WHAT IS "THE TRUTH"?

"Few dare to announce unwelcome truth" ~ Edwin Percy Whipple (1866)

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" ~ Jeremiah 17:9

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." ~ John 1:14 (italics added)


What is truth? This is the question that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus while he was presiding over Jesus' trial and deciding whether to have Him crucified or let go. Prior to this question, Jesus had said, "....for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." (John 18:37b)

Pilate's question, "what is truth", is as pertinent today as it was during Jesus' trial, especially in an information age where everyone grabs on to the form of subjective truth that fits their agenda or ideology. It is not just a philosophical question, because to embrace the truth requires an uncomfortable level of honesty that few dare embrace. Hence people lie.People lie for a variety of reasons: when I look at my life and the times when I have lied, it has mainly been to save face, due to embarrassment or shame over the truth. Other times, it may have been because the truth was too painful and I realized that to embrace the truth, I had to admit my own culpability. Being truthful takes courage, and sometimes we don't want to hear the whole story. This is why actor Jack Nicholson's line "you can't handle the truth" from the movie "A Few Good Men" has become such an iconic movie line.

In our court system during testimony, we swear to tell "the truth" (don't lie), "the whole truth" (tell the whole story) and "nothing but the truth" (don't add any fabrications), but doing so can often be a challenge, even under oath where perjury could have serious consequences. It is especially hard to tell the whole truth when we realize that we are complicit in some act(s) of wrongdoing. Behind any good mystery is always a search for the truth. This is what our court system is supposed to get to - the truth - but we all know, however, that the process tends to pervert the intent and many times it is the side with the best attorneys that usually wins the case, and the truth gets lost in the judicial process (remember the O.J. Simpson murder trial?).

I ask this question about truth because one of the things that I have noticed about self-righteousness is that a self-righteous person cannot be completely honest with self, because to be self-righteous is to focus on one's strengths while ignoring or downplaying one's weaknesses. The flip side of this is that self-righteous people can spot flaws in others a mile away. Think about why Jesus was so critical of the Pharisees and other religious leaders of his day. They (the religious leaders) thought they were guardians of the truth, and yet they failed to use this same bar of "truth" to criticize themselves while they were being so hyper-critical of those whom Jesus was hung out with. Their biggest flaw was that they did not realize that they needed the same grace, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus gave to the "outcasts" of His day...

These days, truth gets lost in ideology, corporate agendas, political agendas and personal bias. My personal belief is that we all have certain biases, but many of us are not be able honest about these biases, because for some of us, our careers and livelihood are tied into the image that we portray to the public. If your job or career is tied to a certain ideology or a lie, then you will do all that you can to guard that version of "the truth" even if you know you are wrong.

Let me use American politics as an example (don't worry, I am not espousing a certain political ideology):

In politics, you see candidates and political Parties go at it like crazed animals. In politics, the rules go something like this:

1. Whatever problems exist in society are ALWAYS the fault of the other Political Party. So if you are a Democrat (or liberal) blame the Republicans (or conservatives) in which case George W. Bush or any of his conservative predecessors are the father of all evil. If you are Republican on the other hand, Democrats are ALWAYS the root of all the country's problems, in which case Barack H. Obama and his liberal cohorts are the fathers of all evil.
2. Whenever something good happens, my Party must always take credit for it one way of another. Find whatever statistics or facts you can find to back this up.
3. If the other Party does anything good, it is only an aberration and ONLY because my party inspired them to do it.
4. My political side has a monopoly on truth and the other side is ALWAYS wrong, except when the other side admits that this statement is true and they move over to my side.
5. Immorality prevails on the other side and never on my side. We may be imperfect on my side, but the other side is plain evil.
6. If you are liberal, you have a host of places to get your TV news from (especially MSNBC), if you are conservative, stick with Fox News and Fox News alone.

I think you see where this is going. If you have ever watched any cable news show where a political issue if being debated, you know exactly where I am talking about. The host of the show brings two people with opposing political view points to talk about an issue, and it ends up being a shouting match where each side is trying to out talk the other one, at the end of the day, no consensus is reached, and you end up wondering, "who is lying and who is telling the truth?" Well, in politics, you have a duty to stick to your talking points. It is not about truth, it is about spin or as Stephen Colbert would say, "truthiness" - a "truth" that a person claims to know from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic or the facts (Wikipedia). In essence, there is a lot of self-righteousness in politics. I would go as far as saying that all great politicians are skilled at this game.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because if we are ever going to truly embrace the message of God's grace, we have to dare to look at ourselves through the lens of truth, tough facts and all. We will never embrace God's Grace as long as we are being self-righteousness, and in a world where it is so easy to have an "us" verses "them" mentality, it is hard to be brutally honest with ourselves. There is really no "us" and there really is no "them" although the talking heads would have us believe this, because as long as we can create the ultimate boogeyman (them) we can attack him/it/them/her and supposedly destroy her and have peace. But how has this been working out for us? Not very well. To say that "all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory" is to include "us" in that "all have sinned" part of the sentence. It takes a humility and a rejection of self-righteous lies to do so.

I don't think it a coincidence that Jesus is full of "grace and truth" (John 1:14); for one, I am very grateful, because if all He has was the truth, without grace, I would be in serious trouble. But thank God for grace, that is where the liberation and love is.

May we all have the courage to embrace grace and truth!

Stephen Oladotun Akinduro