What is Truth?

 

John 18:
³⁷ 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.” ³⁸ Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”
--------------------------------
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator certain inalienable rights....." Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
------------------------------------------------------

 -----------------------------------------------------
Today more than ever, we need to be reminded of this bond between faith and truth, given the crisis of truth in our age. In contemporary culture, we often tend to consider the only real truth to be that of technology: truth is what we succeed in building and measuring by our scientific know-how, truth is what works and what makes life easier and more comfortable. Nowadays this appears as the only truth that is certain, the only truth that can be shared, the only truth that can serve as a basis for discussion or for common undertakings. 

Yet at the other end of the scale we are willing to allow for subjective truths of the individual, which consist in fidelity to his or her deepest convictions, yet these are truths valid only for that individual and not capable of being proposed to others in an effort to serve the common good. But Truth itself, the truth which would comprehensively explain our life as individuals and in society, is regarded with suspicion. Surely this kind of truth — we hear it said — is what was claimed by the great totalitarian movements of the last century, a truth that imposed its own world view in order to crush the actual lives of individuals. 

In the end, what we are left with is relativism, in which the question of universal truth — and ultimately this means the question of God — is no longer relevant. It would be logical, from this point of view, to attempt to sever the bond between religion and truth, because it seems to lie at the root of fanaticism, which proves oppressive for anyone who does not share the same beliefs. In this regard, though, we can speak of a massive amnesia in our contemporary world. The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path.

(Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei #25)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


So, this is what's got me thinking on this dreary Saturday morning.  How do we, as humans, currently define "TRUTH"?  More and more, it seems that truth is being defined as exactly what Pope Francis says above... "scientific know-how".  What we can prove with our tests, our labs, our peer-reviewed journals...what we can see, and touch, and perceive concretely... which hypothesis we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt....that constitutes objective TRUTH in this day and age.  But isn't what can be PROVEN limited by the capacity of the PROVE-ER?  A child cannot determine the molecular structure of water, but a scientist can.  Is the fact that water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen not true for the child as it is for the scientist?   And even our most intelligent, brilliant scientists are limited by the capacity of the human brain, by our limited perspective of the universe while sitting atop this tiny rock, by our paradigms that are shaped indelibly by life inside a concrete world.  So, our ability to prove something cannot be TRUTH, because we are as limited as a child (or even less so!) in the grand scheme of things.  Science cannot be TRUTH, because it's sole goal is to discover truth.   So truth, then, HAS to be outside of science, because science isn't discovering itself. 

I read the first line of the Declaration of Independence, and I wonder what atheists think of this statement.... regardless of the later reference to a "creator". "We hold these TRUTHS to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....".  How does an atheist see that phrase?  Can science prove that "all men are created equal"?  In what way are they equal?  Some are healthy, some are born with disabilities or illnesses.  They are not scientifically equal in that regard.  Some people are born with natural intelligence, others less so - not scientifically equal in that regard.  Some are born with beauty, others with deformity.  Some are born into wealth, others poverty.  By what STANDARD, then, can we PROVE WITH SCIENCE that all men are created equal????  Even on a molecular level, at a chromosomal level, not all men are created equal.  What then, is the atheist to make of our very own Declaration of Independence??

The Founding Fathers, however, knew something that I feel like we moderns are quickly forgetting.  Truth isn't what we can prove scientifically.  TRUTH IS JUST WHAT IS.  Truth is REALITY.  And reality, although perceived subjectively based on the eye of the beholder, doesn't change based on that perception.  Truth just IS.  It cannot be voted on, democratized, change based on individual (or even group) opinion.  It IS.  It's the proverbial elephant, perceived by three blind men at different ends.  We can catch glimpses of the truth, but the whole of REALITY is a bit beyond us, from our limited field of vision.  And that is where faith comes in....

 “Faith is not a private matter, a completely individualistic notion or a personal opinion: it comes from hearing, and it is meant to find expression in words and to be proclaimed. For ‘how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?’ (Rom 10:14). Faith becomes operative in the Christian on the basis of the gift received, the love which attracts our hearts to Christ (cf. Gal5:6), and enables us to become part of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the world. For those who have been transformed in this way, a new way of seeing opens up, faith becomes light for their eyes.”

 (Pope Francis; Lumen Fidei, #22)

Light, that recurring metaphor from the Bible, illuminates.  It helps us to see reality as it truly is, and not as it is only perceived through limited tunnel vision.  Truth is reality, and bedrock, and it is only through this reality that "all men are created equal".  What was "self-evident" to the Founding Fathers is no longer self-evident to modern-day us, in all our progressive wisdom. 

GOD is reality.  We are the construct.  That's why His name is "I AM".  He is the fiber of reality, and we are the created artwork from His hands.