Jul/084
Absolutely infinitely finite
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?