The Personification of Truth

Don: Jesus said:

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;…” (John 5:39)

This tells us that the passion and the quest for truth about God is really a request for eternal life. This helps explain the radical nature of the pursuit—and the apprehension—of truth. It also sheds light on the extreme behavior of imposing one’s (presumed) truth upon others. The more shaky our truth the greater the urge to get others to support it. Jesus recognized this danger. He told us that truth rooted in knowledge can never be the capital-T Truth about God, because our knowledge can never be complete.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, (1 Corinthians 13:12)

The objectification of truth, the establishment of doctrine, the institution of creed, the hermeneutical explanations of scripture, and the economy of incomplete and imperfect knowledge together comprise the greatest challenge facing all religions. Religions, it seems to me, have never concerned themselves to correct or even to acknowledge this challenge.

Jesus was killed because he came as a prophet seeking to enlighten us as to the Truth. Anyone who does that is by definition subversive to the status quo; a dangerous, boat-rocking revolutionary who must be eliminated to preserve the ornately constructed walls of faith which seemed solid—until the prophet poked holes in them, thus undermining the faith the walls upheld.

Jesus said that the search for Truth is really a search for God and that since he is Truth personified then it is a search for Jesus. This eliminates the objectification of Truth and makes it personal instead. Objective, small-t, truth is static and lifeless. It has no ability to change or grow. Capital-T Truth is personal, dynamic, and ever-evolving. Small-t truth has no legs: It cannot find you; you must find it. Capital-T Truth has legs in the person of Jesus and will seek you out:

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. (Acts 10:38)

For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10)

That this mobile, dynamic, vital Truth is on a mission to find us is evident in scriptural story after story and parable after parable, including those of the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan. The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) is about the opposite—about us finding God. Ostensibly, the Babylonians built it for the prestige it would bestow and so that they could remain united in one place, but the very name “Babel” means “gateway of God” and clearly it is a metaphor for our search for Truth by building a tower to the heavens.

The medium of objective, small-t truth is language. It is the same medium we employ in our search for capital-T Truth via ideas, beliefs, and doctrines. The Babel story shows that God takes exception to any quest for him that is based on words; but if we must use words then we must accept that there are many different ways to describe the Truth in words, not just one.

We are born into our religions in much the same way that we are born into our specific languages. We are linked to those who “speak” our religion through practice and liturgy. We can learn another religion in the same way that we can learn another language but we will tend to “speak” it with an accent—there will remain traces of our native religion.

Eventually, God dispersed the Babylonians into a multitude of tribes, each developing their own unique languages. But on the Day of Pentecost he reversed this effect:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? (Acts 2:1-8)

Note the dynamic difference between the movement of people up the Tower of Babel to find Truth and the spirit—God—the Truth coming down from heaven in search of the people. This Truth is personified in Jesus and the personification clarifies the Truth, whereas its objectification only causes confusion.

David: The whole idea of religion is to provide a single, unchanging Truth, one on which one can always rely in life. It is unsettling to think of Truth as being dynamic, if by that we mean subject to change. It re-introduces uncertainty. It is very Daoist!

Jay: Babel and Pentecost have interesting contrasts. In Babel, God disperses; in Pentecost, he unifies. Is God’s action a result of our different approaches to God as represented by these two events? Just before Pentecost, everyone became of one mind. It seems they shared a common set of beliefs and behaviors and the spirit of God emerged through, and because of, that commonality. Yet the Babylonians were also presumably of one mind in the building of the Tower. There is somehow a vital difference between the unity of Pentecost and the unity of Babel.

Chris: Each had a common purpose; the question was whether the purpose aligned with God’s. God saw that if the Babylonians were to succeed then their purpose—their will, not his, would prevail. The Pentecostals, on the other hand, were already perfectly aligned with God’s will.

Jay: Both groups sought a connection to God. The Babylonians did so proactively; the Pentecostals did so passively. They did nothing—they were indeed Daoist!

David: Here are some reflections from a Daoist scholar on the differences between Western and Daoist notions of Truth:*

“Truth” in traditional Western philosophy means something objectively existed and can only be discovered or recognized by people, while the “Dao” in Chinese philosophy is more or less something that can be constituted by people in their practice, or in other words, it is a result of interaction and construction between subjects and objects.

