As a younger man I was introduced to a dichotomy that runs through every aspect of society and travels the very contours of the human heart. It has to do with the search for truth and how we claim what counts as knowledge in those spaces. At the bottom of the matter, the dichotomy reveals something essential about the nature of our humanity—our shared story—and the aspirations that we hold for a truer present, and a better future.

Those Who Have Eyes but Cannot See: 

My introduction to the matter came as an artifact of a fellowship into which I was invited. I was in the early years of my private psychological practice at the time. I had received an invitation to an academic conference by one of my dearest mentors. It was an astonishing honor. What gave me pause all those years ago, was the being invited—the receiving as it were of a summons from above—by one of the people I respected and admired most. I was being asked, not only to attend, but to accompany; to be for my mentor, a collegial co-representative and advocate at a roundtable of ideas. I admired my mentor’s character immensely (still do) and accepted his invitation with joy and a little trepidation.

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The conference was small and occurred by invitation only. Its purpose was to provide its members—16 in total—an opportunity to vet their theories in the domains of psychology and philosophy. There, some of the best and brightest that psychology and philosophy has known would engage my mentor—now, us—in rigorous dialogue about the matters that comprised theirs, and our, life’s work.

In the main, the conference was about truth, about what counts as depth in the cultures that surround us, and about how to discern that matter well.

The Dean:

These women and men had cast some of the most influential theories about psychology into public forms; those, that became standard instruction in university curricula, which shaped institutional policy and political movements, and which incited legislation. Their influence in society and culture was weighty, their textbooks and articles regarded as authoritative. A professional with my interests could not have been invited into more esteemed company than this. I was both honored and, at the time, frightened. I wished to be of value to my mentor and our colleagues. In my place as a novice, I hoped simply not to be an interruptive presence; hoped not to speak out of turn, or to engage the process in any way that would detract from the claimed aims of the fellowship.

The time came for my mentor and I to present our latest year’s-work, which pertained to the subject of life-calling (or, vocation) and placed it at the heart of human life. Our aim was to describe the effects of submission to the voice of calling—to spell out why lives that have regard for such a call are guided into forms of fruitfulness and vitality that can benefit the world—and to note the tremendous cost that occurs when the ears of the human heart are not trained to listen for such a voice. We carefully read our work to our colleagues, emphasizing vocation—submission to a virtuous purpose beyond the range of one’s immediate wants—as a properly deepening agent in culture. We had looked forward throughout the year with joy to this event and to the dialogue we hoped would ensue.

Suffice it to say that our work was not received with the same enthusiasm with which it was offered. Instead, an onslaught of critiques—few about the substance of our claims—ensued. We were told that we hadn’t included enough theories in a balanced representation of genders. We were challenged on the tone of our voices—apparently too ‘pastoral’—while we read. We were scolded for invoking moral and qualitative claims about benefits to human life and about the kinds of people who may possess the character for improving it. All this, but little critique—or engagement, really—with the substance of our position. No attempts to take a position on whether any of what we had presented happened, or not, to be true. We did our best to respond to our colleagues with grace and patience. As our turn came to a close, we thanked the assembly for their interest. With that, we prepared to head out on the town and find a great restaurant for continued—less academic—engagement over a good meal. It was in that setting, the social context, that I would run into more of the real nature of truth itself, about what it consists in and why it matters.

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The restaurant that won the vote of the conference attendees was about a 30-min walk from our motel. We set out in a large group and eventually gathered into pairs and trios during our stroll. Along that way, I found myself in dialogue with the academic dean of a prominent university. I attempted to engage him in an open, authentic inquiry into his interests and his life. As we strolled, I could tell that he was never really with me. The looking past, the distracted glances behind, the stilted, hurried replies, “Yes, mhm, mhm, yes, yes,” left little wonder as to whether he wished to remain in my company. And then, all at once, I found myself on a solitary stroll. One of the dean’s glances behind us apparently yielded something—someone—he had been looking for: someone more prominently established in the fellowship who is a renowned international author and global expert in his field. Right as we walked, and just as I was mid-sentence in response to the hurried answer he had given me about the current pursuits of his eldest adult-child, he turned on a dime—no warning or explanation—and headed the other direction. His abrupt and unexplained departure required no deciphering. The dean came alive, he had found his target and now walked alongside him. I simply continued walking. My glance aback at the 50-paces behind now yielded an image of a spritely and seemingly joyous man—one who showed no semblance of his recent discontent. 

