What is Truth?

Andrew Guffey • April 23, 2026

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.


Pub Theology 10/27/26 -- 'Tis the season, spooky season!

By Peter Trumbore • October 26, 2026
"From ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!" This very old folk prayer, which has been tied to both Scotland and Cornwall, used to hang on the wall of my childhood home, and it often comes to mind for me at this time of year. A little trivia -- the first known publication of this prayer was in 1926 in a volume titled "The Cornish and West Country Litany," but it is thought to be far older. That it can be traced to regions of the United Kingdom that are quite distant from one another may be a testament to its antiquity. Anyway, we're right up to the climax of what some call "spooky season," the weeks from the end of summer up until Halloween, which this year falls on Saturday. Apparently this idea of "spooky season" is a relatively recent development, becoming popular on the internet as a way to talk about stretching the adult of fun of Halloween from a single day of dress-up shenanigans to something akin to the more well-established holiday season we're now rocketing toward. This is a far cry from what I recall growing up, where more than a few of the local churches in our area very actively sought to discourage observance of Halloween, labeling it a pagan celebration of witchcraft, devilry, and superstition that was incompatible with being a good Christian. Of course that didn't really dissuade anyone. But with the holiday just a few days away, I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to talk about the nature of spooky stuff, ghoulies and ghosties, and other such things. So tell us, what do you love about Halloween? How do you mark it? Does anything give you pause? What do you think about this claim that you can't be a Christian and still participate in or enjoy Halloween? Finally, what do you make of that old Scots and Cornish prayer? What real fears do you think it reflects? And what might a modern version look like? Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday Oct. 27 starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 25, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 25, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Copy of Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 18, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 18, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 10/13/26 -- A series of quick hits

By Peter Trumbore • October 13, 2026
Some weeks inspiration hits and we stumble onto a single topic that has enough going for it that our Tuesday evening conversation revolves around it entirely. Some weeks, like this one, we take a different approach. Tonight, rather than chew on one big idea, we've got a couple of interesting, but generally unrelated questions to animate our discussion. We'll take them on one at a time, in no particular order, and see what develops. Nine years ago New Yorker cartoonist David Sipress drew a cartoon with this caption: "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.” Do you experience this tension in your own life, and if so, how do you deal with it? Are you more interested in buying things, or experiencing things? How far will you go to experience something for the first time? What is an example of that? Are you a thrill seeker? An adventure traveler? Something else? Lutheran pastor and writer Nadia Bola-Weber said this: "People don't leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus. People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much, they can't stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that and clearly isn't." What is your take on this? Do you agree with her? Why or why not? Podcaster Joe Rogan: "Jesus was born out of a virgin mother. What's more virgin than a computer? If Jesus does return, you don't think he could return as Artificial Intelligence? AI could absolutely return as Jesus." OK, is he off his rocker, or do you think he might be on to something? If all else fails, what's on your mind this week?  Join us for the conversation this evening, Tuesday Oct. 13 starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 11, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 11, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 10/6/26 -- Finding peace, finding God

By Peter Trumbore • October 5, 2026
It escaped my notice, so perhaps it escaped yours as well. Back on August 31, the lauded poet, farmer, essayist, and deeply influential thinker Wendell Berry died at the age of 92, in the place he loved best, his farm in Kentucky. Over the years, several of our conversations have been inspired by or touched on Berry's ideas and writings. While Berry has influenced countless Christians through his poetry and fiction, he described himself as a "bad-weather churchgoer." In the preface to his collection of sabbath day poems titled "This Day," Berry explains it this way: "But I am a bad-weather churchgoer. When the weather is good, sometimes when it is only tolerable, I am drawn to the woods on the local hillsides or along the streams… In such places, on the best of these sabbath days, I experience a lovely freedom from expectations — other people’s and also my own. I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration.." One of the things this quote brings to mind is how important the concept of "place" was in Berry's work and, more importantly, the way he saw the world and how he sought to live in it. Way back in 2017, we talked about the idea of place, with Berry as our guide. "Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are your neighbors in it ..." This is a very small portion of Wendell Berry's "A Poem on Hope". In his poem, "The Want of Peace," reprinted in the illustration above, Berry writes: "I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place." So in our conversation this week we're going to revisit this idea of "place," of finding it, belonging to it, and perhaps losing it. There are many ways we can think about this notion. Where do we find peace? Where do we find God? Where do we find ourselves? Where do we find our people, or our purpose? Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday Oct. 6 starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 4, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 4, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/29/26 -- There's an app for that

