Will the Truth Set us Free?
One day, according to an Eastern fable, the gods
decided to create the universe. They
created the stars, the sun and the moon.
They created the seas, the mountains, the flowers and the clouds. Then they created human beings. At the very end of their work, they created
truth. At this point, however, a
problem arose: Where should the gods
hide truth so that human beings wouldn’t find it too soon? They wanted, you see, to prolong the adventure
of the search; as any good pantheon of gods would want to do for a little
entertainment.
“Let’s put truth on top of the highest
mountain” said one god. “Certainly it
will be hard to find there.” “Let’s
put it on the farthest star” said another. “Let’s hide it in the darkest and deepest abyss.”
“Let’s
conceal it on the dark side of the moon.”
In
the end, the wisest (and there is always a wisest) goddess said:
“No,
let’s hide the truth inside the very heart of each human being. In this way they will look for it all over
the universe without being aware of inside themselves all the time.” (from the
Truth Diamond, a sermon by Rev. Marni Harmony published in Quest, UUA, Feb.
1991)
Our fourth principle as Unitarian
Universalists implores us to affirm and promote a “free and responsible search
for truth and meaning.” Of all of our
principles, I find this one the most difficult. Just who is it that decides what truth is? Is truth relative to each of us or is there
an absolute truth? How do we even know
where to look if truth is, as the fable suggests, located within our own
hearts?
Add to this, that religion, even our open
searching religion, is all about proclaiming truths that can’t be verified and
you can begin to see how quizzical such a mandate can be.
In the many years of my ministry I have
often been struck by the biblical claim that the truth will set us free. But will it? When a group of people or even each of us can’t be sure just what
the truth is, how then will knowing it make us free? The assumption is that there is a truth we can all agree on, and
that, my friends is the heart of the matter.
We don’t agree on many kinds of truth, especially spiritual truths. How then are we going to find our way to the
freedom that truth promises us?
Truth is not a warm and fuzzy idea. It is a polarity, which is to say, the idea
of truth implies that there is an opposite, untruth or even a lie. And yet we operate all the time with an
agreed upon set of truths in the world.
Before going much further let me outline some distinctions about the
different kinds of truth. The
philosopher Roger Shutuck outline four kinds of truth:
First is the truth that can be known. By this he means the empirical facts of
science and everyday observation. We
all agree that there is a planet and that we are bodies on that planet, and
that gravity and age pull us down.
Those common sense truths are verifiable and not very exciting but they
are truths. I imagine though that this
is not the kind of truth that our religious principle is urging us to search
for.
The
second kind of truth is that which might be known. This are the fuzzier observations. What color is red or blue?
Did you really feel that way or was it just a bad day. This is the realm of relative and emotional
truth. This can also be the truth that
hurts. Several years ago, Miss Manners,
(it is amazing what your minister reads isn’t it?) decried the overt prevalence
of nasty frankness. Criticism is not
always necessary she proclaimed. And
expressing how we feel to the determent of other’s feelings is often just plain
wrong. Unfortunately, this is an area
in which every congregation and most every family needs to pay more attention. It is tempting to gossip, assume and make
innuendoes about the people we share our lives with. And those so called “truths” which are really just opinions can
really hurt. We have seen this happen
here. Expressing your truth to the
determent of another is not good. As
Miss Manners put it so well: “ In other words, we have hit bottom. The thrill of deliberately opening up our
feelings and telling the whole truth to one another is hurtful….” Speaking our minds without any concern
about how another might feel about it, may free you to some extent but it can imprison another with hurt.
Then there are the truths that won’t
be known. I am fairly certain that the
more we know about the working of the universe the more mystery it will present
us with. This is the realm of spiritual
truth. At this level, an individual or
in most organized religions a group of people will agree on the nature of God
and the universe, usually around a story of some kind. They or we believe this to be true with all
our hearts, in fact that is what faith means.
But we can’t possibly prove that truth outside ourselves. Many spiritual thinkers have determined that
in fact, there is a fundamental difference between the empirical truth of
science and the unprovable truth of religions and never shall the twain
meet. I am not so sure.
Finally,
there are the truths that should not be known.
I am by nature a mystic. That
is, I accept the reality of the world as I see it but sense a greater mystery,
which I will never fully comprehend. I
know this because I have experienced it.
