What if we adopted this as a postulate?
The truth heals. Yes, it can make us uncomfortable. Yes, it can be confusing or even frustrating at times. And yes, it can (and usually does) do tremendous damage to our favorite lies we cling to to keep ourselves “safe.”
But no—the truth will not poison you. It will not suffocate you. It will not belittle you. It will not violate you.
The truth (always) heals!
So it’s shocking to me how often we don’t believe that. I know most of the time I don’t. I often spend way too much time trying to figure out the truth, reaching conclusions that paint truth to be less than it really is.
What is truth? How do we know what truth is?
Christianity teaches that you’ll find truth variously in both God and in the Bible. Secularism teaches you’ll find truth in science. And there are plenty of other people making truth claims, whether it’s another religious tradition, a political leader trying to convince people to rally behind them, or just an ordinary person making claims based on their own experiences or preferences. The truth seems to be a point of disagreement among most people. So I have to assume that more likely than not, most have it wrong. Maybe even all of us.
How do we know what truth truly is? The truth is, I don’t know. I have no idea. But I’ve been asking myself this question a lot.
I know that to some people the obvious answer would be to follow the facts, but I’m not 100% convinced that that is a foolproof strategy. Truth is not the same thing as fact, at least not in my book. Let me explain what I mean.
Suppose that you walk into your kitchen and find a mess. There are dirty plates in the sink that somebody didn’t bother to put in the dishwasher, and there’s food crumbs all over the table, and somebody forgot to put the relish back in the fridge. These are all facts. They are more or less indisputable, as long as you aren’t hallucinating, dreaming, or living in the Matrix.
Of course, your first thought may be who to blame. And without hesitation, you blame Mark. I don’t know who Mark is, but for the sake of this story, he’s the only person who lives with you. He’s the only one who has a key to the house, the only one who ever really cooks stuff in the kitchen, and in your mind, the only person who could have made this awful mess. So obviously, Mark did it. Right?
Well, of course, you can always invoke conspiracy theories. Maybe space aliens broke in, grabbed some stuff to eat, and abducted Mark without bothering to tidy up. But most people would probably never jump to such absurd conclusions, and it would be considered reasonable to just conclude Mark did it, in much the same way that it’s reasonable to conclude that what we see with our eyes is not the result of a hallucination, or the Matrix, or something equally bizarre.
The thing is, we make judgments like this all the time, and call it by the name fact. A politician we don’t like says something truly idiotic. We saw the video, which absolutely proves that they’re a nut job. Fact. A study shows that people belonging to XYZ interest group are happier on average than those who hold to an alternative viewpoint. Fact. But once you make a judgment about any set of facts, you have formed an opinion. The fact that you hold an opinion is a fact, but the opinion itself is not a fact, just an opinion. Everything you believe is an opinion. Some opinions have more facts supporting them than others, but all viewpoints are ultimately opinion, not fact. Somebody can always come up with an unfalsifiable proposition (e.g. we’re in the Matrix) to contradict your viewpoint, even if your viewpoint is so self-evident that it is agreed to by every sane human on earth. (It’s not.)
So what are the facts, and what is the truth? The facts are the video you saw and the survey data you read. The truth is what the politician actually said and which people are actually the happiest. Did the people filling out the questionnaire answer honestly? Did they have an agenda? Is the video complete, or just an excerpt? Did the news channel have an agenda? Facts and data don’t always tell the truth, because to use or even comprehend any of that data, you have to form an opinion on it first. And that opinion may be wrong.
In our story, the facts are the dirty dishes, the crumbs on the table, and the relish left out on the counter. The truth is who (or what) actually made the mess. You can say Mark did it, but you don’t know that for sure. That’s just your opinion. Ninety-nine percent of the time, if something like this happens, Mark will come home and admit he did it. (And then you probably know for sure—unless Mark secretly has a twin brother who—oh, never mind.) But suppose Mark comes home and says, “Holy crap, why’d you make such a big mess? And WHY did you leave the relish out on the counter?!” Both you and Mark assume the other is the culprit. After all, that’s what your normal experience would tell you. Yet as it turns out, a burglar broke into your house when neither of you were around, made himself a sandwich, and left. Yup. It sure doesn’t happen often, but such things have happened.
