Truth II

Don: We have been studying the book of Matthew for 11 years so far, and have reached chapter 18, in which Jesus, in talking about the community he called the kingdom of heaven, outlines the key ingredients, or what we are calling the pillars, of community. The first pillar is the absence of authority: The first shall be last. Second, the community of the kingdom of heaven is built on god’s grace and cannot survive without it. Third, the individual is important within the kingdom, as Jesus stressed in the parable of the lost sheep. Fourth, a mechanism for conflict resolution is described. Fifth, the role of prayer is described. Sixth, the rules of heaven and earth are bound to one another. And finally, the need for forgiveness is stressed.

Our discussion of forgiveness then led us to a discussion first of science and religion, and from that to the issue of “Truth” as one of the disputed issues that arises in the context of forgiveness. In the mission and message of Jesus, forgiveness of the soul is linked to healing of the body.

We have seen that in science, truth is based upon data, and as new data are integrated into old theory, then new theory—new scientific truth—emerges. Science is thus essentially self-correcting and unlikely to be radically wrong (though it can be). Faith-based truth, on the other hand, is based upon the words of scripture, as when Jesus said (John 14:6) “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Pontius Pilate famously asked Jesus, musingly, “What is truth?” In Ephesians 4:21 Paul referred to a truth that is in Jesus. John spoke much about the relationship between the Word and a Jesus full of truth and grace.

But the quest for truth is universal, unbound by culture or time. What is so compelling about truth that we seek it so ardently? Why does it matter whether or not we know that something is true? Is it at heart a search for god, or for ourselves? Jesus said the truth sets us free. Free of what?

We are so insistent about truth that we will often rather lie than confess to not knowing it. It reminds me of the famous poem by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887):

The Blind Men and the Elephant

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he:
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
and all were in the wrong!

The need to know the truth seems to be part of our DNA, even if knowing it confers no obvious benefit, or even if it is painful to know. We also want our truth to be perfect, but we know we cannot have perfect truth without perfect data/knowledge—unless truth is based upon something other than data and knowledge.

Are we morally obliged to seek the truth about god? What drives men to defend, beyond the point of violence, their concept of truth? Is truth subjective or objective? What is the relation between truth and reality?

In their book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek describe (p. 32) six (of many) characteristics of truth (they call them “truths about truth”):

• Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independently of anyone’s knowledge of it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton)
• Truth is transcultural; if something is true, it is true for all people, in all places, at all times (2+2=4)
• Truth is unchanging even though our beliefs about truth change (When we began to believe the earth was round instead of flat, the truth about the earth didn’t change, only our belief about the earth changed.)
• Beliefs cannot change a fact, no matter how sincerely they are held. (Someone can sincerely believe the world is flat, but that only makes the person sincerely mistaken.)
• Truth is not affected by the attitude on the one professing it. (An arrogant person does not make the truth he professes false. A humble person does not make the error he professes true.)
• All truths are absolute truths. Even truths that appear to be relative are absolute. (For example, “I Frank Turek, feel warm on November 20th, 2003” may appear relative truth, but it is actually absolutely true for everyone, everywhere that Frank Turek had the sensation of warmth on that day.)

Are these true? What should responsible Christians believe about truth? Why is truth such a compelling aspect of humanity?

David: We have talked much about the difference between the spiritual and physical worlds. I think we are agreed that the truth of the physical world is mutable. As for why we seek physical truth: A scientific answer is that it has evolutionary survival value, as for example knowing the truth of gravity tends to deter our jumping off the Empire State Building thinking we can defy gravity—truth—and fly.

Spiritual truth is much more interesting. Atheists do not accept the concept of a spiritual world; therefore, to them, there is no spiritual truth to be sought.

Don: Does spiritual truth have survival value?

David: The truth is that in many a religious war, right down to Gaza today, belief in spiritual truth has destructive and suicidal rather than survival value.

Sylvester: Our brains operate in a binary way. Things in the physical world are either true or false; they are either facts or not facts. The human brain subconsciously evaluates everything it receives through the senses, every split second, to weigh if what it senses is true or false. Modern culture wants to apply that same method, which works for the physical world, to the spiritual world, where it does not. The physical and the spiritual play on different playing fields. What applies in one does not apply in the other. Modern culture demands that Christianity must offer facts to support its claimed truths, such as that Jesus is god. This is difficult for Christians to deal with.