It had all happened rather quickly. I was met first with a feeling of confusion—I had never been left mid-sentence while walking before—and then came a rush of shame. That lasted only a moment, as I was then overtaken by the sheer comedy of the thing. The glowing absurdity of hubris. The glaring insecurity. The craving of social capital in the ‘sage’ with whom I had just been walking. 

I chuckled to myself with my hands in my pockets and continued along my way to the restaurant alone, somehow purified by the experience. So suddenly had it occurred that I was summoned into a larger look at the reason for my being in such company. I had accepted the invitation to the conference in the hope of learning and growing. I had hoped that I might encounter other good people there, which I surely did. However, I had also encountered this man and others like him, whose years of painstaking thought and writing about the deepest aspects of our humanity and culture had won him great favor in the eyes of the public and great resource as a tenured professor and author in his field. He was by trade a psychologist. He had spent 35-years in an academic discipline that claims as its subject the human person. And here was the matter hidden in plain sight, the one that would bless me with a clarity that would never leave. 

This man through his work and his living had ventured enormous truth-claims. The kind that others regard as authoritative. The kind that wins universities grant money. The kind that gets published. The kind that says that something is ‘this and not that.’ The absolute kind. And yet he wasn’t in possession of (or, had apparently temporarily dispensed with) any of the characteristics that would allow him to freely connect—for a mere 25-minutes—with a junior colleague in a chat about each other’s lives. He lacked the tact and the grace to see such a moment as a grand opportunity which to bless.

He had eyes but could not see, ears, but could not hear. He may have been an expert in psychological theory, but he was a neophyte in human relationship, in human modes of connection, in the reason for giving someone your attention—in human character. 

As we neared the restaurant, so did we approach the section of the downtown corridor that hosted a large population of homeless people. As I engaged these precious folks as best I could, I noticed the seeming indifference with which my one-time walking partner avoided all manner of contact with them—nothing was going to gather his interests away from the clout and social capital that he believed were on hand in the company that had replaced me. It occurred to me as pitiful and small and tragic; a complete misappropriation of the call on this man’s life to submit his gifts and capacities into the service of humanity—the very humanity he so diligently avoided in his attempted connection with the one he thought would benefit him through association. The very humanity that ‘experts’ in our field were regarded by the public as knowing—about which their claims were regarded as ‘true’. 

Our evening at the restaurant proved a lovely one. I sat with my mentor and a few new friends whom I had had the privilege of making besides. The instance of the dean’s pomposity was no surprise in the grand scheme of things. I had encountered plenty of people like him in my time across the entire array of domains in which I had lived and worked. The truth of it is that he is, otherwise, a good man. But good men are capable of distorted interests and maligned sight. It all depends on whether, how, and why, they pursue truth. 

Selves Surrendered to Truth, or Truth Surrendered to Selves:

Some men and women pursue truth as something to which to surrender. Others think they can pursue it as something to leverage or manipulate. I would venture to say that the former is the only way that truth can effectively be—can truly be—pursued. To pursue truth as something to which to submit—to which to yield—is the only way we can actually be allowed into its riches as a resource. The truth becomes something other than a resource when it is pursued any other way. Attempts at pursuing it otherwise (for reasons other than those which are yielded to the truth as it emerges) always seem to result in pain, violence, or chaos. It seems that the truth comes with a set of preconditions and ‘special handling’ instructions. Through my interactions with the dean, more of those were revealed to me.

The confounding experience in this instance was to see the disconnection in modern life between things claimed as true—in this case, grand theories of psychology, philosophy, politics, or science—and the holding of those claims. When it comes to truth, the proper holding of it is as important as the seeing of it. Without one, it seems, we cannot have the other.

It turns out that all truth is a unity. Truth cannot be segmented or turned on itself. It exists as a whole and any one aspect of it pertains to all of life. That’s it’s nature. The dean with whom I had been walking had not connected his theory of psychology to the rest of his life in a manner that could honor the truth that he claimed to know.

