What is Truth?
What to hold onto when the truth varies.
"Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, 'Are you the King of the Judeans?' Jesus answered, 'Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?' Pilate replied, 'I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?' Jesus answered, 'My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Judeans. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.' Pilate asked him, 'So you are a king?' Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.' Pilate asked him, 'What is truth?'" (John 18:33-38).
What is truth? Pilate asks Jesus. I imagine he's a bit frustrated at this point, because Jesus refuses to answer his questions in anything like a straightforward way. Still it lingers in the air, echoing down through the ages: What is truth? It sounds like a dodge: Ok, Jesus, I see your point, but what is truth, anyway? Why is that relevant to whether I have you brutally executed or not? Is truth really a life or death matter? What is truth?
It's easy to dismiss truth with a cavalier relativism. It's easy to ignore the pain of others by asking, well, what is truth? It's not difficult to let ourselves complicate something into obscurity: sure migrants are people, but they should have come here legally, some of them are violent, immigration is all very complicated, and there's no perfect solution; sure, we should take care of the poor, but how would we do it as a nation, can I really force my neighbor to make his tax dollars go to pay for the poor, some of those poor are freeloading, poverty is all very complicated, so I guess, let's just not get too involved, whatever--what is truth? This question of Pilate's is no idle philosophical question, then. It's a literally a killer. To ask, with all the cynicism Pilate seems to bring to bear on the question, what is truth?, is to ignore the truth that is usually staring us in the face. It kills our compassion, our better judgment, our love. It leeches life from our spirits, and humanity from our hearts. When we ask, what is truth, as Pilate did, we are asking how we can recuse ourselves from our common human life and from the commandment of our Lord: love one another as I have loved you.
To become ambivalent to truth is to abandon love.
And yet, we live in a time and in a society in which truth is treated as a tool to be enlisted when convenient and casually ignored or even countermanded when expedient. Some have called this our "post-truth" world. The cavalcade of lies that pours these days from the White House is staggering. The spin-doctors have ever been at war with the truth, but they at least feigned deference to it. That seems to have evaporated entirely. Social media is no friend to truth, either. It is largely an echo-chamber where we listen to the truth, as we want it to be. It is easy, in these times, to ask with Pilate, what is truth and to go on believing whatever fictions we find to hand. We would prefer to be the masters (and manipulators) of truth rather than be mastered by it.
St. Augustine says in Book 10 of his
Confessions, that everybody desires happiness, everyone longs for joy, the deep sense of well-being and delight that is the proper state of human beings. "The happy life," he goes on to say, "is joy
based on the truth. This is joy grounded in you, O God, who are the truth. ...This happy life everyone desires; joy in the truth everyone wants." Even liars actually want the truth: "I have met with many people who wished to deceive, none who wished to be deceived." But not everyone finds this joy, because not everyone seeks joy in the truth. Pilate undoubtedly wanted a happy life, wanted joy. But all he could manage when given the choice was, "What is truth?" As Augustine says, "there are those who do not wan to find in you their source of joy. That is the sole happy life, but they do not really want it."
But this state of affairs is unacceptable to anyone who claims to be Christian. Pilate asks his famous question and then promptly leaves to talk to the Judeans about Jesus. The great 16th/17th-century philosopher, Francis Bacon, picked up on that fact, opening his essay "Of Truth" thus: "What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." Christians will always stay for the answer, probe the answer given, inquire into the roots and marrow of the question until we arrive at truth. William Sparrow was a nineteenth-century Episcopal theologian who ended his career teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary. His words are still etched into the stone at the entrance to the seminary's library: "Seek the truth; come whence it may, cost what it will." The truth can burn. Pilate did not want to acknowledge truth, because it would put him in a perilous position. Pilate turns instead to self-protection as a precursor to self-justification: what is truth? The truth may come from unexpected places, and it may cost us much. We may have to change our minds, even drastically. It may cost us friendships; it may cost us privilege. But Christians will seek the truth anyway, come whence it may, cost what it will.
Why? Listen to what St. Paul says about love: "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends" (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. Because love does not rejoice in covering over the calamities and cruelties of our leaders, of our allies, of our friends, of ourselves, but love rejoices in the truth. Love does not rejoice in the cowardice of obfuscation, but in the truth. Love is patient enough to listen for truth, kind enough to insist on truth, and lacking all arrogance and envy that protects us from the uncomfortable truths we would rather not acknowledge. Love does not rejoice in lies. Love rejoices in the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will. Love rejoices. In truth. Because love rejoices in God.
Let us return to Francis Bacon's essay, where he writes:
"The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last, was the light of reason; and his sabbath work ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light, upon the face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light, into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light, into the face of his chosen. The poet [Lucretius], that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth" (Francis Bacon, "Of Truth").
Although there is some "giddiness" or false pleasure in lies, and yes, a kind of pleasure in self-preservation and denial of unpleasant truths, abiding joy is to be found in truth. Maybe we can modernize and amplify Bacon a little: Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a our hearts and our minds move in love, rest in the stability and assurance of God's providence and protection, and turn upon the poles of truth.
But then, how do we go about discovering and aligning ourselves with truth in this life, under these conditions, in a "post-truth" world? How do we live the truth, anchor our lives in the God who is truth?
There's not a simple answer, except that we must first be determined that the truth is where we belong. We have to love truth. For the sake of God, for the sake of the One who loves us immeasurably more than we can understand or endure, we have to love truth, long for it, seek it out, accustom ourselves to it.
Love is our guide to truth.
There is a line from the song "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men: "Though the truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore." In a world in which it seems that the truth may vary, love is the ship that will carry our bodies safe to shore. Love rejoices in the truth, so let us live in love, and by love be directed to the truth. We will never have the whole truth. But we can treasure the truth that we hold, and sift through the rubble for more.
