“The truth.” Dumbledore sighed.
“It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and shouldtherefore be treated with great caution.”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
When I speak, you can guaran-damn-tee it’s truth!… or at least my version of truth… uh, which kinda makes it an opinion… but anyway, it’s damn true I tell ya’s!
When I speak, you can guaran-damn-tee it’s truth!… or at least my version of truth… uh, which kinda makes it an opinion… but anyway, it’s damn true I tell ya’s!
That’s the climate we live in right now. If I take a position on an issue, I want it sorta fluid and malleable, and if it offends, then clearly it’s wrong. Therefore, the best thing for all of us is to create a truth that works for each individual, and let everyone do their own thing. Cool, let’s close in prayer, discussion done.
But does that thesis hold up? In my book I have a chapter titled “No Absolute Truthiness,” stealing from Stephen Colbert’s brilliant character on his show The Colbert Report. He was genius with his political commentator who spoke in a sort of pseudo-truth. Ah, if only we could laugh that away as silly ol’ TV. But now we have real, non-fictitious political operatives who work with what’s known as alternative facts and “truth isn’t truth.” Nope, not gonna jab at one political party over another, both sides of the aisle are no different than all of us wanting to build our own narrative truth.
Let me set some foundation. In two national surveys conducted by Barna Research, one among adults and one among teenagers, people were asked if they believe there are moral absolutes that are unchanging, or that moral truth is relative to the circumstances. By a 3-to-1 margin (64 percent vs. 22 percent) adults said truth is always relative to the person and their situation. The perspective was even more lopsided among teenagers, 83 percent of whom said moral truth depends on the circumstances, and only 6 percent of whom said moral truth is absolute.
This is a new phenomenon. In the past, the ancient Greek origins of the words “true” and “truth” had some consistent definitions throughout great spans of history. Topics such as logic, geometry, mathematics, deduction, induction, and natural philosophy were considered unbending truth. In Hinduism, truth is defined as “unchangeable”, “that which has no distortion”, “that which is beyond distinctions of time, space, and person”, “that which pervades the universe in all its constancy.”
As Long as My Truth Works for Me
Why does truth matter? Because without a framework of granite, we quickly dismiss God’s authority as the creator and originator of truth. Or we place Him in a subservient position where He bows to our version of truth that works for us. (Yawn), still don’t care? Try this on. Without a pure standard that’s never diluted, I could say something like this, “In my truth, there are different races and ethnicities who are inferior.” Whuh, that’s not right! I can’t say that! This is where the Greek logic comes into play. If I follow the Barna study that says moral truth is relative, then the game has no rules, we just make ’em up as we go. In other words, if relative truth existed, then it’d be totally cool to be a racist, no one would object. Or if I said lock up all Christians, there would be no outcry because all truths are equal, there is no right and wrong, and we all eat cupcakes happily ever after. Let’s stick with racism since it’s right in front of us daily. The fact that most people do recognize a racist statement as inherently wrong, begins pointing us towards a greater truth that sets the standard. You might think everyone knows racism is evil. I would hope so, but history paints a portrait where desires for master races (Nazi German and Khmer Rouge) lead to genocide, solely based on misguided opinions masked as truth. I witnessed the aftermath firsthand on a 2004 trip to Kigali, Rwanda, ten years after the 1994 genocide. There I saw a graveyard the size of eight football fields, with wooden caskets stacked six-deep in a cavernous chamber under a metal floor. In that cemetery alone, there were 250,000 bodies of the estimated 750,000 murdered in 90 days. Yes, 90 DAYS!
We’re often cavalier about a firm compass for our hearts and minds. But there’s kindling in every part of the world waiting to spark. Here’s the reality, in Kigali, these were neighbors living in homes next door to each other, people from the same country, with the same skin tone. Smouldering heat can turn deadly on a mass scale, and 90 days later hundreds of thousands of people can be dead, with generations impacted for decades. I wrongly assumed the Tutsi and Hutu tribes had been warring for centuries like the Middle East. Nope. The toxicity began with the colonialism of white Belgians and Germans in the early to mid-1900s. The spark turned to blazing fire in 1994.
“Rwanda’s colonial period, during which the ruling Belgians favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated the tendency of the few to oppress the many, creating a legacy of tension that exploded into violence even before Rwanda gained its independence.” — History
Maybe Rwanda seems too far away, too third-world. Fair enough, how about this hot-button wedge issue? A big chunk of our country thinks it’s 100% morally accurate for a woman to have control of her body, and have authority to abort a fetus. Another equally large group of Americans believe with 100% fervor that the fetus is a child with legitimacy, and must be protected. Can both sides be right?
Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the death of Eric Garner. When truth is muddy, justice gets messy. As a white male, it’d be golly-darn convenient to be dismissive of his death because I’ve never had to deal with a smidgen of racial profiling. If I carry that dismissiveness in conversation while grabbing beers with black friends, now I’ve added to the kindling. Why? Because their truth is theirs, and mine is mine. Whuh!? In one sentence I’ve taken identical humans with two hands, two eyes, same brain and emotions — ONE RACE — with only a tan as the difference, and tried to separate us into subcategories of “us” and “them.” I could spin-off 20 different directions separating ethnicities, and form jackass definitions of “truths” that work for each ethnicity, which introduce inequalities. I could throw in some “nationality” too for an extra layer of “truths.” And that would prove one thing… that I’m a jackass.
How about the fact that the Democratic party is by far the best political choice when weighing all the facts on all important issues. Or the fact that the Republican party is head and shoulders the only political choice when drilling down into the truth of America. Can both sides be right on all issues?
Or, with that pesky thing called religion. Everyone knows that Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism are all the same. No need to argue, plus being an atheist or spiritual and non-religious works too. Can they all be right?
Not seeing a connection between truth, justice, Rwanda, abortion, religion, politics and Eric Garner? Well, that’s a reason to tune-in next week.
And scene.
See ya next time. ML