He claimed truths about our humanity, but struggled to live them, and apparently struggled to be honest with himself about that rift within. We’re meant to hold truth in an integrated way. It doesn’t permit us our dissections or our segmentations. I must yield to the truth when I find it if I am to benefit from it. The question I was left with after that conference (I had been to many others prior and had seen the same occur there, too) was whether I wished any longer to pursue my continued education as a practicing psychotherapist in such a manner; to attend conferences and take in grand theories that had not been incorporated into the living character of the ones who advanced those very theories. The answer within me was immediate: “No, I do not.” It was the last conference of that sort that I ever attended. 

My experience all those years ago was not a novel one. In fact, I would say that it is the norm. It must be stated here that, in no domain of modern academic life is it a requirement to live what you profess. This has become true in many other domains of life, besides, whether, the life of faith, or medicine, or politics or commerce. We have become fragmented around the matter of the truth. Torn into a million pieces. One can now get along quite well as a professor in a university setting simply by publishing in one’s field new theories on anything, so long as they are peer reviewed and properly funded. Our universities do not run as businesses on the grounds of the character of their professors or the inherent truth of their claims. Rather, the modern university aims merely at research as a basis for its continued existence. Moral claims about what ought to be done with the knowledge discovered through such research are avoided under the premise that such concern is out of fashion, is invasive, or is simply impossible. A quick glance at the range and scope of current scandal swirling about in such places—revelations of the brightest minds and their associations to power and privilege—prove the chaos to which I am referring. The president of Harvard University was recently forced to resign over the discovery that she had plagiarized certain of her writings.  How is it that our culture has become so disoriented around the matter of the truth that we are prepared to do anything to avoid it in pursuit of our wants? 

When Truth Itself is Sacrificed:

It turns out that we’ve been sold a notion of truth that says it isn’t something to which we must submit once we have discovered it—that we can bend it in the direction of our preferences. Without a core ethic to guide us in these pursuits, the truth ends up becoming little more than a weapon wielded for our own personal advancement. Truth surrendered to want. It is this impulse that inclines people to manipulate matters in nature with which we have no business tampering. And, before we mistake what ‘exists in nature’, allow me to submit to you that the president’s plagiarism—the president of Harvard—was itself an instance of nature being tampered with. In this matter, it wasn’t the nature of a ‘thing’ that was tampered with, but the nature of the case. She had not accrued the knowledge that she claimed to have. She stood in violation of the truth. How she came to that condition is her story to tell and only she knows for certain. I would submit to you, however, that whatever the details of her case, she likely arrived at the place where she was willing to lie because something other than the truth had been her motivation. Something more akin to her desires. Truth is sacrificed more frequently on no other alter than the alter of our desires. 

Coming back to my friend, the dean, he had proven what he treasured—proven that his treasure lay in something other than the truth that people aren’t dispensable, and aren't pawns to be played for our own advancement. The dean may have built a career on the claim of the search for truth, but he was guided and goaded within by something else, something closer to his own hunger. He and the president of Harvard were proven in relation to the truth, not to know how to see or hold it, despite the esteem in relation to the truth with which the societies that surrounded them had endowed them.

The Unity of Truth:

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It hasn’t always been the case that truth was regarded in such arbitrary terms as it now is in the modern West. The truth used to be pursued inside of a different understanding of its properties. We used to pursue it within a view of life as a whole—as a unity. Fittingly, this theory was called, “The Unity of Truth.” That is, the prior understanding—and, I would argue, the humbler, truer understanding—was that wherever a truth was discovered in observation of the natural world, so also, was something both beautiful and good. In this view, the truth that 1 plus 1 equals 2 is not just true in an empirical sense, but it is also qualitatively good—good in a moral and spiritual sense. And truth is, in this regard, pleasing; its internal order also occurs to us as beautiful. The truth is good because it is a revelation about the natural order of things, and our knowledge of the truth—of the math equation cited above for example—can equip us to more successfully engage with the reality to which it points. Not to manipulate it, but to yield to it—to work with it, to get into flow with it and thereby be benefited by it. Such a view of the world is predicated on an understanding of the nature of reality itself as good—what we might refer to as an ‘ontology’ for life. Therefore, when we are searching for truth, we are searching for good, and when we are searching for good, we are searching for truth. Such pursuits are meant to guide and inform our lives in ways that improve them, not only by capacitating them, but by making them more beautiful. 