Charles: One thing that distinguishes Christianity from other religious and even non-religious communities is its belief in the trinitarian God. Philosophers discuss truth from the perspectives of correspondence, relativism and pragmatism (which at some level is the ultimate extension of relativism). The “correspondence” perspective: Does the claimed truth correspond to objective reality? must be verifiable. In our previous discussion of the worlds of form and faith, and what tools can be applied to which, we accepted that we sometimes get confused and misapply tools applicable in one world to the other. I believe the postmodern notion of the relativism of truth is ultimately self-refuting, since anything that is entirely dependent on context or culture or personal preference is by definition subjective and in that sense unverifiable: “If it is consistent with my current context, beliefs, culture, preferences, then it it must be the truth”. The ultimate extension of relativism is pragmatism (or egoism: “Whatever works for me is truth”. From my perspective, neither relativism nor pragmatism are ultimately consistent with a universal truth. Indeed, the very principle of the universality of truth itself demands correspondence with universal reality; that is, objectivity as opposed to relativity.

The conversation between Jesus and Pilate appears to be framed as a philosophical debate. By cynically asking what is undoubtedly the most profound and vexing question in all of philosophy: “What is truth?” and then, without apparently waiting for an answer, moving forward to “wash his hands” of Jesus’ fate, Pilate can be seen as the universal skeptic, who exists in every age and culture. To the postmodern relativist or pragmatist, the truth becomes whatever is expedient in the moment. A Christian recognizes that the tortured man standing before Pilate is the answer to his cynical question. The truth was literally staring him in the face. The “truth” was a real person, knowable, objective and verifiable. And if that was not enough, Jesus had actually answered Pilate’s question immediately before he asked it, when he told Pilate that his whole point in being was to show and live the truth, and that whoever was of the truth hears his voice.

This ultimate truth is certainly personal, but it is not contextual, it is not cultural, it is not relative and it is certainly not pragmatic. To know the ultimate truth, one must know the person of Jesus. The person of Jesus is the word.   The person of Jesus is God made flesh.   As such to know Jesus is to know the Father. For Jesus said, “I am in the father and the father is in me”.   To know Jesus is to know “the way” to transcend the impermanent and finite world of form and flesh. But we are not alone on this journey for Jesus in his transcendence he left us with the gift of his formless spirit to guide us to the universal truth. That is, to the person of Jesus, to God. For the believer, through his timeless and infinite spirit, God is always with us. Through his spirit, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life….”until the end of the age”. It may be a circular argument, but I believe the example Jesus’ vanishingly brief, simple life, ministry, suffering and death followed by the inexorable growth of his community in the spirit (his church) are the objective and verifiable evidence that sustains the faith of the believer. By knowing and following the real person of Jesus, we come to know God. As believers, through the real, objective and verifiable person of Jesus we are shown the way. Through Him we come to know truth and ultimately though him we can transcend the finite and impermanent world of flesh and form to everlasting life in his spirit.

Subra (sp?): We who are sighted can see the whole elephant, so we can easily put trunk, tail, and so on in their proper context. How can we help a blind person do the same? Christians know Jesus (albeit imperfectly); how can we help the spiritually blind to see the truth?

Jay: We just heard that one of the characteristics of real truth is that it remains true across time and across cultures. Spiritual Truth does not require physical signs or context to make it true, and it is as accessible to the physically blind as to the sighted. it does not require understanding of the physical world.

But it has to be meaningful to people, to resonate with them. What is needed to achieve that? Paul told us that human knowledge and prophecy will not stand the test of time. And indeed, we can see that scientific “truths” (theories) do not pass the test of time. The life of Jesus shows everyone, across all times and cultures, the unifying principles that constitute Truth and which are common to all religions and all cultures. Those principles are Love and Grace. Love can be understood by the blind and the sighted, by all religions, by infants and old people; and they have existed for all times.

It sounds like Love is kind of a cop-out answer, yet surely it is the true answer! Why is it evidently not good enough for us all?

Harry: Everyone responds to love, even atheists. But not everyone responds to Truth. It is difficult to pass on the Truth, but it is not so difficult to love. That is an easy answer, but it is also an answer to spreading Truth! People come to blows over perceptions of Truth, but there is no violence in a loving interaction. Nobody in his or her right mind argues against the definition or the existence or the benefits of love, yet will argue the blazes over the definition and existence of Truth.

So to me, the path to enlightenment is through love, not so much Truth.

Alice: 1 John 2:9-11 says just that:

The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Michael: If truth is in the living model of Christ and not in the accumulation of scientific knowledge, then gravity, which seems to meet the conditions for truth discussed earlier, is not true. However scientifically methodical a blind man may be on encountering the elephant—carefully documenting the various parts then attempting to put it all together in his mind—he simply cannot see the whole (truth of the) elephant. The approach to Truth is indeed different from the observation and data collection and methodology of the scientific approach.

Alice: We seem to be timid about using the word “faith.”

Sylvester: The physical and the spiritual meet in mysticism. The early Catholics understood that but we tend to shy away from the notion and from people who claim to have had mystical experiences—encounters with god. I long for such experience!

