“What is Truth?”

We are born, we live, and we die. And somewhere in between we want to know and feel something real, something true. Whether or not we are able to come upon a grand theory of the universe, we want to experience something real. Pilate’s question, “what is truth” is our question, and it the question that has rung in our ears through the centuries.

Henry Thoreau said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Walden). This is the visceral horror.

Part of the trouble is that we don’t know precisely what we are looking for, but we hope that when we come across it that it will be apparent: we will know that is it.  However, everywhere we look somebody has claimed truth, but when we look a little closer we think, “No, that’s not it.”

Naming shapes our perception of others, the world, and ourselves: take the word “immigrant” as an example. We name this and that; we label “those” people and ourselves, and in the process we poison the waters and pretend that we haven’t done so. Our troubled perception bespeaks our propensity and incapacity to name things. 

We are in the hunt for something real, but in the process our proclivity for misnaming things sends us south when we should probably go north. And so our troubled perception continues; we continue to shake our heads when we see people claiming to “possess” truth. We all seem to want it, but then maybe it’s not an it that we seek. Have we misnamed it as an object? However, objects are easier to handle, to possess, to manipulate and wield as weapons. We then prefer lies to the truth as long as the lies help us augment our own security. We long for truth. But we opt for cheap imitations, and we name those cheap imitations as “true.”   

We want to cut to “the truth,” and so we use words as swords when they could be used as plowshares. With guns and tanks it would seem easier to take captive truth than to do the precarious thing of letting truth captivate us. I would add, however, that usually we do not have much of a choice; it sneaks upon us without us knowing and so we take up arms fearing that our cheap imitations will be uncovered for what they are. 

For various reasons, Christians are often misled into thinking that Christians possess the truth, albeit “the truth” of which they speak frequently slips into generic affirmations that are safe and superfluous. I would suggest that Christians do not have possession of much at all, but they are to bear witness to truth. And it is with words that Christians bear witness to an incarnated truth they cannot control.

“What is truth?” This question may seem to be an easy question to ask if it is held at a distance as if it does not have dire implications for the one holding it at a distance. How truth is named is of special importance because what we perceive as “true” will be according to our naming of it. To our horror, we may awake to learn that not only have we not lived, but also we have intentionally misnamed life in order to name death as “life,” which is perhaps the life we would rather live as “good” and “true.”  

Images of Horror and Hope

I do not know many people who cook over poop, and I doubt it takes much argument to conclude that the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel was a strange person. Cooking over poop was on his to do list among other unconventional things. He enacted theology in the weirdest ways imaginable in order to grab people’s attention and to unsettle them with truths about their situation.

Stanley Hauerwas has said that description is everything. He has said, “If I say, ‘World War I, World War II, what comes to mind? Now if I say, ‘World Slaughter I, World Slaughter II, what comes to mind?’ Description is everything” (Lecture at Fuller, Spring 2011).

In each generation, it is the task of pastors and theologians to communicate good news as actual good news with fresh and vibrant imagery that captures the imagination.

I doubt, however, if I would ever recommend following Ezekiel’s procedures for creating theological imagery. However, it may prove helpful to take note of the fact that vivid images can potentially speak to us on a visceral level. We may understand what the imagery is seeking to communicate, albeit we may remain unable to articulate why it resonates with us and how it is we understand. It’s been said we don’t always need to know how we know (which may be in part due to do our inability to articulate how it is we know something; it’s then perhaps a matter more of an incapacity to articulate than much of anything else).

In short, images and for that matter stories do what discourse often fails to do. Images can capture a person’s imagination and facilitate inroads for comprehension on a rather basic level. This may be in part why metaphors and vivid imagery are indeed so necessary for theology. We understand ideas with metaphors, and we speak of human affairs in relation to God metaphorically because metaphors are what we have linguistically to describe the significance of God’s conspicuous and inconspicuous sublime ubiquity. Strange and perhaps even horrifying metaphors may very well awake us to the uncomfortable and yet hope-filled truth of God’s reality in our midst.

For as long as I can remember, my mom has told my dad to involve more stories in his sermons. This is not merely for purposes of entertainment; this is for purposes of communication.

Imagery has of course done much for philosophy. The metaphors of buildings and webs have done much to frame philosophical endeavors. Similarly, imagery has done much for theology. There is no need, however, to limn the hosts of theological imagery here.

In part truth as we know it is a description of reality, and in part theology is symbolized reality that seeks to articulate reality’s significance. This was the business of Ezekiel, and this is the business of pastors and theologians today. It may be said that Ezekiel was an excellent theologian because he sought to vivify the reality of human affairs in relation to God, and he did so quite provocatively.

Sometimes I wonder if we have grown so diffident about the business of theology that we have morphed it into a timid academic discipline writing with abstract wisps of air in the clouds completely unrelated to our earthy, gritty somatic existence.