Searching for “Truth” in traditional Western philosophy mainly asks the question of “What is?” While searching for “Dao” in Pre-Qin Chinese philosophy mainly asks the question of “How to?”

The “Truth” orientation has led to the thriving of a spirit of scientific reasoning, which is more suitable for the development of natural science and technology; the “Dao” orientation has nourished the thriving of a spirit of practical reasoning, which is more suitable for the development of social morality and political art, etc.

The motive of pursuing “Truth” is apt to cultivate an indomitable and aggressive will, but sometimes it will lead to bigoted or self-opinioned stances; while the orientation of pursuing “Dao” is apt to cultivate an attitude of incorporating and all-embracing, but sometimes it may become too slick and sly and lead to relativism.

The “Truth” pursuing focuses more on, and cares more about the final goal, in order to achieve the final goal sometimes any means may be taken. While the “Dao” pursuing emphasizes more on the process itself, sometimes even doesn’t care about the final goal.

Michael: If we cannot know God through words, what is the medium through which we can know him?

David: The Daoist believes the medium is experience, not words. “Dao comes into being by people’s walking; things come into being by people’s naming.” (Zhuang Zi)

Don: Is Truth a hobby—something to be toyed with in words but not taken too seriously?

David: You mean, like scripture?

Don: It comes back to the issue of the end product of Truth—presumably that’s the reason why it seems so important to find Truth, and why there is such extremism and violence involved in getting others to see “our” Truth? The question has more than just philosophical interest and implications. There is something almost primeval about it and about the search for it.

Michael: I don’t believe in eternal life yet I still feel driven to discover the ultimate Truth, whatever it may be. Perhaps it has to do with eliminating the uncertainties of life, leaving me confident that I am living life the right way.

Jeff: I think that’s the point. We tend to co-opt Truth in order to make ourselves—and therefore our way of life—seem better than others. That gives rise to extremism and violence. To be different is an affront to me, an attack on me, so I will respond. (Perhaps I have been watching too many Republican presidential debates! )

Jay: It seems that “Truth” is synonymous in our minds with “Right.” So things that differ from our Truth are by definition not Right. They are wrong, and therefore bad, and therefore should not be allowed to exist. If we could somehow break that connection between “True” and “Right” perhaps we might arrive at a more universal understanding of both. We might then be able to see the Truth from the perspective of others. In this class we often draw correlations between the Truths of Christianity and Daoism. Maybe we are totally mistaken but at least it’s an effort that most people do not make and would not be willing to make. Most people are unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that Truth might exist in more than one form. That leads to division.

Don: So is Truth Rightness?

Jeff: The question brings us back to the matter of the definition of Truth. Is it just an ontological issue, a matter of fact such as the fact that we are sitting here? The truth that planes flew into the twin towers does not make the event right. But if we look at a deeper level of Truth then the Truth–Right connection seems somehow tighter.

Jay: The question “What is Truth?” is the same question as “What is God?” “What is Love?”

Chris: It seems to me Truth did not exist before the Fall because its opposite did not exist. If Truth is Right, then for Wrong to exist there has to be Untruth and there was none in the Garden before the Fall.

David: The only thing we know can be True is the will of God; but we cannot know the will of God.

Jay: In the same way, there was no “will of God” before the Fall in that there was nothing in opposition to it. It was just the state of the universe. How to get back to that state is the big question.

David: It is a matter of going back to living life according to the will of God, with the emphasis on “living” because it is not a matter of talking about it. There was no discussion of Truth, Goodness, or the will of God before the Fall because those things just were. Any behavior in the Garden was ipso facto Good. Behavior, Good, Truth involves motion, walking. It is therefore embodied, personified. That means, even in our world too, that it can be varied: Different persons can validly hold different versions of the Truth. In the Garden, they would be valid Truth because they would be God’s will, but here on earth we can’t know that.

Jay: There was no need for the worship of God until after the Fall. Cain killed Abel over a difference in the way they worshiped God. Our ability to relate to God has been flawed since the Fall.

