How do you know that’s true? How do we know anything we believe is true? Since there are many hotly debated ideas about the nature of truth, allow me to simply state my working definition. A statement is true if it communicates the way things actually are.

Through the years, people have understood that it’s important for one’s beliefs to be true, so important that complex philosophical systems in the field of epistemology have been developed to explore the nature of knowledge and truth. When Jesus stood before Pilate (John 18:37), the procurator asked him if he was truly a king. Jesus explained that he was a king but unlike the kings of the earth who rule by force, his power of influence came because he spoke the truth to people. Speaking truth to the masses was not exactly the way Roman rulers did business. Therefore, Jesus continued to explain that those who are of the truth—i.e., those who genuinely desire to know what is true—will believe and act on what he, Jesus, taught. Jesus’ statement to Pilate was packed with such powerful truth that Pilate was forced to make a choice to believe it or dismiss it as folly. Pilate chose the second option when he left the judgment hall while questioning the very nature of truth.

Jesus taught we would find our freedom from the captive nature of sin by knowing the truth. Since the archenemy of God and humanity is Satan, whom Jesus called the father of lies, it is easy to see that the enemy must hold people captive by lies and deception. Jesus taught that if one would abide in his word then that one would know the truth and would be made free from sin. (John 8:31) The faith that saves us from sin must be founded on truth. However, we need to realize that most things we believe are not believed to be true because of direct observation but because we have trusted the words of people we’ve judged to be reliable.

We spend most of our time in school simply hearing and believing what someone we think is trustworthy said about what is true. Ironically, most of the things we are told is true by our teachers are things they know because some source they trust told them it was true. For example, most educated people believe that the building blocks of matter are atoms but few have ever conducted the experimentation or worked through the math that verifies this belief—most would not even know how. There are, however, many scientists around who have and they agree that their research reveals the reality of atoms. We know little of the integrity of any of these experts but we still judge their statements to be true based on the many who agree.

This is the way people decide to believe most of what they believe. Knowing this, Jesus was able to deal with Thomas’ doubts.

When Jesus made his first appearance to his frighten followers, Thomas was absent. When Thomas returned and his friends told him they had seen Jesus and he was alive, he refused to believe it. He demanded empirical evidence. Jesus appeared a second time when Thomas was there and called for him to come and get the empirical evidence his belief demanded. This dispelled Thomas’ unbelief and falling down he worshiped the Lord acknowledging him as God.

Jesus then makes an interesting statement. People who do not require physical proof but believe because they have heard the truth about him from trustworthy people are going to walk in the blessings that truth brings. Jesus was trying to get Thomas to understand that if his trusted friends said they saw Jesus alive, that should have been sufficient for Thomas to have confidence that it was true.

Many doubters will say, just as Thomas did, I refuse to believe unless I have scientific (empirical) evidence. I ask, “Why don’t you hold the same level of skepticism for scientific facts or historical facts you believe? How do you know Abraham Lincoln existed, for instance?”

“Well,” they say, “there are thousands of people who claim to have known him and they wrote about him.” There are also multitudes of trustworthy people who walked with Jesus and have said they knew him. In the majority of belief matters, that is all the proof we will ever get. If it’s good enough for our knowledge of science or history, why do people make an exception for the one who came to bear witness to the truth and taught his followers the importance of being truthful?