Wicked
One Friday morning, I was mindlessly scrolling social media when an ad for the Broadway play Wicked popped up. I yelled, “Hey Courtney, wanna go watch Wicked tonight in the city!” She yelled back, “Sounds fun.” I clicked the ad, and within thirty seconds we were ticket holders to the 8:00 p.m. performance of Wicked.
It might sound silly for a youth minister to want to watch a play titled Wicked, but I am a sucker for a good musical. One of my favorite things to do is attend Broadway plays. It also helped that Wicked was one of the most famous plays of all time and one I had yet to see. The play basically tells the Wizard of Oz story from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good.
Anyway, Courtney and I made it to our seats, which were wedged between a person obviously sick and a couple of girls ready to sing every song aloud and do the hand motions. I sat by the sick people, thankfully. But soon, the show began, and the audience was transported to Oz.
I enjoyed the performance, but all weekend long I couldn’t get one line out of my head. The Wizard said, “The truth is not a thing of fact or reason, the truth is just what everyone agrees on. Where I'm from, we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. We call it-History.”[1]
The line almost caused my apologetic brain to explode. This line was not too far off from things I hear every week in apologetic events or in casual conversations. It often feels like truth has become so flexible in our culture that it would feel rude to say otherwise. We live in a world where people talk about “their truth” like it’s a matter of taste, merely like a flavor of ice cream.
I know it's just a silly theater performance, but I think it’s a great teaching moment. See preferences cannot guide your life effectively, they cannot anchor you when your world is turned upside down, and they cannot provide you with a faith that is sustainable long term. So, what is the problem with objective truth?
The world often seems to recoil at the idea of absolute truth. Absolute truth can draw a line in the sand. It can make conversations uncomfortable. The truth can cost you friends. I know there have been times when I wished objective truth did not exist. Knowing all of this it seems like the easiest thing to do is concede that truth is relative, but that is simply not logically possible.
Anyone standing on the hilltop of relativism will soon find themselves tumbling down the mountain and this statement from Wicked is the perfect example. The Wizard can’t even make it one more sentence without using truth in an objective sense. He says, “Where I’m from, we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true.”[2]
I wanted to pause the performance and ask if the things they believed where he was from weren’t true because a majority agreed or if they were just objectively false. Even popular culture cannot escape some sort of objective stick to measure with. C.S. Lewis once famously stated, “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”[3] It is impossible to live in a world of relativism. The statement, “All truth is relative,” in itself is a claim on absolute objective truth. Living in a world of relativism is sort of like playing the old game Whack-A-Mole. Every time a relativist thinks they have it all figured out another pesky problem pops up with their reasoning.
Luckily, Christians do not have to play the game of circular reasoning. Jesus tells us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6 ESV). Much like the clever plot twist of Wicked, it turns out the truth isn’t even a philosophical premise like some philosophers claim; it is a person, Christ.
Christ is the measuring stick for truth. The laws of logic flow from His very nature, objective good is defined by who He is, and all creation points to His glory. Any other version of truth is wrong and honestly… wicked.
[1] Wicked, by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman (national touring company, Civic Center Music Hall, Oklahoma City, OK, March 8, 2024).
[2] Ibid
[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 25.
