What is truth???

It's a seemingly simple question, or at least that's what I thought. Maybe it was just what I hoped for. It's probably part of what attracted me to Mormonism.

Here is my black and white, previously held definition: Truth is truth. It is the way things are. It is concrete and it doesn't change. It isn't relative to an individual. God tells truth to the prophets and they tell truth to us. We have agency to live by that truth or not, but the truth doesn't change based on who we are, when we lived, or what we want.

Like everything else in life what 'truth' is seems to be getting more complicated by the minute.

One of the difficulties I have with the church is the ever widening disparity between the church and it's teachings during the time of Joseph Smith, and the church and it's teachings today. Lots of things have changed, all the way down to pretty core doctrines such as the nature of god, eternal marriage, eternal progression, and prophetic infallibility. I thought that God was the same yesterday, today, and forever? What's up with all the changes? Shouldn't I be able to expect the truth to be consistent?

Recently I came across a very long, detailed essay by Curt Porritt, in which he discusses this very dilemma in detail. It's a great read and highly recommended. It can be found here.

Here is my very brief, one paragraph synopsis of the 117 pages. It won't do the essay justice in the slightest so please don't judge the essay by my pathetic reduction below. Read it in it's entirety for yourself before casting stones.

God's truth to us changes. It is fluid and dynamic. He gives us higher and lower truths and laws based on our ability to accept and live them. In general, we are given lesser truths now than in the early church due to a relative state of apostasy. For example, tithing is still true even though the ideal is the law of consecration. God gave the children of Israel the Law of Moses even though that law was later fulfilled in Christ. Monogomy is true for us now even though polygmay is the ideal. Adam and God really are the same person, but that idea is too far out there for us to accept right now so God gave us a different version of the story that is easier to swallow. Etc...

I don't necessarily buy all that, but it is food for thought.

This is complicated further by the fact that prophets can be and often times are wrong. So we are left up to our own personal revelation to tell us if the prophet is telling a higher truth or lesser truth that may or may not apply to us at the present time, or if he is just giving his own opinion and is wrong altogether. Furthermore, what is false or true today may change tomorrow. It gets even more complicated than that. You'll have to read the essay to see what I mean. Please take a couple hours to do so, and let me know what you think. I need somebody smarter than me to help me wrap my head around all this.