and many others is something we might call “the epistemological crisis.” Don’t be thrown off by the big word. It has a simple meaning. According to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Epistemology is the study of knowledge.” The Oxford Languages Dictionary includes this definition—“Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.”
Epistemology investigates the question of truth, how to know truth, and if it is even possible to know the truth. The epistemological crisis, then, is that human beings no longer know what’s true, or if it’s possible to know truth. This results in people living only for pleasure. Isaiah 22:13 tells the story of the people of Jerusalem facing God’s judgment and saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” When they should have repented, they resigned themselves to destruction. Instead of turning from sin, they chose to revel in iniquity.
This represents much of the world today. People have concluded that if truth exists, it is unknowable. That leaves them with beating hearts and living brains, but empty souls. The closest thing to meaning they can think of is fun. They determine that life is about checking as many things off their bucket lists as possible — “for tomorrow we die.”
Without knowable truth, everything rests on opinions, and opinions mold themselves into whatever shape seems most convenient. In such an existence, the thing we call “truth” becomes a mere justification for our desires and feelings. In politics, truth has become a commodity to be manufactured, bought, and sold — something that can be molded to fit the tastes of whatever audience the politician wants to reach at that moment. While freedom from objective truth can at first feel liberating, it eventually entraps and entombs people in a nightmare of shifting ground.
A person might feel that 4+4 equals 92,000. But real liberty comes when we can again walk on a solid foundation, knowing that 4+4 equals 8. When truth can be malleable so that it can be “your truth” and “my truth”—it becomes nothing more than a manifestation of our prejudices.
In Jesus, the Bible presents the ultimate answer to the epistemological question. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am… the truth.” In John 8:32, the Lord said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
Here, as always, Jesus meets our deepest need.