Truth as a Distinctively Human Dynamic:

What this indicates is that the intentions we bring to our pursuit of the truth of a matter—the posture with which we seek it and hold it once it is discovered—are as much a part of that truth as are the technical aspects of the truth itself. We lost this awareness during the reign of Modernity. We lost the awareness that we always bear moral responsibility in relation to the truth of a matter or a moment. That is the human aspect of the truth. Other creatures merely operate within the truth. Only we have the capacity to ‘hold’ it consciously, to seek it, discover it and consciously interact with it. It is there that we are measured and tested in the deepest aspects of our human character. In this, is our humanity defined, inhabited, and fulfilled. The truth remains incomplete, cannot be born as a seed that will bring life, if it is not first pursued, then held, and finally, offered, with the spirit and capacity that (any) truth discovered requires of any of us. The beauty of truth can only be received if the conduit for the truth—the human messenger—is yielded to its nature. In other words, truth—the whole truth of a matter—can only be properly revealed to the one who seeks it in humility. By the term, “whole,” I do not mean ‘summarily complete’, but instead, integral, unbroken, unsegmented and—in human terms—mature. A quick survey of all of humanity for all of time will reveal that none of us possesses truth in its entirety. Further (and perhaps more certainly), none of us wrote it in the first place. We are all, therefore, its beneficiaries, never its author. This alone ought to give us pause prior to wielding it as a weapon or as warrant for our own ‘advancement’.

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Back to my friend, the dean. He had yet to learn this. He was a fan of the French existentialists, who love to offer claims to the world about the nature of the world, just as they claim that it cannot be discerned or engaged with any reliable clarity. It’s a conundrum to be sure. It seemed for the dean, to be a conundrum he preferred, for it allowed him not to have to submit to the truth, for a truth that cannot be known is a truth to which I do not have to submit.

Will The Truth Actually Set Us Free?

There is a popular phrase about the truth that is often invoked as a platitude. Like all platitudes, the ones who exclaim it are usually naïve, both as to its origin and its true meaning. This statement—that ‘the truth shall set you free’—was mercilessly hammered off of the integrated stone that is truth itself. It now floats around the universe as something that cannot benefit the ones who espouse it. That is the effect of such a bludgeoning of truth, such a distorted manner of pursuing it: whatever one finds if one pursues the truth with such interests, cannot benefit the ones by whom such ‘truths’, once discovered, are held. Neither can it benefit the ones to whom such ‘truths’ are offered. 

The real statement from which this platitude was fractured away was remarkably spoken by a person in reference to himself. It is a stunning statement, spoken in a context, and with implications, that would cost him his very life. In his case, his own life was not regarded by him as something to hold in place of what was true.

The statement was issued as a clarification of sorts, a way to gather his listeners inside of a manner of living—a way of life if you will—that would constantly and properly situate them in relation to the truth in a way that they could always benefit from. It would equip them to pursue, to comprehend, to hold, and to offer the truth in a way that is itself true. A way that is not only factually correct, but also integral and beautiful. A way of engaging the truth that humans, in particular, need.

The statement is this,

“If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine. And you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” 

We’ll get to what this man meant by ‘being his disciples’ and how that is relevant to the truth in a moment. For now, our focus is to see the way that the truth can only be held as a unity. We’ll see that this is what he meant by “continuing in my word,” or, as other translations present his words, “hold to my teaching,” or, “abide (live) in my word (teaching).” 

How The Truth Is Held in Modern Life:

Let’s consider for a moment the living effects of the statement as it has been sent out into modern public life, the version of the statement that simply says, “the truth shall set you free.” How has the statement “The truth shall set you free” benefitted you in any practical sense?

You’ve heard the statement before. I know that you have seen it, even if you haven’t any conscious recollection of it. It is emblazoned on stately structures and written in scholastic settings alike, from the Original Headquarters Building at the CIA to the graduation books at Johns Hopkins University. From the coat of arms of the Dominican Republic, to the invocation of the sentence by the one-time president of Brazil in response to the verdict rendered in the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial that so seized popular culture in the mid-2020’s. The phrase shows up everywhere, wafts in on the winds of culture and does little more than tickle at our ears in its incomplete and fragmented form. Just as truth is a unity, so was the statement issued by the one who spoke it. It is meant to hold together and cannot benefit us in fragments.

