You Can't HANDLE the Truth!

Texts:  Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31; Romans 5: 5b;  John 16: 12-15
       

Picture first that court martial scene in A Few Good Men as Tom Cruise relentlessly demands the truth from the infuriated Jack Nicholson, who finally barks back that famous line, "You can't handle the truth!" 

Although stated with an entirely different tone to make an entirely different point, Jesus said essentially the same thing to his followers just before his arrest and trial. 

Picture now the last supper scene in John's Gospel as the disciples question where Jesus is going and how they'll be able to follow him (John 14).  Jesus gently, perhaps wistfully, responds: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 15:12). In other words: "You can't handle the truth; you can't take in the 'whole truth and nothing but the truth'." 

Then he adds, "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 15:13).

I wonder how often there is more truth available to me--were I prepared to handle it. But receiving truth in limited doses is, I suppose, a blessing. How comforting to know that Jesus felt compassion for his followers who weren't ready to hear the fullness of his truth. How hopeful to hear a promise that more was/is yet to come from the Spirit of Truth that animated Jesus's life and that guides us today with a Still Speaking Voice. I'm not expected to have figured out everything. I can be at peace when I have received all that my little mind and heart and spirit can bear--and no more.  Yet I can be expectant that there is more.  We can believe, as one of our UCC forebears said in 1620: “There is yet more light and truth to break forth” (John Robinson).

In my personal life, there have been times when I protected myself from difficult questions for fear my worldview would change too much, for fear I would have to delve deeper in my own emotional life than I was prepared to go, for fear I would leave my old self behind and never find my way back to that me, for fear I might discover a God bigger than I could handle.  At other times I have simply been so weighted with my own needs that I've missed transformative experiences with others that could have deepened my spirit.  I was too distracted by my hurts, preoccupations, or prejudices to listen deeply to someone else's truth.  I've not always welcomed new truth.

In a more cosmic sense, I believe Truth has many more things to say to humanity, but we are not able to bear them now. Just to consider that the universe is literally expanding, that it includes black holes and dying suns and subatomic particles and perhaps parallel universes, wormholes through space, and intelligent life on other planets--is more than most of us can handle. If the theory of evolution challenged us theologically 150 years ago, what are the theological implications for quantum physics?  We can't bear the thought quite yet--not because such a universe appalls but because it is astonishingly unfathomable. 

Culturally, too, there are limits on truth.  Human cultures have taught not only what is true but also how to know truth.  However—and we often forget this—the truth we know is always partial and culturally-mediated. As culture changes, so do our understandings of what is true and how we know what is true. It’s not simply that we accumulate new facts but that we put on new lenses that change how we see things.

I’m oversimplifying, but I ask you to consider that in pre-literate cultures, truth--or Wisdom--was apprehended through stories or sayings handed down or through dreams divined. The book of Proverbs, from which we read earlier, is an example of a type of trusted ancient wisdom or godly truth that was based on sage sayings. A wise person was one who could deliver the perfect aphorism or parable for the right situation. Sayings and stories and dreams—spoken by an authoritative figure like a shaman, elder, priest, or prophet—transmitted the truth.*

When cultures shifted from oral to written communication, the printed word became the ultimate arbiter of Truth.  Religious and political leaders eventually began grounding their declarations of truth in printed words.  Laws were written down. Our democratic system evolved when printed words allowed even the average person to pin down complex ideas long enough to follow a logical argument--and later to hold someone accountable for his or her argument. Wisdom written down allowed laws that were more than rulers' whims to gain power and stability.  And Wisdom printed by a printing press allowed for laws and philosophies behind them to develop and be distributed to more and more people. Truth in print, of course, has given us the false impression that what is printed is Truth.  So once again we see the limits of Truth within our culture's primary conveyance of truth.

