What Is Truth?

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 30, 2010, Trinity Sunday. Nineteen footnotes is excessive, but some of the notes are comments for readers that I did not make from the pulpit. What is in parentheses was spoken.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Several years ago, the Comedy Central cable channel premiered “The Colbert Report.” No, not Colbert, like Jim the golfer, but Colbert—with a French pronunciation. In an interview with Bill O’Reilly on The Factor, Colbert stated that he is of “Irish descent and only adopted the French pronunciation of his surname to ‘get the cultural elites’ on his side.”[1] Pronounced this way, the name of the show rhymes; it’s “The Colbert Report,” not “The Colbert Report.” What’s funny about that is…[2] never mind, it’s the cornerstone joke of this satiric farce.

In the premier episode, Colbert introduced a feature segment that would define his show called “The Wørd” where the host takes a common, or not so common, word or phrase and defines it in novel and hilarious ways. The first word to enter the lexicon was "truthiness."

Truthiness is defined as “‘truth’ that a person claims to know intuitively ‘from the gut’ without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.[3] Webster's has sanctioned truthiness with two definitions: “truth that comes from the gut, not books” and “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts of facts known to be true.”[4]

In a BBC editorial,[5] Drew Westen cites the first debate of the 2000 Presidential campaign as an example illustrating the perils of trying to persuade voters with truth verses truthiness. In the debate, Vice President Al Gore explained how Governor George W. Bush’s health care plan would be more expensive to persons on Medicare including the worst phrase ever used in a political debate. Vice President Gore said, “Under the governor’s plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he’s modeled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries.”

Medicare actuaries? Mr. Gore, you had me at (insert snoring sound here).[6] Muddled would be more like it to most debate watchers.

With this response: “Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math. It’s trying to scare people in the voting booth.” Mr. Bush established himself to be one of us, not one of them; one of those Harvard educated cultural elites.[7]

The Vice President talked numbers and policy. The Governor countered with stories of what would happen “to you.” Westen points out that “stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win.” It’s little wonder the nation elected President Bush instead of President Gore.[8]

Stories over facts, anecdotes over data, gut feelings over measured research; this is the essence of truthiness. But heaven forbid; truthiness and being a follower of our Lord and Messiah do not mix well.

On this day, on this Trinity Sunday, the disciples are told “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide [them] into all the truth.” The disciples are told that the Spirit will hear the truth from the Father; this truth will glorify the Son. The disciples are then told again that the Father has given all truth to the Son; and this truth he will share with the Spirit who will share it with them.

The Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit who was at the creation of all that was created, the Spirit who descended upon Jesus like a dove, the Spirit that roared through the house where the disciples were staying on that first Christian Pentecost; the Holy Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth.
So here’s a good question for us: “What is truth?”

It’s a good question, deceptively good. Pilate asked Jesus this question. We read that passage from John’s gospel every year, every Good Friday. And considering that the 117th meeting of the Presbytery of Arkansas is coming up next weekend, the Session meets with the General Presbyter the next day, and the 219th General Assembly meets in July, it’s a darn fine question. These church leaders meet to do the church’s work in the name of the Lord. So again I ask: “What is truth?”

Being the stickler that I am, I start with what truth meant for the people who heard these words from the lips of Jesus. In the Hebraic understanding, truth is firm, solid, valid, and binding. When it is applied to people, and we do say that the Holy Spirit is a person, it characterizes their speech, action, and thought. It describes someone with integrity.[9]

In the Jewish legal sense, it means that the truth rests upon authentic facts. Truth is factual, impressive. It is beyond trivial objections. It is undisputable.[10] I guess that’s the Al Gore sense of truth. Of course in ancient Israel, the Rabbis were the arbiters of God’s truth, and they saw the Torah as its ultimate expression. By this truth, they found evidence of the Living God and that God is the everlasting king.[11]

Of course, legal truth is not the same as religious truth. Truth goes beyond legalistic definitions making it a mark and goal of divine action. Because of this truth, God is worthy of absolute confidence.

To those who wrote Hebraic law, truth has an element of transparency; it carries a meaning of not concealing. Truth declares itself that it really is the truth. (By the way, my English teacher always told me not to use the word while defining the word. Then again, this definition comes from the Greek, not the English. Let’s go on.) Of course, there is an implication that people might try to conceal, falsify, truncate, or suppress; of course that’s the nature of sin. So truth must encompass the full most real state of affairs.

In legal affairs, this is the difference between “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” and “don’t give more answer than the question asks.” The truth demands the whole truth. Lawyers and their ancient counterparts don’t want anymore truth than is necessary.

Truth has certainty of force. It has judicial righteousness. People on whom you can rely are people of truth. It denotes a sincerity and honesty that like any virtue is public, not private. Truth is an authentic teaching of faith, something that I have endeavored over the past five years behind this pulpit. The truth has the ability to show the full difference between the divine and what isn’t divine.[12]

My English language bible dictionary elaborates on truth. It says that biblical people who spoke the truth often used metaphors, expressions to tell the truth of the glory of God. They had to do this because the realities of the truth were too difficult to express and be understood in literal language.[13] Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said the disciples could not bear to hear the truth at that moment. I’m just guessing here.

It also says that truth is defined by a pattern of action. Truth is not established in a one-off sort of experience. It must be continuously told, it must be continuously lived. It is a characteristic of our actions, not our words. By this definition we cannot tell the truth without living the truth. Since actions speak louder than words, “do as I say, not as I do” is not an option.

