Is It True?
Order of
Service
September
21, 2003
READING
“Cherish Your Doubts” by Robert T. Weston
Cherish you doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief that may not be questioned blinds us to error, for
there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats
away the false.
Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it;
for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by
the testing:
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing
stronger, more secure.
Those who would silence doubt are filled with fear; their
houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded
on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work
of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its
help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the
attendant of truth.
Today, we have set for ourselves the interesting question,
“Is it true?” Our children will be exploring truth in their Religious
Exploration program. In addition, more than once in recent spoken responses to
sermons, you have asked that we explore truth more fully. And, of course, the
heart of our Unitarian Universalist Purposes and Principles is the principle,
“. . . the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” So, we shall
examine factual historical truth, metaphorical truth, and truth as process.
Let’s begin with a Jewish Folk Tale about truth:
The Preacher of Dubno, Jacob
Krantz, was once asked why the parable has such persuasive power over people.
The Preacher replied, “I will explain this by means of a parable.
It happened once that Truth walked
about the streets as naked as his mother bore him. Naturally, people were
scandalized and wouldn’t let him into their houses. Whoever saw him got
frightened and ran away.
“And so as Truth wandered through
the streets brooding over his troubles he met Parable. Parable was gaily decked
out in fine clothes and was a sight to see. He asked, ‘Tell me, what is the
meaning of all this? Why do you walk about naked and looking so woebegone?
“Truth shook his head sadly and
replied, “Everything is going downhill with me, brother. I’ve gotten so old and
decrepit that everybody avoids me.
“What you’re saying makes no
sense,’ said Parable. ‘People are not giving you a wide berth because you are
old. Take me, for instance, I am no younger than you. Nonetheless, the older I
get the more attractive people find me. Just let me confide a secret to you
about people. They don’t like things plain and bare but dressed up prettily and
a little artificial. I’ll tell you what. I will lend you some fine clothes like
mine and you’ll soon see how people will take to you.
“Truth followed this advice and
decked himself out in Parable’s gay clothes. And lo and behold! People no
longer shunned him but welcomed him heartily. Since that time Truth and Parable
are to be seen as inseparable companions, esteemed and loved by all.”
How much truth is in this parable?? Ahhh. Each of us will
find different truth in it, some
profound, some simply funny. And some will see no truth at all, but a twisting
of truth unvarnished – or unclothed. I remember a person telling me, “No one
wants your truth it is too hard!” But what kind of truth?
For many of us, truth may only be found in empirical,
replicable evidence. Thu truth is best found through the scientific method. All
else is not to be trusted. This is the factual/historical approach to truth. It
has merit, for it avoids self-delusions that often pass for truth.
In particular, when we approach biblical texts of the
Children of Abraham, we may insist that they are either true factually or not.
We then find ourselves in a quagmire, because it is difficult at best to get
replicable results from ancient histories. Different cultures tell the same
story differently, depending upon whether they won or lost a war or a gained or
lost land. Further, some people would read these texts as if they were written
to speak to people today, two millennia later.
Marcus Borg offers a different approach when he wites, “The
historical approach focuses on the historical illumination of a text in its
ancient context.” (Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. P.
38.) This assumes that the meaning was intended to be understood by the people
of the time it was written and in the context in which they lived then. It does
not assume it is true now. This approach takes into account “. . . the
traditional methods of source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism,
and canonical criticism.” (Ibid.) In addition it opens to more recent methods
which include “. . . models and insights derived from studies of pre-industrial
agrarian societies, honor-shame societies, cultural anthropology, and so
forth.” (Ibid.) The point is to understand that the culture and people for whom
the book was written is very different from that of our culture and people, and
we need to recognize that “. . . some events reported in the Bible really
happened,” (Ibid. p. 44.) This is the actual history of the stories of the
Bible, set in the various contexts of the times they occurred.
