But What About Truth?

This essay is originally published in Rooted in Grace: Essays on Dialog without Division (Columkille; Southlake, TX, 2018). For more please see: Rooted in Grace

By Andrea Lingle

I am sitting in the office I share with my husband, surrounded on three sides by books. Books that tell about the truth of Methodism, books that tell about the truth of generosity, books that tell about the truth of philosophy, economics, and the mechanics of the Hebrew language. There are commentaries, memoirs, sermon collections, and bibles. All full of truth.

But they don’t all agree.

Not even all the books in the Bible agree.

So, what about the truth? Is there truth, or must we be condemned to the weakness of the relativistic truth-for-me life? Truth is difficult. It is something that is hard to define, but easy to feel. We certainly do not want to be caught not telling it, and we get a creepy feeling in our gut when someone else is not telling the truth. But what if what I think is truth contradicts what you think is truth? Who is right?

Exactly.

Surrounded by all of these book, each telling a truth of its own, I am startled by the truth that every single one of them, down to the Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus I keep, nostalgically, on my shelf, are constructed from twenty-six letters (except the Hebrew ones, but let’s just let that go, for the sake of the illustration). Twenty-six letters has given us Plato, Lewis, Gladwell, and Blake, all of them different, and all of them hinting at truth. The Word behind the words. The Indescribable within the described.

But how do we defend that which lurks behind and within? How do speak truth if it is as broad as the universe and as unimaginable as the Higgs-Boson?

We pursue it with intense, unfettered, relentless joy. We wrestle with it until the break of day, coming away breathless, limping, and changed. We think and listen and learn and work and work and work, and, in the end, we realize that what we have been playing in was the ocean, not a puddle. We revel in the joy of being able to play in the very edge of truth, knowing that we could never hold it all. 

There is a recurrent problem in my house. Picture this: the doorbell rings. A friend, whom I am expecting for dinner, is standing on my faded Welcome mat with a suitcase. 

“Oh! Hi.” I try very hard not to stare at the suitcase while opening the door. Then I turn with an inquisitive and acid stare to non-verbally assault my husband. Why is there a suitcase? The guest bed does not have clean sheets!! I have NOT cleaned the bathroom down there! I shriek—internally. Oh, but he hears every word.

Later after the clandestine bed change and bathroom swipe my husband and I debate the finer points of truth.

“I did tell you.”

“No, you didn’t. If you had told me, then I would not have been surprised.”

“But, I remember telling you.”

And on and so forth. If you have not had this conversation, then I am assuming you are another life form that has learned to read. Which I welcome. I do not discriminate against reading birds or wombats or lichen. But, if you happen to be human, you will have experienced the unknowable truth. Did I remember to tell you.

Personally revealing, humorous examples aside, to search for truth requires discipline, commitment, and flexibility. No one comes to a greater understanding of the truth without acknowledging that truth is greater than a single interpretation or perspective of the truth.

To facilitate a search for truth, John Wesley used what has come to be called the quadrilateral. This four-part system uses scripture, reason, tradition, and experience to explore truth. Scripture, when used as a singular pathway to truth, can be used to justify injustice. Reason alone strips life of mystery. Tradition alone discounts the evolution of the human spiritual experience. And experience alone leaves you frustrated and screaming, unable to support what you have lived to be true (he forgot to tell me she was spending the night). 

Then we have to face another truth about truth. When is my rightness more important than living toward love? Sometimes truth (or your viewpoint of truth) forces you to climb a hill and die on it. If the truth you have found through your multifaceted process requires you to act, then you must. If your defense of truth protects the personhood of another, then you must defend your truth. But if not, I submit, that our responsibility is first to loving God, ourselves, and others, and not to defending truth—however it is discovered. 

“Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” John 8:31,32 Truth is what sets you free. Does your doctrine make you more free, more loving, more kind? Then it might be truth. What about your opinions? Do they make those around you free?

We have come to the table with our truths which we have nurtured and loved because they have given us the strength and courage to come this far. Now, shall we offer them to the Way, the Truth, and the Life, knowing that this work of grace, this work of faith, this work of God will go on to completion in Jesus Christ.

Next week, the Wisdom for the Way will begin a new series called, Encircled by Love. It will be part of a new Incarnational Study. During this study we will be using a beautiful book of drawings and sayings by Charles Mackesy called The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse and Philippians 4 to inspire thoughts and questions about what is most deeply real and true which seems to be just what we need to be asking right now.

Please join us as we search for what it means to love one’s neighbor when it gets really hard.