Some culture watchers argue that the current vehicle for truth is the image.  A picture’s worth a thousand words, you know.  And now they say, “If you don’t have a picture of it, it didn’t happen.” Events that matter are those that are televisible. Our phones are cameras. Courtroom evidence is a video. We click on icons or touch pictures to operate our computers. Some hear sermons on television where the preacher’s image and personality fill up the whole screen. Some go to church to see video clips on a big screen so that even religion is picture-based. Pictures offer a truth that is more emotionally charged but maybe less rationally developed. Each new medium for delivering Truth expands and contracts what we can know.

As the general culture has reconsidered how it receives Truth, so has Christianity. The first authority for Christian Truth in a largely oral culture was found in the sayings of Jesus, passed on by word of mouth to followers who eventually incorporated them into the pages of Gospel accounts. Later, authoritative figures who stood on top of those sayings became the arbiters of God's truth, and others stood on top of them, until the Church's truth eventually was determined by a powerful hierarchy. 

When once again culture shifted, it was neither Jesus’s sayings nor papal authority that determined Truth for many Christians.  It was, in the slogan of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura—or "only scripture."  The Bible, now available in print to the many, became the chief repository of Godly truth and wisdom.  “No one can tell me what to believe,” Protestants protested. “I’ll read it for myself.” But how was the Bible to be interpreted?  Making Christian scripture the ultimate authority for Truth had its own limits. So by the 18^th Century John Wesley argued that spiritual discernment happens best when we consult scripture, tradition, reason, and our own lived experience.

What would you say is the primary way we today determine spiritual truth?  At some level our image-based culture, as I suggested earlier, drives how we deliver and receive religious truth today.  But another contemporary arbiter of Truth is found in our general culture and increasingly in religious life: community. In popular culture today, the World Wide Web is our icon for a vast and interrelated network of information that holds our wisdom. The Arab Spring last year demonstrates the power of these vast but loosely organized connections.  At Open Table, our emphasis on group discernment—which trusts the members of our faith community to find truth together collaboratively—reflects our own preference for an ancient/modern method for discerning what is true. Two heads are better than one.  There’s a theological presupposition that the Spirit of Truth works in community and that we, the Body of Christ, are all interrelated in some fundamental way, that there is unity across our many differences. We are committed to hearing even, or especially, the voices on the margins, because Truth lies there, too. Are there limits to this communal way of knowing?  Of course. 

But on this Trinity Sunday, I suggest that a communal approach to Truth is very Trinitarian. The Trinity is a picture of the Sacred as a diverse yet united community that seamlessly, eternally communes: Parent, Son, Spirit picture a mysteriously united and yet distinct pattern for Truth.

If the Trinity is True, then it's true more as a picture of loving community than as a doctrine to be developed through entirely rational argumentation.

If the Trinity is Truth, then our generation may see that truth best as relationship.  All that needs to be known and treasured and enacted is ultimately found in some pattern of relationship: as one atomic particle bonds with another, as one planet pulls its moon into a regular orbit, as one human paradoxically retains her distinct identity while being shaped by others in the community.

If the Trinity imparts truth, then truth comes also through ongoing revelations.  All that needed to be understood about God had not been shared by the time Jesus said farewell to his followers.  Truth continues to unfold—as we see through science and religion.  God’s “truth is marching on.”  But Truth is a messy and boisterous process. Recall the words of Lady Wisdom we read earlier as she strides forth: 

“Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out.”

Lady Wisdom, long associated with the Holy Spirit, does not stay home. She’s assertively active.

Jesus shared his truth but believed there would be other vehicles for sacred truth so that his Spirit would continue to prick consciences and nudge loving actions and teach creative ways of nonviolence and connect us to one another and inspire us to work for justice. The way Truth would get told would be through humanity's messy engagement in life.  To sit across from Jesus in the passive mode of listener had its limits.  We understand truth in the context of our daily interactions. 

In the fictional world of A Few Good Men, we observe several understandings of Truth. Truth is known in Jack Nicholson’s world--that is, the world of his character, Colonel Jessup--through slogans and unwritten rules like the Code Red and authority figures in a military chain of command.  But truth requires that authority be questioned, whatever the authority du jour.