But there is another way to approach truth, whether in the
Bible or our everyday lives. This is metaphorical “truth.” As Borg asserts,
“The metaphorical approach enables us to see and affirm meanings that go beyond
the particularity of what the texts meant in their ancient setting.” (Ibid.
p.40.) Metaphorical language is not simply “. . . a relative to a simile.” It
is used in the broad sense that is “. . . intrinsically nonliteral. It
simultaneously affirms and negates.”(Ibid. p. 41.) He uses the statement, “My
love is a red, red, rose,” to illustrate such metaphorical writing. The real
point, relative to truth, is “. . . metaphors can be profoundly true, even
though they are not literally true. Metaphor is poetry plus, not factuality
minus. That is, metaphor is not less than fact, but more.” (Ibid.)
Ursula LeGuinn illustrates this when she writes:
“The truth against the world!” ---
Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, so desire
the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar
and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which
never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in
detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are
done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That’s the truth!
(LeGuinn, The Left Hand of Darkness. p. iii.)
Understanding these two approaches to truth, especially when
reading scripture from any culture, have merit. The latter offers me a third way of exploring truth that comes to
mind as I consider the first two approaches. What if we approach truth as
resonance with the process of Life?
In some ways this would smack of Roman Catholic “divine
law.” It might assume that there is a “Truth” with a capital T that exists and
must be adhered to. “Thou shalt not kill!” would be one such truth. But even
most Roman Catholics hedge their bets with the “just war” theory, saying it is
OK to kill in certain cases – and thus we start the slide down a slippery
slope. But I don’t want to ignore this approach entirely, for I think it comes
closer to my own sense of truth as I experience it than either the
historical/factual or the metaphorical. Once again I turn to the thought of
Alfred North Whitehead regarding our search for truth:
. . . Mankind never quite knows
what it is after. When we survey the history of thought, and likewise the
history of practice, we find that one idea after another is tried out, its
limitations defined, and its core of truth elicited. . . . At the very least,
men do what they can in the way of systematization, and in the event achieve
something. The proper test is not that of finality, but of progress.
(Whitehead, Process and Reality. p. 14.)
Truth for us, whether we accept it or not, is unfolding.
From my theological perspective, it unfolds or progresses best when we are in
harmony with a greater consciousness which persuades us toward the best
possible outcome for our choices. Some would say that no such consciousness exists.
Others among us cannot deny that we experience such a consciousness
within/beyond, not as a predestining God, but as a “. . . divine lure toward
greater intensity and harmony.”
Rabbi David A, Cooper, a Kahhalistic Jew, puts it another
way:
As an empiricist, Reb Zalman
searches for truth. We have learned many things about what is true and what is
not. His teaching is that we must be prepared to move ahead in the spirit of
truth, even if it means leaving some things behind. (Cooper, God Is a Verb.
pp. 14-15.)
For Whitehead, truth is what we know has happened
empirically and also what may yet happen, but is unknown. Cooper goes beyond
that and notes that we may have to give up the “truths” of the past to move on
to the truth of the future, a truth which may be deeper and wider than that of
the past.
What we can say about truth is that some of it is
historical, even if it is told differently by different people with different
contexts, as is true with different stories of the origin of life, as well as
stories of the origins of various peoples. Some of it is past – or present -
understanding in metaphorical form, giving us insight into our human condition
and its possibilities. And some of it is yet to be known, unfolding in the
process of living. Thus truth may be both empirical and growing. Always it
lures us to new and wider understanding
and, if truly resonant, to deeper love.
We need our community to engage this search, for alone we
may delude ourselves, but together we may divine more of what is true by
comparing our truths. As John Andrew Story notes:
The star of truth but dimly shines
behind the veiling clouds of
night,
but ev’ry searching eye divines
some partial glimmer of its light.
From honest doubt we shall not
flee,
Nor fetter the inquiring mind,
For where the hearts of all are
free,
A truer faith we there shall find.
May ours be a religious community in which each persons’
truth is magnified and challenged so that together we co-create a far larger
and more useful truth, both historically and metaphorically.
So Be it! Blessed Be!