We have to be clear about how to develop our relationship with the truth. We just cannot sit around and wait for truth to come to us. The ideal relationship is when we seek the truth, love it, follow it. But, of course, we have to be clear first about what truth is, how to recognize it, where it can be found.
Nowadays, people are aware that there many kinds of truth. You have truths that come from the physical sciences, or from the social and political sciences, or from our legal system. There are also truths that just come from our common sense, or from our direct contact with people, things and events.
Because of these kinds of truth, we are also quite aware that there are truths that are stable, and others not so, being subject to some changes and are therefore evolving. There are truths that we consider big, others small, some very important, others not so, etc.
There are many sources from which the truth can come to us. We just have to realize that truth has a range and scope that spans from the here-and-now to eternity, that covers the material and spiritual, the natural and supernatural, the created and contingent truths on the one hand, and the absolute, necessary, primary and ultimate truth, on the other.
We have to be wary when we confine ourselves in our appreciation of truth to what is only here-and-now, material, natural and contingent. That, I’m afraid, is the predicament of many of us, a predicament that we need to solve and get rid of.
As we can readily realize, we are equipped to know the truth. We have senses that can immediately capture the sensible, material realities. We have intelligence that can discern intelligible and spiritual (non-material) realities like essence of things, the causes and effects of things, etc.
In pursuit of the truth, we can see, hear, feel, intuit, then think, judge, reason, discuss, argue, conclude, discover, invent, etc. We just have to realize also that we actually are also wired for faith that would enable us to discern not only spiritual realities but also supernatural ones. We can enter into the world of mysteries which are also truths, in fact, a higher kind of truth.
Faith enables us to accept truths that are beyond our capacity to see, hear and touch, and even to understand. Faith makes us accept truth through belief. What our Lord told the doubting Thomas is illustrative of faith.
“Have you believed, Thomas, because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (Jn 20,29)
Even in our ordinary, daily life, we use some kind of faith, because we simply have to trust people rather than go through the tedious process of investigating and studying as to whether this woman, for example, is really my mother or not, or whether the cook really serves me food and not poison, etc. We are wired for faith.
We just have to go all the way to the scope of faith and find that at the beginning and end of it, we will find God himself, the Creator, who made the universe, the author of all reality in all its infinite richness and variety of aspects and levels.
In short, we cannot really be in the truth unless we are in God. We cannot seek the truth unless we seek God. The problem we have is that we dare to know, study and use the truth without God, or ignoring him, at least.
As a result, we get some aspects of truth that ultimately depend on us simply. And since we are not stable, not to mention that we are often affected adversely by passions, if not dominated by malice, then the truth we see, study, invent and use, cannot be the truth that is the real truth.
It would be at best a contingent truth, a relative truth, detached from its stable and ultimate moorings, and therefore can be shifty, unstable and vulnerable to be misused and abused. This is what we see around, and thus we are also quite in a mess.
We need to have some kind of revolution in our attitude towards truth. There has to be a conscious, deliberate effort to seek God who actually revealed himself fully in Christ and continues to reveal himself to us in the Holy Spirit. Unless, we do this, our affirmations of truth will always be suspicious.
Why, for example, do we make an oath before God when we say something really important?
***