Truth I

Don: We’ve noted that both science and faith lay claim to “the truth” and decided that we need to understand what exactly is meant by it. We need to study the theology of truth.

The issue of truth is raised more than 200 times in the bible. Jesus told Pontius Pilate that everyone who is “of the truth” hears god’s voice. Hearing the voice of god is central to the shepherd and sheep metaphor that Jesus embellished a lot in his teachings.

Both believers and unbelievers lay claim to the truth. To the believer, truth is about the existence, power, and word of god (the bible) and about god’s interest in mankind. To the unbeliever, the truth is that there is no god; that he is a figment of human imagination, he is opiate for the masses.

Even amongst believers are those who claim that their truth is more refined, more accurate, more insightful, more verifiable, than the truth claimed by other believers. Thus, denominations proliferate, and are more or less strong depending on how many people they can persuade of their version of truth.

All of these concepts or definitions of truth are conclusions drawn from purportedly observed and analyzed data. But is truth related to data, or knowledge, at all? Does truth spring primarily from things that are true? It sounds a silly question, yet the bible contrasts knowledge, or data, with truth. Jesus’s statement in John 14:6 that “I am the way, the truth and the life” links truth to his personhood, to a living entity, not to an inanimate abstract idea.

Other concepts that seem to pit knowledge against truth come from the teachings of Paul. In 1 Corinthians 8:1-3, he says:

Now concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. [Note the distinction between the end products of knowledge and love.]  If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him. [Here again is the contrast between knowledge and love.]

1 Corinthians 13:8-10 also talks about the transient nature of disembodied knowledge in contrast to the nature of truth as embodied in Jesus:

Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

If one looks to knowledge for truth, then one must either assume perfect knowledge or admit that knowledge is imperfect. But if one looks to a living model of love as the embodiment of truth then knowledge and its advances and new theories are irrelevant.

The bible is seen as the literal word of god. I view it as a dynamic book about the drama of life. As a surgeon, I deal with the drama of life on a daily basis, and I find the bible addresses much of what I see. It is a window on the divine but it is even more an intimately human book, full of love, tenderness, compassion, concern, hope, and all of the good things of life, as well as the bad things—hatred, violence, and corruption. It is a book of stark realism, showing Man as he is, at his best and worst. It records all the afflictions as well as all of the greatness of Mankind, the certainties and doubts, the aspirations and the vileness.

This degree of realism explains, at least to me, many of the bible’s contradictions, that seem so disturbing and perplexing to some and even destabilizing of faith to others. The bible seems to me to mirror the human heart, which is itself a mass of contradictions that prevent us from ever grasping but a portion of the truth. We get onto shaky ground when we take that portion and start to expand it, embroider it, extrapolate from it, and so on.

We do this at our peril. God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55). The difference is not small; it is immeasurably big. So personally, I do not look to the bible expecting to find logic. I look to it for life. Like life, it offers far more questions than answers. Logic is powerless to explain life.

The bible is not written as a book of scientific and systematic thought. There is something true and vital even in the most contradictory bible stories: They affirm that there are contradictory thoughts and ideas and inconsistencies in the hearts and minds of all of us. They reflect the existence, the life, of Mankind.

We long for an easy religion, easy answers, no mystery, no unsolvable problems, no snags; a religion that lets us escape our miserable human condition, whose god protects us from strife and suffering and doubt and fear. We want a religion that is free from suffering and the image of the Cross. In the bible, god does not exempt Man from the drama of life; rather, he promises to live it alongside us. The bible avoids nothing. It enters realistically into life as it is. It expresses all of our feelings, aspirations, fears, contradictions, and intuitions. On every page we see the crisis of human suffering.

It is of amazing depth and, to me, provides an amazing analysis of the human condition. It is therefore worth studying. But it is precisely in seeking knowledge from the bible that we run astray. Jesus himself—the “living truth”—noted our tendency to rely on knowledge in John 5:39-40:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.

If we study the bible for knowledge, rather than for the mission and message of Jesus, then we will find the truth, which we so desperately seek, to be elusive. Could the truth be found more in questions than in answers? In a person, rather than in knowledge and ideas? John 17:17:

Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.

John 1:1-5, 9 points us away from scripture and toward the living person of Jesus:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. … There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.

This is reflected also in 1 John 1:1-9:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Are we misguided in mixing up knowledge about nature with truth about god and things of the spirit? Is it necessary to have to constantly update those truths in the light of new scientific knowledge? Could it be that the word of god is not meant to be understood simply as the words of the bible but rather as the living Christ? That the truth is simply the message and the mission of Jesus? [Postscript by David: Marshall McLuhan’s dictum, “The medium is the message,” seems apt here.] Does the essential canon of truth consist of the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and the other few simple precepts that formed the core (as he himself avowed) of Jesus’s teaching, and by which he lived?