Truth is known also in the world of the JAG corps in which Tom Cruise’s character operates. The US Constitution, formal military codes, even letters and a flight schedule are used as evidence and thus attest to power of the written word to tell us what is true. Yet these written truths require interpretation.

Ultimately, the audience plays its role as the ultimate determiner of truth. The film, you see, ends ambiguously. The Marines on trial are found not guilty of criminal charges but are dishonorably discharged. So it’s a hollow victory for the defendants and for their attorney. Meaning it’s up to the viewers—having heard the stories, having reviewed the law, having witnessed a powerful authority speak his truth, having seen logic and reason brought to bear on a complex case—it’s up to a jury-like audience, which represents the communal way that Truth today gets determined, to decide if Truth won out.

How much easier it would be to line up behind one confident authority who’ll happily decide truth for us. 

How much richer it is to be in relationship with the Spirit of Truth.

PRAYER

Trinity of Truth, keep us humbly mindful that we can know only in part, but keep us seeking truth nevertheless.  May we see love as the brightest light for truth. Amen

*My discussion of epistemological shifts was influenced by writings of Phyllis Tickle and Brian McLaren and others but is mainly informed by Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.  (New York: Penguin Press, 1985).

Truer Truth

Some folks believe that Christianity is all about believing that a set of unbelievable propositions are factually true.  The various ways we define truth account for important distinctions between what Marcus Borg calls the earlier Christian paradigm and an emerging one.  Representing the earlier paradigm is a letter I read recently in Billy Graham’s column in the Mobile Press-Register[i].  Rev. Graham invokes John 14:6 to affirm that Jesus is the only true path to God.  Graham then concludes with a prayer that God will open the hearts of disbelievers “to the Truth.”

In contrast, Marcus Borg, a writer on Emerging Christianity, would say the Bible bears truth that is not “absolute” but is instead relative and culturally conditioned, truth that is often expressed as metaphor.[ii]  Literalists might say metaphors don’t count as truth, but emerging Christians would say they name a deeper, truer truth.  And Jesus, the Word made Flesh, is Christianity’s foundational metaphor of Truth, even if there are other transmitters of Truth.


I’m going to use the opposite of the word truth to explore it further with the aid of a recent movie. The Invention of Lying is a 2009 comedy about the first person who learned to lie. Here's a trailer:

Let me warn you that the US Council of Catholic Bishops rated this movie O for offensive, calling it: “venomous . . . pervasive blasphemy . . .  an all-out sneering assault on the foundations of religious faith such as has seldom if ever been seen in a mainstream film.”[iii]  Other Christian groups have likewise condemned this movie.  So naturally I couldn’t resist using it in a recent sermon.  I’m not exactly recommending the film.  But I found some so-called blasphemous ideas intriguing and unintentionally supportive of Christian theology, though both the filmmakers and the bishops would disagree with me.  Truth be told, I may have more in common with Ricky Gervais, the proud atheist who wrote and stars in the film, than with the offended Christians who’ve panned it.  No, I'm not an atheist, and I don’t endorse lying.  But the bishops read this film too literally and thus missed an implicit if unintended argument: Religion might be a human creation, but it is our means of expressing, however imperfectly, Deeper Truth about our most sacred and ultimate reality.  The “true lies” that religion tells are not falsehoods but metaphors.  They are our journeys toward the ineffable and songs about life and pictures of that which we experience but can’t quantify. 

The Invention of Lying is set in a world that looks just like ours—except no one knows how to lie.  You might think: What a morally pure environment with total trust and honesty!  But telling literal truth is an infantile measure of morality. After all, honesty is not always kind.  The compulsively truthful often say some pretty cruel things.  And because of limited imagination, the alternate world’s inhabitants understand reality only in material terms.  For instance, they evaluate other people only on their physical qualities and achievements, so no one can imagine that physically unattractive people have anything beautiful inside them.  Jennifer Garner’s character in the film matter-of-factly tells Ricky Gervais’ character at the start of their blind date that she’s disappointed to see he’s fat.  The inner qualities of a person can’t be verified as true, so they don’t exist and can’t be imagined.  Worse than brutal honesty is this stark objectivity required for literal truth-telling.  That means no one can make subjective judgments or speculate . . . or empathize.