Ultimately, when we “follow the facts,” we are following whatever interpretation or opinion of the facts seems most probable. To us, of course. This serves us well most of the time, because in most everyday situations, things are exactly as they seem. If there’s a mess in the kitchen, burglars and space aliens will be the furthest thing from our minds. If the clock says midnight, it probably is. If your best friend said she broke her wrist, she probably did.
So when we ask, “What is truth?” we are typically thinking about matters that are outside of the realm of our normal experience. Nobody wonders if their feet are really on the floor; people wonder if God exists or if welfare programs help people. Some folks will make a dogmatic assertion that they know this stuff, but they don’t. That’s their opinion.
Of course, as usual, we try to form our opinions on these more difficult subjects using the same formula that works for things within the realm of our normal experience. Just like it’s obvious that Mark made a mess, it’s obvious that welfare programs will do fill-in-the-blank. But Mark and his habits and your kitchen are part of your realm of normal experience. The effect of welfare programs across the nation and on individual persons and families is probably NOT part of your normal experience, and is probably a more complex and varied issue than a binary for-or-against opinion could truthfully convey. Having a burglar break into your home to make a sandwich is also probably not part of your normal experience. The principle of believe-whatever-is-most-obvious does not serve us well in areas where we have no experience. This is why just following “common sense” or “sticking to the facts” doesn’t always help. It can actually put us out of touch with reality.
To me, this is why the facts (actually, the opinions we form in order to process them) are not an automatic slingshot towards the truth. The truth is the truth. The facts are whatever subset of the total possible data in the universe we happen to have access to at this moment. And that subset is very, very small. In other words, sometimes the facts lie.
This does leave us in a sort of hopeless spot, doesn’t it? How do we know the truth? Well—we don’t. All we have is not enough facts and too many opinions.
So what are we to do? I suppose we can appeal to the experts. If a question I have is within the realm of their normal experience, then chances are they will have a pretty good answer. That definitely works some of the time. If I want advice for my health or my diet, or I want to know how long it takes to get from here to the moon, or I want to know what it’s like in Japan, I’ll ask an expert.
But sometimes, even this strategy breaks down. If I want to know the truth about God, I can go ask a dozen or so pastors to tell me who he is, and many of them will contradict each other. They’re all experts, right? I can go ask a brilliant scientist to tell me the truth about God, and I might be told God doesn’t even exist at all. I can ask an imam the same question, and he will tell me about a completely different God. All of these people are considered experts. So why so much inconsistency? How do I know which person is correct? How do I know if anyone is correct? What is the truth, and how can I know?
To me, it seems God is so far out of the realm of anyone’s experience that we all have to guess. We believe whatever seems most obvious, which usually means adopting the worldview our parents gave us. Or we get disillusioned with that and go find another clueless expert to defer to. We want concrete answers, but in matters such as these we don’t get any. Often we trick ourselves into thinking we have concrete answers by using facts (not truth) to bolster our position. But no honest person can ever say they know the truth.
So maybe instead of asking what the truth is, a better question would be, “What should I believe?” Even if we can’t know the truth 100%, we of course want to get as close to that as possible. We would like an approximate truth.
Again—I don’t know. I’m pretty sure there isn’t one thing you should believe. I’m not sure what the point is in asking that. Personally, I think we all have way less control over our beliefs than many would admit. Our beliefs are in large part influenced by our experiences, and so asking somebody to throw out one set of beliefs in favor of another will rarely work. (This is one reason why door-to-door evangelism sucks.) If you apply enough pressure, you might get somebody to pretend to agree with you, but, is that what you really want? If we want to change our worldview, we need to go out into the world and do stuff, see stuff, and learn stuff. And don’t forget, enjoy stuff. That all takes time, but it’s happening all the time, which is why your worldview isn’t much different today than it was yesterday (in most cases), but your worldview is quite a bit different today than it was ten years ago (hopefully). We’re constantly growing, maturing, and slip-sliding backwards a little. But for right now—you believe what you believe. Maybe that’s okay.
So should we avoid making any truth claims ever? No. People understand. You’re stating your opinion. It always helps to state it in a way that is gracious towards others and humble about the limitations of your perspective. But that’s always optional. That’s an invitation. You don’t have to.
I don’t know the truth. So don’t assume I know. I’m a guy on a blog, for goodness’ sake, and there’s plenty of people on the internet saying stuff and calling it truth. I think some of them are pretty close, others not so much.
