Truth and Love

Don: Last week we began to note the “terrifying” type of love as described in 1 Corinthians 13. It is a “fear-full” love, because it is so demanding, so radical. It demands a release of our ideas and prejudices, of supposed truths and knowledge and expectations. It seems as if love is being contrasted with truth. Is it possible that these two are opposite ends of a continuum? Are ideas and truths that we have long held as “self-evident” to be sacrificed at the altar of love so that we can pass through to true community?

M. Scott-Peck wrote in respect to theological truth (and this probably applies to political belief also): “If your theology is different from mine, it calls mine into question. It is uncomfortable for me to be uncertain of my own understanding in such basic matters. On the other hand, if I could convert you to my way of thinking, it would not only relieve my discomfort about the differences which we hold but it would also be further proof to me of the rightness of my thinking.”

In order to come to true community, do we have to abandon our belief structure—the truths that we hold to be precious and perhaps self evident—in order to arrive at the necessary stage of emptiness on the road to true community? In his book Courage and Calling, Gordon Smith talks about pursuing truth to a fault: “Something is askew when our passion for truth blinds us to other perspectives and prevents us from disagreeing graciously and from learning from others—that is, others who see differently than we do. A conviction may be a true one, but it becomes deadly in the hands of a zealot. A genuine love of truth is always complemented by humility, evident in a gracious and teachable spirit.”

Paul talked about this as well. In 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 he made a number of provocative statements:

For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.

To what extent is it possible to hold onto beliefs ideas and notions and at the same empty oneself of them, in order to come to true community? If they are not mutually exclusive, how can we understand community in light of the idea of cherished beliefs? What do we think about truth and love, about acceptance and holding on to cherished belief structure? What is at risk in the emptiness of true community?

David: The psychology term “cognitive dissonance” refers to our ability to “switch off” thoughts that we can’t or don’t want to contemplate. It’s a protection mechanism. We switch off beliefs that threaten our sanity. It’s not that we’re required to abandon—to renounce—our beliefs and our faith; we just have to put them to one side, to empty ourselves of them as we seek true community with others. We have to enter this state otherwise we suffer cognitive dissonance—the world, or at least the issue at hand, ceases to make sense.

Alice: We don’t need to abandon faith or beliefs in order to have true community. The closer we get to the truth, the closer we are to love and true community. It’s not either/or. The more one has of one, the more one has of the other. The truth that I used to hold was an intellectual truth. It put me in conflict with the people I lived with, and it kept me from love. The kind of truth I hold now is the kind that pushes me toward other people and toward true love. It is non-doctrinal; it is in my heart and is not affected by anything outside. I can be a Seventh Day Adventist, Catholic, Christian, Muslim; it doesn’t matter. There is something that is common between all believers in God, and probably this is the only Truth: That when we love God, we won’t hurt anyone, and our beliefs do not make us any different, fundamentally, from any other person. Our differences are immaterial; our one similarity—our love for God—is Everything.

Robin: I wonder if, as human beings, we tend to twist to the exact opposite the things that God is trying to teach us. We (or maybe I!) tend to think that it is truth that is the yardstick, when it is love that is the yardstick for truth, and if we can’t learn to love, then how much truth are we going to have? I think of 1 Corinthians 13:1: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Even if one can move mountains, and have all faith, without love, one is nothing.

Don: There has been so much coverage of the new pope’s election this week. On the one hand, much as been made of his background, his compassion, his interest in the poor; but on doctrinal issues such as homosexuality and women in the priesthood he clearly will not budge in beliefs he holds to be immutable, time-honored, cherished beliefs of the Catholic Church. Every church has such beliefs, usually based on its interpretation of scripture, based on divine revelation or insight the church believes others have not been given. Can or should these beliefs be set aside in the interests of community? How can a church, which exists to evangelize, do that? Surely it’s not possible for a church to be “truth-less,” is it? Yet in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul does seem willing to go that far in order to deliver a more fundamental Truth.

David: Alice said that all religions are focused on the same core belief—in love of God—and Robin reminded us that love is the fundamental idea (at least in the Christian bible.) So maybe that is all there is! That is the answer! Why then do we need all the rest of the bible when that one passage is all we need to know? It doesn’t matter what one’s faith is: Everyone would surely agree that love is fundamental and that everything else is (relatively speaking) irrelevant. You can still have everything else, your other beliefs, but to get to true community you must leave them aside to enter the emptiness stage. At any time you are free to step back into that room for a top up of your favorite belief, if it matters to you but it is not fundamentally important to do so.

Don: Can you approach God and be in community with him without being in community with one’s fellow man? If not, do our communities provide a framework on which to grow or amplify our belief structure in God?

Alice: You need to have a base. You need to know God in order to love him. To do that, you don’t have to follow the rules of authority (of, say, the pope.) I can live amicably next door to an homosexual (though I am not sure how I would react if that person approached my child!) I am OK with people living the way they want, and I believe God leads everyone individually to the Truth. But by definition, authorities have to be authoritative! They have to make things black and white. But the only true authority is God’s authority. Paul had direct authority from God, given to him on the road to Damascus. But church authorities can hardly claim that kind of authority!

Don: You can’t be a Seventh Day Adventist and say the Sabbath is not important; you can’t be a Mormon and say that baptism for the dead is inconsequential; you can’t be a Jehovah’s Witness and say that blood transfusions are OK. There are certain tenets, fundamentals of belief, that all religions hold sacrosanct.

Alice: So why say it? Why put it into words? Let people live their beliefs. Let them set an example for others by the way they live out their beliefs. But don’t just talk about them—don’t impose them on other people. This is how wars get started!