Has the phrase such as it is commonly offered been something that you’ve been able to employ for your or anyone else’s good? Does it hold any distinction for you as something you’re able to put to use? You probably know a whole bunch of ‘truths’. Are you benefitted by them? 

At present, we inhabit a society that is experiencing unprecedented churn inside of an unprecedented array of change with unprecedented access to information for all its inhabitants. For instance, you may know in the very moment of your reading or hearing of these words, these statements as true: 

• That the titans of industry and politics are waging war with one another
• That questions are being raised about whether or not humanity is the only host for sentient consciousness in the universe
• That there is a debt-crisis in North America 
• That string theory is being called into question in the field of physics
• That our oceans are being polluted by a proliferation of microplastics owing to overconsumption and greed in the commercial sector

Are you set free, merely by the knowing of any of these ‘truths’ in the informational sense that you do? My suspicion is that you are not. That’s the way that information comes to us these days. That’s the form that our knowledge of the truth takes: a form from which we cannot benefit. Like a pearl for a pig. When the stone of truth is pummeled by so many hammers, so many conflicting interests in relation to it, we cannot benefit from the shards of that stone that we wield and thrash with so much frenetic energy and passion. We can only experience them or wield them as weapons of violence, as arrow heads and knives that eviscerate rather than nurture the human soul.

My friend, the dean, held truth in such a manner. He picked up shards and threw them into his interests. He pounded away at that stone for 35-years. The stone of truth is actually immense. How could it not be? And it isn’t merely a stone, is it? It’s a mountain range. If you’ve pursued the truth yourself, you know this to be one of its most obvious features; its nature, while never divided, is expansive. Every bit of it you gain access to is simultaneously a revelation about how little of it you have command over. You can’t know that until you’ve actually attempted in humility to comprehend it. Mountain ranges do just that, they humble us as we navigate them. And the mountain range wins every time. Every hunter and hiker knows that. Ask them. To a person, they’ll tell you. Just as you’ve aspired toward what you thought was the last one of its peaks, you arrive there only to discover that you merely couldn’t see the top, or the next draw or saddle, in the range. You discover that what you had seen from below was merely a precipice; that the summit of the mountain or the other side of the range is much farther still. Just like our attempt to navigate any mountain range, comprehending the truth—traversing the breadth of its contours, of its heights and depths—requires that you approach it on its terms. On the terms of its nature and structure. Death hangs in the balance. So does life. 

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Two Essential Features of Truth:

The one who spoke the words, “If you keep my commandments, then you will truly be my disciples and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” understood very well the matters that I am approaching here. He knew that humankind has always struggled with how to pursue, to hold, and then employ the truth into its essential aims. He knew that we bring divided interests to the matter of truth and are often dishonest with our intentions there. 

There are two essential features that allow for a proper comprehension and employment of the truth: 

1. An integrated view of the world—a comprehension that can represent “the world” as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience, and, 
2. A coherent ethic or, ‘why’—a corresponding ‘way’—for moving through the world; a manner of living that serves as a coherent guide in and through any living scenario, one that never requires of the human agents in the situation a fracturing of their integrity.

The man who made the audacious claim, “If you keep my commandments, then you shall truly be my disciples and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” had both points above squarely in his sights. The record of his life and those of his followers or apprentices verifies this at its very core. The man who spoke the words is named Jesus. He was a carpenter by trade and was also a religious teacher—a pastor and educator in his time and region—who gained renown in his community as one who knew truth all the way to the bottom. Further, he knew how to hold the truth—to keep it and to offer it in ways that were always aligned with the whole of it; ways that were never segmented or atomized. Ways that never compromised his integrity. Ways that were rooted, all the way to the bottom, by love.

People experienced him as polarizing for this very reason. His claims about the truth and his command and possession of the same simply disallowed a casual hearing of his words. The way that he lived and the claims that he made required of everyone he encountered a re-examination, not only of the way that they saw the world, but the way that they moved through or inhabited it. 

The Effects of Truth:

Truth has that effect in us as we encounter the people who have developed the capacity to hold it—we can’t stop looking at them or rehearsing the things that they have to say. This was true of Jesus. True words spoken and the people who speak them have such an impact on us that we begin to consider how we might change ourselves in order to pick up more of the attributes that they hold—the ones that ‘strike’ us. That language has held on so long (“I was struck by the truth, that…”) because of the way that the truth comes to us. It has the effect of ‘hitting’ us, of seizing upon our sensibilities. The unmistakable experience of running into the truth is similar to having been ‘hit’ by something. It comes to us in a way that often stuns us, stops us in our tracks and holds our attention. 

