What is it to pursue truth? I find my self continually frustrated with the compulsion of so many of my friends, especially Christian friends, to only embrace ‘practical’, ‘simple’ and ‘absolute truths’. Indeed, one of the worst dichotomies posed by many is this idea of ‘absolute truth or bust’. According to several people I have conversed with in recent weeks, if absolute truth cannot be taken for granted, then it is impossible to know or believe anything. Often it is the fear of such an alternative that drives such individuals to ship wreck in the blissful but deceivingly shallow waters of ignorance.
While I have sympathy for people who are in such a place, absolute truth as a predicate necessity for knowledge is dangerous, limiting, fearful and often carries with it the appearance of a ‘monopoly’ on truth. At its core, the desire to stuff truth into only absolute terms is an artificial comfort zone, albeit a widely accepted comfort zone.
It is with such a serious crisis of knowledge that I look with some relief to my agnostic friends. While I believe that truth can be known and certainly exists, the tentative approach to knowledge that characterizes many agnostics is incredibly refreshing at times.
Where has the church gone that it has lost its humility, its subjectivity and the knowledge of its own finite understanding?
The Apostle Paul himself underscored the reality of our knowing difficulties when he reminded the Corinthian community that we (the church) merely know in part, as if seeing through a glass darkly.Why do many insist on putting the God of so many paradoxical extremes into their own box ? Why must the church purport to have a monopoly on the way to knowledge?
Indeed, if God must fit into our own contrived absolute rubrics, then where is God’s power? What makes Him God?
It is to this end that I question the application and necessity of absolute truth. Like my agnostic friends I do not exclusively write off its existence. However, in as much as it is used as a crutch for those who will not face the danger of God’s being, and conversely, in as much as a linear objectivity keeps others from embracing His love… and especially for those who believe they have an absolute knowledge of justice which they conveniently wrap around ‘the God of their dreams’ until He looks and feels a way which makes them feel good, the necessity for absolutes forces a grievous disconnect with the reality of an untamed God who by His very nature defines truth, love and justice as sometimes infinite and often paradoxical.
In my mind one of the most naturally absolute truths should be the love of a father for his son. Indeed it may be, but that didn’t stop God from transcending a truth that we take for granted as penetrating the very fiber of our beings when he both asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac AND allowed His own son to be tortured to death, eventually forsaking him. Where does the knowledge of such events leave committed truth seekers? Certainly, with this history in mind, may we even dream of binding any notion of God to the same frame work of absolutes that dictate decrees such as “thou shalt not kill”?
God will break the molds we make for Him. And if someone is to truly model humility, they must hold what is thought to be the truth before God continually, always waiting on God to redefine it and give it new shape, that they might be made to reflect the patience of God in all that they do and that they might take the truth and its behavioral and existential implications seriously. What’s more, we must be willing and confident to be at least mostly wrong in our ideas and beliefs. In this willingness we may still proclaim what we believe is the truth, but we must fear God in every proclamation and take correction with an open heart and mind. For who has a monopoly on truth when it all belongs to God in the first place?
Good thoughts indeed. It is interesting how everyone has their “absolutes” when it comes to truth and defining God. Part of the beauty of faith is not being any where near omniscient. Humankind loves to define and teach on who God is, which so often becomes who we want God to be.
It’s true that people tend to rush in and crown absolutes on the King’s of their own ideas. This can unfortunately lead to division and arguement more than love and unity. However, in Hebrews 13:8 it tells us that “God is the same yesterday, today and Forever.” So even though it is wrong to put a cap on our understanding of God and His character. God can’t contridict His own nature and as Hebrews reminds us, He remains constant in that character. People can call it whatever they want, “putting God in a box” “shallow understanding” “being rigid” however, to me that seems like a “shallow understanding” of what is really going on. God will always be gracious, loving, forgiving and just because that is who He is. It would seem there are absolutes about God. I am more than ok with that. If God wasn’t constant in his love, grace, forgiveness, and justice, I would be scared for my life. His absolute perfect nature gives me hope.
As far as the Abraham example, that seems another “shallow understanding” of the story and what was really going on. The point wasn’t the sacrifice of Issac, but the obedience of Abraham. And after Abraham obeyed his heavenly father, the God of grace, provided another way out with the goat.
One thing that struck me from the lecture given by the principal (of the school I work at) at a retreat for the seniors: You only recognize something as truth in hindsight. That is where I encounter a limit of being a teacher: I can talk about truth, but it won’t be truth for yourself until you encounter it.
Another thing he said: If you think something is true, then you have to take a chance and live it. That is the only way to know.
Instead of seeking to live out the truth though we know only in part, it’s much easier and more common to format our lives according to the absolute truth that we’ve set up for ourselves. And through that, we cut off others that are seeking to live in that truth as well, if they do not fit into the format. I think about the numerous times that truth that has been merely passed on as knowledge rather than experience inhibits someone from fully entering into a real-life situation and seeing truth in that. I had heard since I was little that God was a loving and good God. But how many times I used that to mask my own hurt or not recognize the real-life situations that this world encounters that makes us question the love and the goodness of God… and only when I truly entered into that place of hurt as a legitimate space for myself, I saw and heard and experienced the goodness and the love of God that transcends experiences that are hurtful and horrific. That became truth for me, a truth that freed me, instead of binding me or blinding me.
The danger of a Christian community and the Church is that truth can become a dogma. We let the spirit die and take the corpse, tracing over the shape of it, trying to remember what it was like when it was alive. Truth needs to be passed on, and Christ needs to be proclaimed and the relationship shared, but in that, I hope and pray that we will, with humility, as you say, always do so with an open heard and mind. We also need to truly experience the Truth that the disciples encountered and was changed by, and this is the only hope the Church has. But when this does happen, the beauty of the Church is that this truth upholds one another and becomes a communal journey, through different expressions, towards Christ who is the Truth and yet comes to each of us in so many different ways: sometimes as a man by the well, sometimes as a teacher in the temple, sometimes as a dying man on the cross reduced to shredded body and blood.
And about the Abraham narrative: I don’t think it was only about the obedience. It truly shows the madness of faith, obedience that must have come with agony and some kind of irrationality that enabled Abraham to jump over morality as accepted by people in general as well as his love for his son… and his obedience can only be heralded as an example to be followed in hind sight.