In teaching, truth is teaching reality, not myth to the listener. It teaches reliability of the message as a guide for life. It recalls the Jewish characteristic of reliable teaching as truth and as another way of expressing what is held dear in the Torah, in the Law.[14]

John’s writings take all this and wonderfully distills it saying that truth is God’s faithful commitment to God’s people. This is where we get into one of the most glorious answers to the question of “What is truth?” John’s gospel teaches that “the incarnate Word makes God’s truth accessible in the sense that Jesus displays the reality of the divine person. Jesus is at once the manifestation of God’s faithful character and the divine reality.”[15]

Now we are getting to where the rubber meets the road. Pardon me for backing up into my opening story, but I am about to introduce a grain of truthiness into worship this morning. I thank you for your rapt attention to my excursion into the dictionary answers to the question “what is truth?” I don’t blame you if your eyes glazed over either, even if just a little bit, as I entered into the hallowed ground of my “inner Al Gore.”

If truthiness has taught me one thing it’s that all of the facts in the world don’t matter when something more powerful is at stake. I can give you all of the facts about truth in the world, but it is the stories resonate more than the data ever will.

R. Buckminster Fuller teaches “Truth is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught.”[16]

William Sloane Coffin has written “Fear distorts truth, not by exaggerating the ills of the world… but by underestimating our ability to deal with them… while love seeks truth, fear seeks safety.”[17]

Acting in truth is the focus of this expression from Mennonite writer John K. Stoner: “Speaking the truth is the most significant political action available to any of us—not voting, but speaking the truth. This view is based on the familiar biblical notion that the Word is central. The Word is the truth; the expression of the truth by human lips moves culture and history toward the government of God. There is no higher form of political action, nor is there one that can contribute more to the wholeness of the human community.”[18]

In their own way, in their own incomplete way, there is an element of truthiness in all of these examples, but I will admit, they do give us a bit of traction into the question “what is truth?” that straight data lacks. So let us turn from truth that is not quite the truth and move to that most basic source of truth, scripture.

Let us return to Jesus’ long teaching during his final meal with his disciples, the lessons he gives the eleven remaining disciples during his last supper. Our reading today comes from this speech, also in this teaching is John 14 where Jesus tells his disciples “I am the truth.” This is our answer, Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the truth.

Still, there is something devilish about thinking that we have fully received the whole truth. It’s not that the truth ever changes; it’s that our understanding of the truth does. This is what it means to be reformed and continually being reformed. “When we claim to have arrived at the Truth, capital T, we cheat ourselves. Finality of understanding, closure of interpretation, shuts us off from further insights, illuminations, inspirations, and so on. When it comes to Truth with a capital T, we spend our lives in waiting rooms on our knees. There are no ‘immaculate perceptions.’ We all walk into the dark.”[19]

Yes Jesus is the truth, and if we think that in our lifetime, with scripture, with 2,000 years of interpretation of the New Testament and 2,000 more of the Old, and even with the gift of the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of Truth indwelling us since that first Pentecost, we will never know the whole truth. The truth is just too big to be known by us, that is the mystery of the Triune God.

The answer to the question what is truth is often in front of us. It calls us to know the truth that we are saved by grace through faith. It calls us to act with the integrity of Jesus in all situations so that our actions will glorify the Son as the Spirit glorifies the Son; not to earn our salvation, but to respond to it. It calls us to act in truth humbly, because Jesus was humble.

So let the answer to the question of what is truth mean one thing to all of us. Let the answer mean that all spiritual truth in the world is nothing if we do nothing with it. We must remember the ancient Hebrew definition that truth is in action and the teaching of Stoner that the Word spoken is central. Virtue requires public action, there is no such thing as a private virtue.

Seek truth, act in truth. Remember love seeks truth, fear seeks safety. Jesus is the truth, as lavishly bold as a flash of lightening and as sublimely humble as the distant rumble of thunder.

[1] Stephen Colbert (character), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_(character), citing “Stephen Colbert Enters the No Spin Zone”, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,244882,00.html, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[2] Homage to the Reverend James “Skipper” French.
[3] Truthiness, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[4] The Truth of Truthiness, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/12/opinion/meyer/main2250923.shtml, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[5] BBC News, “Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Interests?” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8474611.stm, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[6] Yes, it’s a “Jerry Maguire” reference.
[7] This is where I mention that George W. Bush went to Yale University and was a member of one of its most famous secret societies, Skull and Bones, but does anybody say that Bush was an Ivy Leaguer just like Gore, nooooooo.
[8] Please, don’t get started on popular vote vs. Electoral College, I get it, I get it. So as a registered Democrat, let me just say for the record that the 43rd President of the United States is George W. Bush, not Al Gore, Jr.
[9] Kittel, Gerhard, “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.” Volume I. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964, pages 232-233.
[10] Ibid. 233.
[11] Ibid. 237.
[12] Ibid. 242-245
[13] Truth, “New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.” Volume 5 Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2009, Page 675
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] HomileticsOnline.com, keyword search “Truth”, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=859, retrieved May 28, 2010
[17] Coffin, William Sloane, “The Courage to Love.” New York: Harper and Row, 1982, 60.
[18] Stoner, John K. in “Mennonite Life.” quoted in The Other Side, March-April 1997 and in Context, August 15, 1997, 4.
[19] Ibid.