I don’t degrade others ultimate truths (unless the hurt others) because
I am not going to know for certain who is right and who is wrong. This requires a bit of humility and loss of
ego. I could just be wrong about
God. Maybe the Christians are right and
I am going to hell. But there it is.
To these four classifications of
truth I would add a fifth and that is the truth that should be known. It is true that we often hide what
hurts. But the truth will set us free
to the extent that we open what was hidden.
Child abuse, alcoholism, sexual abuse, these cycles of pain, breed in
the secrecy of the families and communities we share. Expose these to the light of day, tell what actually did happen
and the victim finds a certain kind of freedom.
What
then can we say is the free and responsible search for spiritual truth that
will enliven our lives? Can there be a
spiritual truth that sets us free? In
the case of abuse, in fact, the emotional freedom we feel is itself a spiritual
transformation. The Catholic Church has
had to come to grips with a tremendous lie.
Hundreds if not thousands of cases of clergy sexual abuse. As one Catholic I know put it: “Yes, it pains me to see the church reeling
from such scandal. But my life has been
deepened now that the truth is known. I
was abused and now my abuser is known.
I have felt closer to God than ever before.
Unitarian
Universalists were not immune to such troubles. Back in the 1970s and 1980s there were quite a few cases of
clergy sexual misconduct. I am proud to
say we dealt with it openly, asking those who did this to leave, and we have
established procedures to deal with it in the future.
What
about the rest of life though? Here we
are looking for some kind of truth, that will help us deal with a separation, a
loss or just the numbing complexity of life.
What kind of truth can we offer up to each other that will set us
free? As my colleague Marni Harmony put
it, its not so easy for spiritually open and critical people such as ourselves to
rest comfortably with any one truth:
“Though the spirit yearns for certitude, for answers, for stability,
that is not our lot when it comes to the ultimate questions in life. If we are lucky we may get a temporary,
workable truth but we do not get The Truth.
No one does.” (Ibid, Harmony in
Quest)
And
maybe that is all right. I believe that
the free and responsible search for spiritual truth can only lead to temporary
ownership. The very nature of human
life is to grow and change. Why
shouldn’t our spiritual truths grow and change as well? I began my adult spiritual journey as an
avowed atheist, I moved to an avowed theist, even a Christian, backed away
again to a wandering Buddhist and have come to rest comfortably in a faith of
accepting mystery. Why stay the
same? Are you the same person you were
as a youngster? The freeing part of our
search for truth is that we are free to choose. And once chosen we are free to change are mind. This is why I have so much trouble with
religious bigotry. Don’t be so smug to
dismiss the faith of another as “unreal and out of touch”. You may just find
yourself sharing that faith some day.
This kind of truth will set you free:
believe in what you know is right and good and let that be your
theology. Accept what you don’t know as
possible even if it is not certain.
Accepting the possibility of another truth
is what the responsible part of our principle call us to. Weigh the evidence with your own life and be
prepared to change.
Having said all that, let us also
remember that the free search for truth cannot be a foil for creating beliefs,
which just suit us when they need to.
Truth seeking must entail some discipline, some rules for discernment. Traditionally, that has meant for us as UU s
use of the power of reason, that is, could this make sense and experience, have
I ever experienced this? Truth finding
is not like shopping from the spiritual marketplace for what feels good and
novel. Rather it is like wrestling with
angels for what is unavoidable to believe.
I believe in the inherent goodness of people, even though it is tempting
to believe in human depravity.
Why? Because it makes sense and
fits my experience. There are plenty of
opportunities to abandon our truths.
But make the criteria for changing your truth a high bar. (ibid, Harmony in Quest)
“We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable
rights…” when Thomas Jefferson penned
these immortal words, the enlightenment was in full swing. The world was easier to understand. Self-evidence for truth was easier to
see. But I do believe that we are still
endowed with the ability to see these truths even if they are harder to see.
And many of them, regardless of our
spiritual understanding, rest in each of our hearts, common truths, such as
love, goodness, honesty, compassion and hope.
We may differ as to the means of our
truth telling or event to the truths for which there can never be evidence, but
to the ends of what is good in life, we agree.
The truth will set us free, if we understand that we can change and grow
in the process. And that may be all we
can ever know for sure. Amen.