In our efforts to establish a correct dataset—the truth—for religious understanding, are we missing the real, simple, truth?

Harry: Truth is built into us, in the god spark, the spirit, he puts in all of us. Mark is considered to be one of the oldest gospels, written probably in what is now Italy in about 30 AD. Luke was written some 50 years later. Luke was a physician, fluent in Greek. Luke 1:1-4:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

The paradox is that early church fathers used Mark as their basis for truth. Luke would have had access to Mark’s gospel. Why did he not just take Mark as the gospel truth? Did he not find the truth there? His gospel is somewhat different. Why do we have so many slightly different accounts? My point is that even back then, the authors of the New Testament were searching for truth in a story they thought was special and mystical. To me, that is what makes their writing divine. That there are historical errors and differences is irrelevant. What matters is that they help in the search for divine truth. The proof of that statement can be deduced from the fact that for 2,000 years the gospels have been, and remain to this day, the most powerful source of divine truth, though not necessarily of precise historical truth, for millions of people.

Robin: In 1 John 3:17-19:

But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth….”

Then in 1 John 5:4-6:

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

This is another example that the truth is the godhead. Perhaps we should not be seeking to know the truth but rather seeking to have the truth know us. The former is a sort of arrogance; the latter is humble.

Alice: Jesus, the inner light, the truth, resides in each of us. So the truth is only to be found inside ourselves. That introspection must be totally honest, but if it is, we may be able to perceive the truth.

Harry: What if we decide that our group has discovered “the Truth”? If we, or any one of us, thinks we know it, are we then bound to share it with others? Isn’t Truth a matter for the individual? All religions share millions of small-t truths that may help the individual find capital-T Truth. But it is impossible to express the Truth in words.

Chris: Jeremiah 17:5 talks about trust:

Thus says the Lord,
“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind
And makes flesh his strength,
And whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

If Jesus is the way and the truth, as John says, then we should look to emulate the life and behavior of Jesus to be on the right path and in the truth. But in both science and religion we tend to pick out complex minutiae that are amenable to human fact-finding methods and therefore provable or disprovable, and we trust the results. We should think of truth simply as love and grace, and trust in god, in Jesus, as the source. What other source, what other truth, could there be?

Robin: Truth is not some nebulous, mystical concept. It is unitary. It is or it is not. If it is not, it is a lie.

Alice: Apropos the passage Robin just cited from in 1 John 3: Suppose I see someone today who needs help, but I walk away. I have two options: Dismiss the incident from my mind, or look inwards to my heart and acknowledge my guilt. It might be a small infraction, but it points to the greater truth and if we are not honest enough to acknowledge that, then we are living a lie.

David: I agree with Harry and Alice about the individuality of truth. It is not that there are multiple individual truths; there is only one capital T-Truth, which is not the small-t “truth about the things you have been taught” mentioned in Luke 1:4. Don began this discussion with the question” What is truth? Clearly, we need to define the term or we end up talking at cross-purposes.

To me, it is the arrogance of scripture to tell us what is truth. Harry asked if we are obliged to share the truth if we think we have it. Religion answers with a resounding Yes, as long as it happens also to be that religion’s truth. But Daoism is an exception: Daoism says if you think you know the truth, keep it to yourself. The same truth is inside all of us. None of us needs to be told what the truth is. We all know it.

But whether, as Alice said, we acknowledge it or cover it with a bushel, it is still there. This is what Jesus says. It is profound, it is simple, and it is enough. All the rest is dangerous embellishment.

Robin: But 1 John is telling us that we proclaim the truth through deeds, not words.

David: Yes. Truth (the capital-T version) is not expressible in words. And there is no obligation to proclaim the truth by proactively performing good deeds. Quite the opposite, in fact, if we take seriously Jesus’s admonishments about praying and giving alms, etc., in private, unseen by others.

Harry: We all know what is the right thing to do. The problem is that the right thing to do often crosses or ignores religious lines and boundaries. It may run counter to someone’s interpretation of their scripture. For that reason, religions fear the truth, because it may undermine their reason for being. There would be no purpose in meeting to share the truth with others. There would be no reason for different denominations. There would be no meaningful distinction between believer and non-believer.

