You Can Handle the Truth

Truth

/tro͞oTH/

noun

1: the quality or state of being true

True

/tro͞o/

adjective

1: in accordance with fact or reality

2: accurate or exact

A large Tibetan Singing Bowl was struck. This marked the beginning of morning meditation. Everyone closed their eyes and breathed with a little more intention. Except for me. I looked around (a bad habit I developed during Sunday School prayer). I wondered what everyone was thinking. I thought about what I should be thinking (I think that’s meta-meditation).

A few weeks earlier, I arrived in Santa Cruz, California. Up to that point, I had my first surf lesson, started an internship, and attempted to be a walk-on extra for the movie Chasing Mavericks. Now, I needed to find a new church home (priorities weren’t my strong suit back in 2011). Though I had already narrowed my choices down to two, a friend kindly invited me to attend a service with him. I gladly accepted the offer.

A second playing of the Singing Bowl brought the congregation out of meditation. Ironically, I couldn’t focus the entire time. As the vibrations faded, eyes opened and smiles were passed from person-to-person as if spring had finally arrived. For some reason, I equated meditating with being physically still, so I was just happy to finally shift in my seat. I looked over at my buddy. I think he centered his chi.

Like the different churches I’ve attended in the past, a short meet-and-greet was a part of the morning structure. The woman sitting to my right obviously didn’t know appropriate meet-and-greet etiquette as she felt it necessary to resuscitate our conversation only moments after it ended.

“Now, is there anyone visiting with us for the first time?” the speaker asked as everyone settled back into their seats. I noticed through my peripheral the woman trying to get my attention. I promptly looked the other way with a sudden curiosity of whether anyone responded to the question.

“Psssst. Excuse me,” the woman whispered. “Psst….psst. Hey, excuse me. Pssssst.”

“Oh, me?”

“You’re new here right?”

Now, I take a very legal approach whenever this question is asked regardless of who’s asking or under what circumstance. I reserve the right to remain silent. But the speaker and the woman persisted.

“Anyone at all?” the pastor asked.

“You are, aren’t you?”

“Nah, I’ve been here before,” I whispered out the side of my mouth. “One of the later services.”

“We only have the one.” The woman waved down an usher.

“The eleven o’clock, I think.” I was committed. 

She gave a “point-and-tap” over my head as if ordering me a drink. 

“The eleven-thirty, maybe?”

“It’s okay. I knew you weren’t going to say anything,” she said with a smile.

“Aw, you’re sweet.”

I looked down the row. Passed from person-to-person, a large pink, perfumed rose made its way to me. I’m not sure why, but when I received the gift, I stood. I held it up for the congregation to see like I had just caught a home run ball. I’m pretty sure the welcome applause stopped not because it ran its natural course, but rather because everyone just wanted me to sit down. Either way, I was grateful they did.

The speaker walked to the podium. He looked out over the congregation and asked, “What is truth?”

Apparently, my recent fib needed addressing. I slouched a little. But my interest was piqued. I knew this one. I also knew the one famous for asking and to whom it was asked: Jesus. Pilate. Boom. No half-points this round. I heard enough sermons to know exactly where this message was heading.

“We can’t know it.”

I was wrong.

“How can we? Think about it,” the speaker continued. “It’ll hurt your head. Truth is one of those things that is just too vast to comprehend. Truth. How can we know it? We simply can’t.”

I looked around the auditorium. Many nodded in agreement. Me? I was surprised. And not just because my free gift was a scented rose and not voucher for a free drink at the coffee bar. I was surprised because leaders have circled this mountain before. In fact, they’ve been circling it for centuries. Apparently French writer Jean-Baptiste was right: “The more things change, the more they stay the same” (not unlike using a two hundred year-old-quote as the chorus of a rock song). From Pilate to the pulpit, the same question continues to be asked. And please hear me. It’s not the question that’s concerning. But rather both men’s conclusion.   

Because if truth is beyond comprehension, then it becomes relative; and if truth is relative, then there are no absolutes; and if there are no absolutes, then there is no right or wrong. No rules, no authority, no consequences. Not too dissimilar from those well-thought-out bylaws we posted to treehouses as kids.

As children, a place with no rules and no punishment was the utopia many of us strove to attain–a world where consequence was nothing more than a word used by adults. But something happened along the way. We grew up. We traded in our games of make-believe for something greater. But the pull of childish thinking and treehouse philosophies are anything but weak. Author J.M. Barrie knew this well.

At the end of Peter and Wendy, Peter Pan fully succumbs to the pull of juvenile desires staying true to his adolescent edict: “Even though you want to try to, never grow up.” He trades that for which he always longed, a family of his own, for eternal childishness. Some of us make a similar trade. We long for truth, yet settle for relativity. “If it feels good do it” is simply a repackaging of Peter’s proclamation given to us from the Neverland of the 1960’s: Woodstock. One many live by today. 

And I get it. In a world full of pain, who doesn’t want a painkiller? And I’m not challenging one’s perceptual experience (Peter wouldn’t have chosen Neverland if it didn’t have some redeeming quality). I just believe there’s a better way. Because oftentimes tonight’s “feel good” is tomorrow’s headache, and we’re left nursing two pains instead of one. Perhaps a better philosophy then is not if it feels good, but rather if it is good. Philosophical change is difficult to make, however, when one is busy having food fights and crowing like a bird (okay, that’s more Hook than Peter and Wendy).

Christ calls us to be childlike, not childish. Childlike asks the question “What is truth.” Childish is knowing truth and asking anyway. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” We must do the same. And not because it’s easy, but because it’s right. And ultimately, because it’s in our best interest (the boys of Neverland were, after all, called “lost”). Because without truth, we wander. And when it comes to matters of truth, all who wander are lost.

Truth isn’t beyond comprehension. It stood before Pilate. It stands before us today. We can know it; we can know Him. For those truly searching, truth isn’t hard to find. In fact, in our wanderings, truth found us (John 3:16; Matthew 1:22,23; Philippians 2:1-11). So, perhaps the question isn’t how can we know truth? but rather, will we choose to know truth and embrace it?

John 14:6

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way the truth and the life’” (NIV).