When We Want to Look Away from The Matters We’re Meant to See:

That is, unless it’s the only thing we don’t want to see. We’re permitted that too, aren’t we? We can avoid the truth of a matter, but that means that we are committed against it. I’m not talking about the truths we can’t take in because we just don’t yet have the capacity for them—those are typically technical or are developmental. For example, I don’t know the ‘truths’ of heart surgery in an academic, professional, or experiential sense, and likely never will. Neither does the toddler have the capacity to understand and to hold that a cold stethoscope is an instrument used for their good, or that their father is currently feeling pressure at the pump because of the cost of diesel. Those aren’t the sorts of truths that we choose—or better said, that we choose against; choose not to hold once we encounter them. Those are simply aspects of the truth that we haven’t yet developed the capacity to hold.

The aspects of truth we avoid, however—the ones we choose against—tend to show up in spiritual and moral cases. It should come as no surprise that these are the aspects of the truth that are systematically avoided by people in positions of power, whether in universities, senates, parliaments, congresses, or communities. Those truths are the ones to which we have the capacity to say “No, I don’t want to look at you. I refuse to hold you or be held by you—I refuse right relationship with you.” They appear in instances of relationship; with ourselves, with others, and with the transcendent or divine.

The truth we avoid is the one we don’t want to face because it requires something of us when we look at it. These are the sort that haunt us.

The truth we know, for instance, that changing our daily diet and exercise routine is the only immediate way to halt the trajectory of the poor shape that we know our body—correspondingly, our mind—to be in. The truth that both our body and mind require care from us because they are sacred. The truth we know, for example, that our poor behavior in the last argument we had with our spouse or partner was a major factor in how long the argument lasted. The truth we know that it would be a good idea—a better way—to go back to them, account for our wrongdoing, and ask their forgiveness in kindness. The truth of the scientist, who knows that it would be better if she changed her scientific theory—the one that she worked 20-years to develop and for which she is widely known—because a junior colleague discovered an equation that suggests an entirely different foundation for her initial premises. The truth we know that no other impulse halts innovation and advancement in the sciences quite so strongly. The truth we know that we do actually drink too much—that the concern in our spouse’s tone when they last came to us about the matter was rooted in deep love, that we shouldn’t have shunned them in anger, that we were ashamed… because of the truth of it. The truth that begs change of us, that exposes who we are and calls us into further alignment with itself. The truth that is also—is inherently—good and beautiful. The truth that comes to us with an offer: “heed what I have to tell you, and more will blossom into life in and around you. I’ll set you free.”

Instances like those mentioned above require that we hold them in honor with the one(s) who brought the truth our way, whether those ‘ones’ are human or are divine. Because of that, we tend to offer one of two responses to the truth when we are so ‘struck’ by it: we either accept it (far rarer as our initial response), or we deny it. In the latter case, we don’t disprove the truth, we don’t render a different ‘truth’ in its place, for there isn’t one to grab a hold of. So, we lie—sometimes for a moment, other times for a season, and in tragic cases, for a lifetime—to ourselves, to the one(s) who brought the truth our way, and, interestingly, to the truth itself. We say something to ‘it’ too. We say, usually fearfully and angrily, ‘that’ is not the truth, without ever proving how this is so. We deny the nature of the truth without presenting an alternative. Given our commitments in such a state, we typically treat with violence the one who brought to us, that, which we didn’t want to see or hear. 

Those reflexes of our body and our will take over where our mind and heart might do better to lead us.

We end up not rightly ordered in relation to the truth, therefore. Subsequently, we end up not rightly ordered within ourselves. When we deny the truth, it doesn’t break apart, we do.

It turns out that we can’t chip shards of the truth off of that stone with our hammer and chisel. The more we bludgeon it with no interest in yielding to it, the more we are fractured into shards ourselves. We become divided—so many selves within. Too many selves within. We’re only made to be oneself. But we become an internal bundle of conflict. That’s the nature of the truth—it is “living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” as it was stated by one author long ago.