We should not define ourselves by the bible. We should be defined by our inner light. That is not to say that we should not meet to study the bible. At all of our meetings  (and today has been no exception) we are each more or less enlightened by some bible passage or other. But the only visible truth is how we treat others, how we share grace and love.

Robin: Are Daoists encouraged to serve others and to think of others more than themselves?

David: Yes, they are. [Postscript: That is to say, they are in their very brief scripture but not so much in their temples, which are not much like our churches and which indeed don’t really belong in philosophical Daoism as represented by the Daoist founders and scriptures, in my opinion. The “three jewels” of Daoist behavior are “abstention from aggressive war and capital punishment”, “absolute simplicity of living”, and “refusal to assert active authority.”]

Robin: If the godhead is truth, then god is able to reach into every culture, no matter how it proclaims or spreads its spiritual beliefs.

David: Daoism has indeed spread globally, like all major religions and philosophies. Its core message of selfless love is the same universal message as the other great religions. But its own scripture denies that it can describe the truth, which can be witnessed only by going along with the Way through “non-action”–a term that expresses in just two characters the notions Jesus expressed in many more words (turn the other cheek, don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing, etc.

It is worth noting above all that the Daoist canon is very short. It attempts to distill the essence of truth as far as it can be distilled in words (as did Jesus) and it arrives at the same startling and non-obvious conclusions—turn the other check, lead by following, be quiet and humble about one’s deeds. But it does not make a big deal of anything, because (it says) at the end of the day, the Way will always prevail no matter what we do, so we had best follow it as water follows the stream bed.

Illiteracy does not therefore preclude anyone from knowing the Way, from knowing god. To me, the “good” bits of the bible say just that, too!

Alice: Truth cannot be external and cannot be proclaimed. I can be a Christian all my life and proclaim all sorts of things yet still not be aligned with the real truth inside me.

Robin: That was my point in reading the passages I cited just now. When one looks inside to the spirit and finds the truth, then one’s actions—how one treats one’s fellow human being—will automatically reveal it, without any proactive proclamation of it. There is really nothing to proclaim, unless it be that god and god alone is truth.

Alice: God made it his business to make sure we all know the truth. Yet Christians warp the truth that is in their hearts so that it aligns with the truth they think they see in the bible. Muslims do the same with the Qurʾān. John said we should not do that.

And by the way, where in the bible are we told we must search for the truth?

Don: That is an important question. We will pick up on it next time.

Chris: Luke 16:15 adds to the argument that truth is internal:

And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.

Truth is universal across religions and individuals. The notion professed by religion that god/truth resides externally, in scripture, only serves to limit access to god, to the truth. Emulating Jesus’s behavior is one thing, but I think there is something deeper, something no religion can claim.

Harry: Don has often pointed out that there is no law against goodness. Goodness is measurable. We can observe and know when it touches someone, unlike the godheads and truth we have been talking about. And what do we keep going back to, to help us describe and measure goodness?—The bible! There is nothing wrong in that.

David: Scripture may well reflect, in a shadowy way, the truth we instinctively feel inside us, and to that extent it may have some value. But the shadows can be deceptive, too. When Jesus said “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” did he mean to exclude all the non-Christians who—because they were born before his time or into a different faith or no faith or are illiterate—will never hear his voice? I’m sure he did not mean that, and I would interpret his remark liberally to mean that “everyone who looks inside for the truth knows it,” but Christians will tend to take these words in the bible literally, as saying quite unambiguously that one who has never heard the words of Jesus as recorded in the bible cannot know truth.

Don: Listening to the voice of god ought not to require a great deal of searching. As my old teacher used to say, “Don’t just do something, stand there!” If we wait for god, he will get in touch. That is quite a different notion from having to diligently search for him. Scripture does not point to words in their own right but only as they reveal the life and person and mission of Jesus.

We certainly seem to be coming around to the notion of a need for a whole new religious paradigm. We will continue to discuss these ideas.

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Editor’s Postscript:

WHILE VISITING ON THE  SOUTH  STREAM
THE TAOIST  PRIEST  CH’ANG

by Liu Changqing (Middle Tang Dynasty)

Walking along a little path,
I find a footprint on the moss,
A white cloud low on the quiet lake,
Grasses that sweeten an idle door,
A pine grown greener, with the rain,
A brook that comes from a mountain source-
And, mingling with Truth among the flowers,
I have forgotten what to say.

寻南溪常道士

刘长卿

一路经行处， 莓苔见履痕。
白云依静渚， 春草闭闲门。
过雨看松色， 随山到水源。
溪花与禅意， 相对亦忘言。