This is one of those "deep" posts that I have been thinking about for a while. If it bores you, or is incoherent, all I can do is apologize.
"Truth" is one of those words that, were I ruler of the free world and most everywhere else, I would discard. It has too many uses, too much baggage, and people toss it around as a way of appearing superior. It can be used to mean "correct". It can mean "factual". It can mean "transcendentally authoritative". It can mean "faithful". The first two meanings are trivial, but too often mistaken for the third. The fourth is an antiquated way of speaking of human relationships that is actually based upon the third. I would, out of consideration to the way the world is, replace the first two and fourth uses with their synonyms. In order to clear up confusion, I would discard the third reason as incoherent and meaningless. There are a variety of reasons as to why I have discarded the entire idea of "truth" as having any meaning whatsoever, and discarded as well the idea that human beings are inherently "truth-seeking" creatures; for me, the central argument is this - how is it possible that something as contingent, time-bound, limited, and error-prone as language could capture something timeless, correct in all situations in all times and places for all people? The entire idea of propositional truth as singular, universal, univocal, necessary, and absolute is absurd on its face.
Propositional truth is one of those ideas whose time is long past. I much prefer Richard Rorty's affirmation of William James' assertion that most of our beliefs are true for us most of the time. This is not an argument for relativism, irrationalism, or nihilism. Rather is is an argument for understanding the way beliefs actually function in human lives rather than attempting to find some transcendental proofs for one's assertion that one or another belief is True. One can say that two people assert opposite propositions as truthful, but the test is not an analysis of the coherence or correspondence assertions, but the way these assertions function in the lives of those who assert them. For example, I could claim that the sentence "All human life is sacred" is transcendentally true; yet, if I acted in such a way that showed that I actually disregarded the lives of others, the assertion would be false, because it had no actual effect upon the way I live my life.
Too many Christians get confused because of the claim put in Jesus' mouth by the author of The Fourth Gospel, "I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." While it might be interesting to do some serious exegesis on this one little sentence - one could write multiple volumes unpacking all that is loaded in those nine words - let me just say that it is important to remember that, for the writer of this Gospel, Jesus is not saying that he has the truth, or speaks the truth. Rather, he is discarding any metaphysics; by asserting that he is the embodiment of Truth, he is banishing the notion that we can capture Truth in any sentence about him. The Truth is a person, in his totality, and this defies any logical, epistemological, or ontological parsing or defense. We are confronted by the Truth as a human life, not as a series of sentences in an argument. In my not-very-humble-at-all opinion, this wipes away any attempts by Christians to assert "Truth" as something they possess, or that is vouchsafed to them in whatever religious message they may carry. Rather, the Truth is something that calls them, captures them, and moves them - but is always separate from them, never to be fully understood or even summarized. When confronting the Truth in the person of Jesus we are confronted with the enigma, and ultimate impossibility, of any human claim to having the Truth.
Virtual Tin Cup