If we can accept as irrefutable truth that Alice felt cold on November 26, then we should be able to accept as irrefutable truth that Harry felt the touch of god on March 3. I wish god were not so elusive, so hidden to our senses; but people with the spiritual discipline to combine the physical and the spiritual through mystical practices have seen Truth. We should think about resuming such practices.

Subra: I have noticed from my readings in Samuel and Kings is that David seemed able to hear God’s voice telling him what to do. Why can’t we hear it? Is it that we can hear it but we are not listening? Is it that we have lost the kind of relationship with god that David had?

Jay: We always try to tie Truth to right and wrong. But when we do, the truth is no longer universal, and therefore not true. It causes division. True Truth is incapable of being misunderstood, of causing disagreement and strife. We want our truth to make us right. But Truth is not about determining or judging or distinguishing right and wrong. It is about something else.

Robin: A friend once told me that people he worked with or came into contact with would sometimes ask him how he, a scientist, could believe in god, and he would answer: “Because I know love.”

Kiran: The reality of my truth is Jesus. But even though I am experiencing this, I still seem to feel that I need more data, more knowledge, to support my belief! I am being foolish. Truth has to be true for all cultures. When Gandhi returned to India he brought with him the message to “turn the other cheek.” He used the name Jesus, but it was the principle that mattered. It worked for him when he was in in South Africa. So Jesus is the truth. He is all over the New Testament, yet I can’t seem to meet him.

Robin: Paul addressed the difference between the believer and the unbeliever. Romans 1:18-25:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

So even within the hearts of those who say they do not believe, god has been revealing himself to them, but they are exchanging the creature for the creator.

And Romans 2:10-16:

… glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God.

For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

Alice: Truth is inside. It is conscience. This is truth to them.

Charles: It is convenient to define truth as love.   I don’t disagree that love is a fruit of truth, as are other graces. But such a definition oversimplifies because there is more to universal truth than love. Universal truth must also encompass a theme that persists throughout scripture, before the human Fall from grace: The truth of I am. That is the truth that God exists.   Universal truth must also encompass another objective reality of the human condition. This is the universal truth of Suffering and of physical death. Nobody, not even Christ, can escape it.

So ultimate truth is more than human love, it is also in a sense more than believing in the existence of God. Ultimate truth is also objective reality of Suffering and Death. God does not try to shield us from it. For that matter God did not even shield his own son from it. Quite the opposite in fact. Suffering and Death is a universal truth of the human condition. A universal truth of the world of form and flesh. The truth of Suffering and Death is both objective and verifiable. The truth of Suffering and Death is not relative. The truth of Suffering and Death corresponds to the objective reality of all human beings. Therefore Suffering and death are knowable and, we see both in the life and death of a real person, Jesus.   Knowing Jesus, we know “the way” to transcend Suffering and Death can never be found in the world of form and flesh. A world that is universally subject to impermanence and decay. Through faith in the real person of Jesus, we can “know” God. Knowing God, we can receive the fruits of God’s spirit. We can receive God’s graces including love. But the universal truth is more than fruits of the spirit, more than grace and more than love. The universal truth embraces a dual reality of impermanence and human suffering in the word of form and flesh and a simultaneous reality of permanence and transcendence of suffering in the world of the spirit. That is, truth of I am. The truth that God exists.

Chris: Isaiah 55:8 talks about the vast gulf in thought and action, between us and god. He goes on to describe earthly physical phenomena. In the end he talks about the Word (John 1:1.) Who was the word?—Jesus. What did he do? The truth always comes back to Jesus and his life. He and his truth encompass his grace and love. Man’s inclination is not love, it is selfishness. God sent his son to show us this difference, at a physical, earthly level.

Harry: Love and suffering have more to do with god than with us. We cannot control suffering caused by natural phenomena. Only god can.

David: Jay spoke of the need for a universal, unified truth. Perhaps that is Chuck’s “I am.” I would want to define the I am, god, as Goodness. We can see Goodness. We can be sure it exists. Since this truth is universal, why can’t we all live by it? I think religion gets in the way of doing so. There are religious, scriptural truths, self-servingly defined as truth because they are also scripture. One of these truths is that Jesus is god, truth, and life. If you read that purely as Christian scripture, then you are denying access to the truth to all Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, and others. I refuse to believe that this was Jesus’s message. His “I am the way, the truth, and the life” was a spiritual message, not a religious message. He said he is the light—the spirit, the god—within us. He is part of the trinity, and that is what is important. Gandhi recognized this, and he could (and, by his actions, he did) embrace so-called “Christian” truths while remaining a happy Hindu!

The problem is that we rely on religion for our truth and not on the Enlightenment that Harry spoke of.

Michael: Can one perceive or even measure the truth in a person by His or her behavior, and how closely it matches the behavior of Jesus?

Don: That is a good question to start our discussion next week. How can truth be validated? Is it validatable at all?