Neither are creative expressions possible in a rigidly truthful world.  For instance, poems and novels are unknown in the film’s world; the only writing is technical or factual.  Ricky Gervais’ character—the world’s first liar—has been an unsuccessful documentary film writer until his discovery of lying allows him to become wildly popular as the world’s first fiction writer for film.  With the discovery of lying, art enters the world.

So does empathy. Jennifer Garner’s character, at first so indifferent to her fat suitor’s feelings, toward the end of the film watches children taunting a chubby child on the playground and, in an understated scene, takes an evolutionary leap forward to IMAGINE what that bullied little boy must be feeling.  We, the audience, see the dawning of empathy in her as she tells the child he’s beautiful inside—and she takes a step forward in her human growth.  To feel what another might be feeling requires imagination, a move beyond factual objectivity into the realm of conjecture and into the region of compassion—where deeper truths dwell.  Maybe we're inaccurate when we see another’s tears and connect that experience to one we've had.  We can’t really know what the other is feeling.  But our attempt to feel with another is an imaginative leap that can take us to a more deeply human place and a truer truth.

Another mixed gift the invention of lying brings to this world is religion.  At a pivotal moment in the film, the Ricky Gervais character is summoned to his dying mother's bedside. There the main character hears a cardiologist tell him and the critically ill mother, with cold objectivity, that her heart will probably give out some time that evening—and in the same breath the doctor recommends the fajitas being served in the hospital cafeteria.  Upon hearing her prognosis, the ill mother worsens.  Panic-stricken, she tells her son that she fears the nothingness beyond death.  With sudden inspiration, the world’s first and only liar creates an assuring story about a place people go to after they die, a place in the sky with many mansions (the very phrase from the King James version of John 14:2—“In my father’s house are many mansions”—often read at funerals).  Since the doctor and others have overheard the story the world’s first liar tells to calm his mother, and since they don’t know lying is possible, they all accept the story as truth, beg the son to tell them more, then urge him to tell the whole world this good news.  In that moment Religion is born, just made up on the spot—a lie—so says the film The Invention of Lying—where “religion” is equated with “lying”.

If you’ve watched any of Ricky Gervais’s stand-up comedy or seen him interviewed, you know he enjoys taking pot shots at biblical literalists.  On the surface, his character’s spur of the moment creation of “a man in the sky” who controls peoples’ lives is an attack on religion.  But on another level his film eventually undermines the idea that there is only the material world we can see and prove.  As the lead characters evolve in their ability to tell a deeper truth, which includes their creation of religion, we see them developing compassionate awareness of another, a love that is beyond the self-serving gratification exhibited earlier, and an imaginative capacity to see not just the material but what’s “inside.”  The film’s elevation of the two developing characters—a new or born again Adam and Eve—unwittingly acknowledges a spiritual dimension to life.  This man and woman become the first fully human beings, and the growth of their characters says there is more to life than can be captured in factoids.  There is perhaps “The More,” to use Marcus Borg’s term for God.  I don’t think Ricky Gervais intended it.  I don’t think the Catholic bishops recognized it.  But the film links the invention of religion to the benign “lies” we know as art, beauty, empathy, and love.

There is a Truth more important than Fact.  The Truth of the spirit brims with compassionate wisdom that facts can’t span.  For Christians, there is Truth of Jesus we live out rather than prove mathematically. As Jesus says elsewhere in John, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).  Real truth is not restrictive or narrow.  It’s freeing.  



Followers of Jesus’ way are challenged to grow personally in empathy, in creativity, in compassion so that we can live and speak a deeper truth and thus contribute to transforming this world from what is to what can be--by God’s grace.

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[i] Graham, Billy. “Complaints about Bible Likely Mask a Lack of Faith” in the Mobile Press-Register 2D (May 21, 2011).

[ii] Borg, Marcus.  The Heart of Christianity.

[iii] http://www.usccb.org/movies/i/inventionoflying.shtml