In the end, it turns out that the truth doesn’t belong to us. None of us. It is there for us to see. There for us to witness. There for us to hold. There for us to inhabit. Never there for us to own or to possess. The moment we posture ourselves as owning the truth becomes the very instance where we walk away from the whole with only a fraction of it. Stone fragments that cut us, our ambitions, and others, to pieces.

When Truth Exposes Us:

The carpenter and pastor who issued the statement that we’re observing here evidently loved the ones to whom he spoke. His statements were aimed at the benefit of his hearers—the ones to whom he referred as his apprentices. Both, for the claims made about him in the local cultures through which he moved, and for the relationship to the truth in which he stood, he was brought before the government. A quick review of history will reveal to you that this is a common occurrence as it regards the truth and governments. In particular, Jesus found himself face to face with a man named Pilate. Pilate was a governor in a Roman province called Judea. Jesus had been summoned into his office for his holding of the truth—for his manner of living, for his relation to the natural world, for his claims about who holds true authority, and for his claims about the nature of the troubles we routinely face as humanity. For all these reasons he was brought before power, yet not for any wrongdoing in those domains. There, no wrongdoing could be found. His exchange with power went like this: 

Therefore Pilate entered the Praetorium again, and summoned Jesus and said to Him, “You are the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own, or did others tell you about Me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed You over to me; what have You done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”  Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this purpose I have been born, and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.”  Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?”

What is truth? One man testifies to it, while another calls the very category into question. That’s how it tends to go with the truth. When it is standing right in front of us and reveals the world to us, we often don’t want to take in what it so plainly presents to us as the case. “Those who belong to the truth…” What could it mean here to belong to truth, except to be given to it—be surrendered to it? 

Pilate wasn’t yet surrendered to the truth. He knew that the man who stood before him had done nothing wrong. It appears that Pilate, once confronted with sheer size and integrity of the truth that stood before him, was more powerfully seized upon by the commitments he had made and kept in allegiance to truth’s alternatives. He was captured by his commitments against it. The ones that would keep him in power. That was the truth. The tone of his exchange with Jesus also indicates that he suspected that he may, in fact, be engaged with a true king, one “not of this world.” Pilate wasn’t prepared to hold or to offer the truth to his constituents, whom he knew weren’t interested in the truth either. In order to appease them and not face the consequences that would ensue if he acted upon the truth, he gave Jesus over to the very ones who refused to face it, and thereby, themselves. He gave truth over to be handled by the hoard. The truth that stood there as a mirror to their souls. They did the only thing that would allow them to avoid such a revelation—they killed him in the most violent way they could conceive of, shouting and jeering as they did. They crucified the man and the truth that he brought them. The truth was too exposing, so they denied it and lied. They then tried (as we often do) to kill it.

Fracturing into a million pieces in relation to the truth isn’t inevitable. It really can set us free, but we must first surrender to it, must first determine within that we’ll accept it wherever it is properly presented to us. We need help along that way. Jesus knew the truth of it. He was prepared to die for it—and for us in our relation to it—so, at last, we would be rescued out of our losing battle with the truth.

He shows us a way to see the truth, to hold it, and to offer it in a manner that frees us ultimately. He offers a way—His own—to be human in relation to the truth, to let it do in us what it is meant to. To heal, to grow and to prosper us. To teach us to submit all our pursuits into the interests of love so that both our aspirations toward the truth, and our holding of it once we discover it, can keep what ought to be kept and heal what ought to be mended.

Jesus’ Invitation to Seek, to Hold, and be Transformed by The Truth:

“If you live in my teaching, then you will truly be my apprentices, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Jesus presents apprenticeship to him—to his way—as the best way both to see and to adopt the truth. His claim is made in love for the ones to whom he speaks. Any who have ears to hear. In this, he shows us how the truth can set us free. He proved what he believed by what he was willing to give for it. By what he did give for it. He proved his relation to the truth in what others couldn’t deny about him. He claimed to be the very truth himself and everyone who ran into the truth of that matter was defined by their response to it, whether Pilate or his followers. Jesus holds it, reveals it, offers it, invites it, moves in it and stewards it. Just as we are meant to. He does this in the only way it can be done. In love. Sounds to me like a better way—a truer way. May we all find our way home to the truth, where we belong—the only home inside of which we can truly live and move and have our being. Our human being.