What is truth? When I receive this question from more conservative minded persons the implication is clear, somehow someone is watering down what truth is. Their concern is that as truth gets watered down the murkiness of ethic becomes real, people begin to justify their questionable behavior based on diversity of thought, that there is no “one way” to see an ethical dilemma. You can tell someone is a conservative by how tight their voice gets, how they stiffen as a result of hearing these justifications. For them there is one truth and one answer and any attempt to mitigate or nuance this assertion must be met with firm resolve.
My more liberal or progressive friends also ask this question, but with a much different intent. Their suspicion leads to deconstruction, they believe the automatic justification for a policy or rule or doctrine based on “it is the truth” is usually a smoke screen for lazy thinking at best or giving cover to an ideology of oppression at worst. Progressives and liberals think any attempt to give form or language to something called Truth is a slippery slope to privileging one group over another, or over many. And they have history on their side. Most ideologies that privileged one group over another have used language like Truth to subjugate gays and lesbians, women, the poor, the ill, people of other faiths, and people of other ethnicities. History tells us that using terms like Truth in such casual and loose ways can easily lead to assumption about who is valued and who is not.
Both liberals and conservatives believe that truth can and does apply to interpersonal relationships. Lying, for instance, would be wrong no matter the ideological biases. But as truth becomes applied to theology, ideology and culture things get more complicated.
I believe most liberals and conservatives are not as doctrinaire in private as they are in public forums. For instance ask a conservative if she really thinks all Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists are going to Hell and you usually get hedging. Likewise ask them if gays and lesbians really choose their orientation and you receive even more throat clearing. The sound bites of “I believe in Truth” are easy to say than the realities of what that means for someone living outside the boundaries you are setting in place.
Likewise when my liberal friends are on their high horse of diversity and inclusion and “no one should judge” and they encounter a culture that is different than ours where women appear to be of a lower status my liberal friends suddenly find “difference without judgment” a harder argument to make. For my progressive and liberal friends there is often more shape and form to the concept of “Truth” than they might want to admit.
For me it has increasingly come down to a narrative, a story, where we live out our story in a context where all participants have dignity, respect and worth. The Truth of life for me is helping to maintain that all participants in our stories are afforded these values and given the opportunity to participate in their own meaningful story. For me my story is Jesus’ story. Jesus’ story is one of seeking the lost and reminding them and those with privilege that living a meaningful story requires dignity, respect and worth. Interestingly one rarely hears preachers talk about how lost the privileged were in Jesus time, how they too needed to connect to a deeper and more meaningful story. When I read in John 14 “I am the way, the truth and the life” I feel the truth of that passage could easily apply to other great religions and none. The “I am” is the shape and form of a truthful story, a truth-filled way, a participation in something larger and deeper than our own story. I have known from an early age Jesus is my story. Jesus is the shape and the form of my truth. And I believe there is much common ground in the truth expressed in other stories.
Sharing these stories of truth is what makes life so full and so challenging.