I make plenty of truth claims, on this blog and in other places, but all are a reflection of my perspective. That perspective is not a very stable one. I’m not a firm-in-the-faith type of person. (I don’t think anybody really is, although there are plenty of folks pretending to be.) I’m not really a Christian, I’m not really an agnostic, and I’m not really anything else to be honest. I’m just a human being who is struggling about as much as you probably are, and I’m trying to be as honest with myself and with others as I can. I have strong opinions, especially about Love, acceptance, and the heart, and I think they are true on my good days and think I must be mad on my not-so-good days, but at the end of the day these are all opinions. I can’t tell you the truth.
What I can do, however, is be honest. I think sometimes we get so caught up in our quest for truth that we forget to be honest, with ourselves and with others. When you think about it, honesty is truth. And yet, I think a lot of people don’t treat them the same. Instead of saying what we honestly think and feel and need and want, we parrot whatever doctrinal statement or research study or expert opinion or scientific evidence we have been told is the “truth.” Which is really kind of ironic when you think about it.
Can you imagine how much more truth we would all have access to if everyone were 100% honest? I don’t think 100% honesty is always good in practice. We need our privacy, mostly to prevent other people from taking advantage of our more “shameful” parts. But in a perfect world, we would all be honest. And that pure honesty would do more for the world than any truth claim would—even if that truth claim were true!
Why? Because honesty is the foundation of relationship. Without being honest and vulnerable with others, we can’t experience love. If somebody doesn’t really know who I am, how can I know they love me?
I have a lot of friends, and I care deeply about them. Most of them have no idea who I am. People have told me I’m super smart, that I’m a walking book of knowledge, that I’m the definition of precise, that I’m a perfectionist, and while some of these remarks are flattering, they usually hurt, because they clue me in to the fact that the person talking to me doesn’t know me very well. And I’m not sure that all of these compliments are particularly honest. The other person wants to be liked too, remember, and complimenting others is a good way to play the acceptance game and “earn” acceptance, if such were possible. I’m definitely a bit of a brainiac and can come across that way on the outside, but on the inside I’m a very sensitive, tender soul who wears his heart on his sleeve, but makes sure nobody sees. I listen to music most men my age would never listen to, I love flowers, and I love nature, too, not for outdoorsy sport stuff like the rest of the guys, but for natural beauty and quiet contemplative walks. But I play chameleon frequently, because I want to fit in. I keep my voice down, because I want to be loved. But this has been the biggest barrier to love of them all. Nobody will love your voice if they don’t know what it sounds like! But nobody will hate it either. It’s safer to stay quiet, invisible—maybe even nonexistent. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I’ve wondered if people would love me more if I were dead. But that whole line of reasoning is predicated on the lie that love is conditional. If I say the wrong things, people supposedly won’t love me. Since I already know I think way, way, way, way too many wrong things, it’s better to keep them to myself. It’s better to accept that my way of thinking, feeling, being—is bad, and to repeat whatever status quo assertion will earn me love.
Only, it doesn’t make me feel more loved. It makes me feel more misunderstood. Part of the reason this blog exists is because I’ve become so sick of hiding that I knew I needed an outlet to express myself as honestly as possible. I’m much more honest in writing than speech, because during speech there’s a temptation to adapt what you’re saying to the worldview of the person in front of you, in order to preserve their acceptance of you, an acceptance you believe is conditional. Whereas when writing, unless there is somebody standing over my shoulder reading every word as I type, I can be myself and just say whatever I want however it comes out. And of course my words won’t magically rearrange themselves to say something different depending on who visits a blog post or opens a book I’ve written.
It is more important to be honest than it is to be right. Honesty itself will lead us closer to truth than anything else. Honesty is what we need to be fully ourselves. Honesty heals us.
I think that kind of truth is more valuable than anything. We can ask questions like, “Is gun control good or bad?” or, “Did we evolve or were we created this way?” or, “Is the Bible true or not?” but ultimately, relational healing and freedom for our hearts comes when we learn how to be honest with each other and tell the truth of what we really think and feel and believe. We also need to foster safe environments where people will be free to open up about what’s going on inside them. Honesty produces intimacy. Knowing the origin story of the universe is great, but it’s overrated.
Where those kind of questions do matter is when they inform our perspective about who we are, who God is, whether we have an everlasting heart, and whether we’re dearly loved. If my belief in evolution causes me to see myself as a purposeless accident who doesn’t belong in this universe and is on my way to the trash can, then I think we have a problem. Even if evolution is true, I feel strongly that such a horrendous assertion about our value (or lack thereof) is absolutely, most definitely not true. It’s a perfect example of how the facts can lie. How do I know that you and I have value? I don’t. I believe it.