David: Perhaps that’s why we are all forgiven. We each have our “Truth” that might or might not correspond in any way to God’s will—we can’t know, and (according to scripture) God doesn’t expect us to know, so the only decent thing he can do is to forgive us all, no matter what. But we think we know the Truth and tend not to forgive the behaviors of those who don’t accept our Truth. In God’s view, all human versions of the Truth are equally (in)valid and therefore equally forgivable.

Jeff: How do we know for sure that God does not let us know his will? Devout followers of any religion will assert that he does.

David: The only scripture I can quote chapter and verse is Isaiah 55:8-9:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Jay: Intuitively we believe that if God really wants us to do something then he will somehow tell us or show us what to do, what his will is. He does so in many a scriptural account, speaking through Balaam’s donkey and so on, yet he does not seem to do it so blatantly with us today. The danger is that we assume that any message we infer from those accounts is universal; that if God was so intrusive with his will on the life of Balaam et al. then that must be his will for all Mankind.

Chris: Then he ought to intervene in a consistent manner.

Jeff: Many people take the lazy way out, shrugging their shoulders and saying “Who knows?”

Don: We tend to generalize from authorities, making their pronouncements universal. Perhaps a lesson in the account of Babel is that there is no one source of Truth.

Jeff: Yet here we are in this room, analyzing the Babel story and looking for universal messages, and God’s will, within it! It brings us back to the fact that we are driven to search for knowledge of the big-T Truth.

Jay: There is a kind of intentionality that even Jesus advocated: “Abide in me and I will abide in you” and so on. We cannot be totally lazy, totally passive, totally Daoist. How strictly we define the intentionality is what seems to lead to differences among us.

Jeff: Do we have the ability to parameterize this?

Jay: I can for myself! If I did not have a little bit of intentionality, my psyche would suffer catastrophically! I understand that it is out of my hands, that there is nothing I can do to influence things at the cosmic level, that it is not my decision. But I want to have some idea of how I can best have some input into the process.

Jeff: There’s no question that you can establish that through scripture, but it is an idea ingrained in the human psyche—the scripture writers embellished it, but because they were all individuals we ended up with many views—many of them contradictory—about it.

Don: So we are hard-wired to seek God in Truth? Or to sit back and let Truth seek us? Or is Truth-seeking a learned behavior? Intuitively, I sense that many more people seek Truth and want to know something about God than are utterly indifferent about it.

Jeff: We are hard-wired to do something, not nothing!

David: By creating Creation God guaranteed the Fall. So in that sense Adam and Eve were indeed hardwired to seek knowledge—the truth and the Truth—thus guaranteeing their inevitable Fall. But they also had free will and that is what enables us to overcome or short-circuit our hard wiring, to stop actively seeking Truth, and to accept (as the Daoist does) that the Way is what it is and there is Nothing you can or should do about it.

Jeff: Animals are better off than we are. They are instinctives; without morals.

David: Animal lovers might disagree, and find more morality in animal society than in human society!

Jeff: Perhaps it’s a matter not of inner wiring but of external environmental influences. Just about every human being is given some sense of right or wrong as a part of their upbringing. Is that a result of the Fall?

Michael: Big-T Truth is God’s will, which is not to be found through words. In the Bible, God changed the nature of his prophets to guide them to Truth. Perhaps Truth is expressed in this change of nature. In other words, the expression of Truth is when a person changes to be more in line with the will of God. This can only happen through action, not through words. Truth is personified through the nature of Jesus. It fits what Jesus said about the necessity to change our ways if we want to enter the kingdom of God; that following the law is not enough. The key is in a change in nature that is aligned with the will of God.

David: That is a beautiful statement. It emphasizes the dynamism of Truth, because change is dynamic by definition; it is a process, not a static concept.

Jeff: So we do have to do something!

David (postscripted last word; droit d’éditeur! ): But Something can be Nothing!

* * *

* In class I merely mentioned these quotes summarily but think they deserve to be quoted in full here. In addition, I have uploaded the entire document from which they were taken—an article by Dr. Keqian Xu of the School of Chinese Literature and Culture at Nanjing Normal University, entitled “Chinese ‘Dao’ and Western ‘Truth’: A Comparative and Dynamic Perspective.” (Asian Social Science 6:12 pp. 42-49; December 2010.)