Robin: I have never felt comfortable initiating a doctrinal statement. I have never been an evangelist. But I’ve had experiences where other people were discussing moral issues around me and have then asked my opinion. So I was not trying to convert or impress someone. But in my experience, if god wants you to say something to someone, and you don’t have the gift of the gab, he will bring the person to you—you don’t have to go out and seek him or her.

Don: Paul clearly has a message he wants to get across in 1 Corinthians 9. What message was so important that he was willing to set aside conventional beliefs and understanding?

Alice: His message was simply to show them the light, and to let them walk in it.

Robin: This was the simple message God gave him on the road to Damascus. God struck him with the light, and that changed him totally. Before that, he had total faith and detailed justification in his persecution of Christians.

Don: Is love strong enough to form community around? Is there such a community—one formed around love and nothing else? All churches have additional baggage. If there were such a community, you’d think we’d know about it!

David: Humanism* seems to represent such a community—with the simple belief that humanity is something to be loved and nurtured and not harmed. But by the very act of creating a religion, you take one step away from God. When I joined this study group, it was discussing the notion of “light.” That is a fundamental thing that attracts me. It’s not a doctrinal issue, it’s not like discussing (say) the sanctity of Sabbath. What interests us—this group of us—are fundamental topics like love, and faith , and light, and it seems to me these are not the sole preserve of religion.

We need to constantly remind ourselves of the fundamental truths. Certainly, they can be found in religion (as for example the beautifully stated 1 Corinthians 13 passage about love.) It is wonderful that our group focuses on these things. All the other potential issues for discussion in a religion, such as the sanctity of the Sabbath, are irrelevant and would only get in the way. They may be fine when we step outside this room and into the wider church, but they are not needed inside this room.

On the question of whether we need other people around us to help us reach God: Some people seem to. Simon Stylites on the other hand did not. Anchorites (mainly women—anchoresses) in the middle ages shut themselves off almost (not quite) entirely from community in order to commune solely with god.** But I can see that this is not for everyone.

Don: Is religion like a language? A culture? Most of us live within the constraints and guidance of our language and our culture. Likewise with religion: It constrains and guides in matters such as how we approach God, how we express our spirituality. It is a tool, but to the extent it becomes an end in itself, it gets in the way: It divides, it makes distinctions.

Sabbath is important, but not for the reason that it is right! It is important to me because of the culture that I have been brought up in, because of my background, and because it gives me the opportunity to hold this class, so it is a vital part of who I am. It provides me with opportunities, so it is valuable to me. The problem is that this well-meaning, self-evident truth, becomes dangerous in the hands of a zealot who says you must believe this way, and it goes against the fundamental teachings of Christ.

Robin: With respect to the Sabbath:

Mark 2:23-28:

And it happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain. The Pharisees were saying to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry; how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?” Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Mark 3:1-4:

He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered. They were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent.

David: I have long been interested in the unity, also called the singularity, of everything and nothing, of zero and one, of the Big Bang and the Big Crunch, of Alpha and Omega. The singular instance of total creation and total destruction. True community and emptiness are perhaps the same singular thing: When one is in communion with every other soul in the whole of creation—when one is part of the mind of God, when one is in the Kingdom of Heaven—one is in true community; but at the same time one must be in a supreme state of loneliness, of emptiness, of Nothingness. The Daoists believe that the response to the Way—to God—is to Do Nothing—to become part of the Way. As Christians would say, to let the Lord be my shepherd. So if nothing = everything, everything = nothing! You can be a Jew and a Moslem and a Buddhist—you can be everything, because then you are nothing, and it doesn’t make any difference.

Don: One step short of the difficult extension of community to nothingness only requires a certain humility and civility. Yet we start wars to prove our rightness. Unless one can prove that one has all Truth, all Right, then one can only have partial truth, partial knowledge. As the scripture says, we see through the glass but darkly. If we could just have a modicum of humility concerning our beliefs, so that in discourse with others we can learn something from them. This is what Paul and Jesus were trying to say, it seems to me: That there is something more important, more foundational, than our partial truths and beliefs. We don’t need to give them up, but they should be understood them for what they are: As partial, as not fundamental; as tools to help us in the expression of love. I think God recognizes that while there are some people who are so spiritual they are practically hardwired to him, most of us need these tools—we need a language, an environment, in which to reach him. This seems to take us back to the notion of stages of faith, where some people need structure, and others don’t.

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 * I used the term “humanism” here in the full sense of the wonderful mid-18th century definition given (says Wikipedia) in 1765 by the author of an anonymous article in a French Enlightenment periodical: “The general love of humanity … a virtue hitherto quite nameless among us, and which we will venture to call ‘humanism’, for the time has come to create a word for such a beautiful and necessary thing.” (“L’amour général de l’humanité … vertu qui n’a point de nom parmi nous et que nous oserions appeler ‘humanisme’, puisqu’enfin il est temps de créer un mot pour une chose si belle et nécessaire“; from the review Ephémérides du citoyen ou Bibliothèque raisonée des sciences morales et politiques, (chapter 16, Dec, 17, 1765): p.247, quoted in V. Giustiniani, op. cit., p. 175n.)

** From the Wikipedia entry: In the Middle Ages anchorite was a common [hmmm!] vocation. Anchorites and anchoresses lived the religious life in the solitude of an “anchorhold” (or “anchorage”), usually a small hut or “cell” built against a church. The door of anchorages tended to be bricked up in a special ceremony conducted by the local bishop after the anchorite had moved in. Medieval churches survive that have a tiny window (“squint”) built into the shared wall near the sanctuary to allow the anchorite to participate in the liturgy by listening to the service and to receive Holy communion. Another window led out into the street or cemetery, enabling charitable neighbours to deliver food and other necessities.