Why should anyone believe anything outside of factual knowledge? On my part, I have a gut-level instinct to believe that while some of the lesser truths of this world are quite terrible (e.g. death, sickness, pain, shame), the greatest truth hidden behind all of that must itself be incredibly beautiful. Life reeks of a sense of story, and I don’t think that story is an accident, regardless of whether you believe biology to be an accident or not. I’m not an advocate for rejecting science or other forms of factual knowledge unless we have solid scientific and factual grounds to dispute that. But I am an advocate for assuming that life has purpose, that we have intrinsic value, and that there is a God who deeply loves us (not necessarily the God of the Bible, but not necessarily not so). I take these assumptions entirely on faith—blind faith, even—and I’m totally okay with that because I am convinced it’s true. It is truth to me. And I think it is truth period. But that’s what I think, what I honestly think, and so that’s what I’ll always continue to say. I’ll keep calling it truth. I won’t try to argue that it’s a fact. It doesn’t need proven, just believed and honored. It is too good not to be true.
And of course, I know we would never believe we’re going to win the lottery tomorrow “because it’s too good not to be true.” But when it comes to something as crucial as the core of existence itself, I choose to assume the best. It is self-evident to me that Love exists and that we were meant to be healed. Any belief less than that is not worth believing.
Belief influences behavior. If what I believe causes me to treat those around me like crap, causes me to think I’m useless/worthless/junk, causes me to believe I’m a twig on my way to the bonfire to be burned, etc., then I think I must be believing lies. So maybe we could consider this as a possible indicator of what truth is—the truth heals.
The truth heals!!!!!! It has to heal. Healing is all about a person becoming who they are, or were, or are meant to be. That’s a truth journey, and more importantly, a Love journey.
I look at the world and I see desperate, hurting people. These people don’t need facts. They don’t need answers. They don’t need this person for president or that person. They need healing! I want to be a participant in that. And I believe healing is possible, and I believe healing is the truth. I believe healing is honesty, compassion, and Love, and anyone or anything that gets in the way of that is going to have to move. Sorry not sorry.
Let’s not let facts get in the way of our pursuit of truth. Let’s let facts have their super important, proper place in our lives, and let’s let truth have its own. Whether we like it or not, belief influences behavior. So let’s believe things that bring us to greater spaces of healing and positive change. Let’s believe the best about other people and see their hearts. Let’s believe we have hearts, and those hearts are good. Very good!
And we’re not going to do that perfectly. Remember, it takes time and new experiences for our beliefs to gradually shift from less healthy perspectives over to healthier ones. Half the time we probably will have no idea what a healthy perspective looks like. That’s okay. Healing doesn’t require us to figure everything out. We were made for healing.
In the meantime, we can be as honest as possible. If you believe you’re a terrible person, say so! That doesn’t mean it’s true. But the fact that you feel it is true.
We can’t tell people the truth about the universe, or God, or something big like that, not with any huge degree of certainty. But we can tell people the truth about who God is to us. We can tell people how he has revealed himself to us and what he means to us, if they care to know, of course. And we can tell people the truth about ourselves—what we think, what we feel, what we need and want. This is easier said than done. You can’t be honest with others if you don’t even know how to be honest with yourself.
A lot of people hate themselves. Self-honesty is tough, because it means opening up about things that we’d rather not talk about, or even think about. Often we think being honest with ourselves is all about admitting fault, about seeing ourselves as broken, unworthy, unlovable—you name it. But I think there is another layer of the onion that needs peeling here. I think you have a far, far more beautiful heart than you think you do, and when you continue downward to deeper stages of honesty, you’ll start to catch glimpses. Do I know that from a facts-based standpoint? Probably not. I know it from an honesty standpoint. It’s been my honest observation that there is more than what meets the eye when it comes to who you are. You have many layers of identity, and we tend to get stuck on the layers that are either superficially “nice,” or atrociously “unacceptable,” instead of the layers that are deeply meaningful. I do it to myself, often seeing only the worst, and I know so many people who default to the same.
The truth heals. You’re a beautiful soul with a beautiful heart! Relish that.
And know that you’re deeply loved by Love himself, and that’s entirely true.
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