By Peter Trumbore • September 28, 2026
You're probably aware of this already, but for years now, we've been hearing that Americans in particular are suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. Which is different from simply being alone. I think we're all aware that it is perfectly possible crave alone time without feeling lonely, and to feel intense loneliness even when surrounded by people. Sometimes this can be a result of things that are out of our control. But often, it's the choices we make in the name of convenience that lie at the heart of this. Journalist Gabe Bullard's new book, "Against Convenience," argues that our pursuit of ever faster and frictionless experiences comes with invisible costs, and that we unthinkingly accept those as the inevitable price we have to pay to make things easier, Reviewing the book in The Atlantic , writer Julie Beck argues that many of those costs are social. Beck writes: "Once you open your eyes to the tradeoff between convenience and community, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s more convenient to ride a Peloton bike at home alone than to go to a spin class full of other sweaty bodies (whom you might end up chatting with). Zoom meetings make working with distant colleagues much easier, but aren’t very socially nourishing. The gig economy is rife with this bargain. Ubers and Lyfts replace rides given by friends and trips taken on public transit. Delivery replaces meals out at local restaurants and time spent in stores of all kinds." Sometimes, she continues, the whole point of an innovation is that it allows you to do something in isolation that once required interaction with others. Think self-checkout at the grocery store, or the "quiet ride" option that Uber introduced. One of the things we regularly talk about in our conversations is the importance of community. It's why some of us come to church, or, for that matter, Pub Theology. But I think we all also recognize that we engage in this tradeoff of convenience over community all the time, and in all kinds of ways. So that's what we're going to talk about in our discussion this week. Thinking about your life, your-day-to-day, how do you experience this convenience vs. community dynamic? Sure, when we're streaming a new movie in our living room, we're trading that for sitting with a bunch of strangers in an actual theater. Or when we get our meals or groceries or other purchases delivered to our door we get to spare ourselves the hassle of interacting with wait staff and cashiers, or dodging around other shoppers blocking the cereal aisle. But what about the impact of convenience on the relationships we really care about? And what is the impact of avoiding interaction, not just on ourselves, but on society?Finally, how much convenience are you willing to give up in order to build, or rebuild, or sustain community? Join us for the discussion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Sept. 29, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | September 27, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • September 27, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/22/26 -- What's your plan?

By Peter Trumbore • September 21, 2026
Years ago, when we were newly married, my wife and I used to schedule annual "planning retreats," where we'd leave town for a long weekend to stay in some charming bed and breakfast somewhere (typically coastal New England), enjoy what the local area had to offer, and to make plans for the future. We'd usually dedicate half a day or so of our getaway to thinking about and writing down our goals for the near and longer-term. These were the days before house and kids, when it looked like the future was ours to determine. We both had demanding jobs at the time, and while we weren't rolling in dough, we had enough to give us the luxury of looking ahead rather than worrying about how we were going to manage day to day. So we talked over timelines, savings goals, family priorities, and so on, trying to figure out things like how much we had to put away, and for how long, before we could start looking for a house. When would we be able to afford to have children? What were our career goals? Where did we want to be five years from now, or ten years from now? And it wasn't just brainstorming. We. Made. Plans. We had targets. And objectives. And we tried to stick to those plans over the following year, reviewing and reevaluating at our next annual planning retreat. At some point, though, we stopped doing this. I can't remember the specifics about when or why we abandoned the exercise, but at some point we did. If I had to guess, I think I'd say we realized that life didn't conform to our nearly laid out agenda. Or, as Mike Tyson famously said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Or, in military parlance, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." You may be wondering at this point where we're going with this, and how it relates to our first discussion after our long summer hiatus. Well, it turns out that scripture has a few things to say on the topic of worrying about and planning for the future versus trusting in God's goodness and care. Probably the best known example comes from Matthew's gospel, specifically 6:25-34 where Jesus is telling his followers not to worry about the future: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?" He concludes with this: "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today." I hear the objection. You're right, this is Jesus telling us not to worry about the future; he's not telling us to not to plan for it. And, in Luke's gospel (14:28-30), Jesus addresses this directly. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him ..." For me, this poses a bit of a conundrum. Why plan for the future when everything is in God's hands anyway? But if we fail to plan ahead, things can go awry and we'll face the consequences of our own unpreparedness. So where is the balance here? Join us for the conversation this week as we take on the question of planning for the future. Are you a planner, or are you more a seat-of-the-pants kind of decision maker? Do you develop plans for the long-term, or is your focus more on the immediate? For example, if it's my turn to make dinner, I make a meal plan (usually). But I'm not in the five-year-plan business. At least not anymore. How about you. Come out to Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Sept. 22, and share your thoughts with us. Discussion begins at 7pm.