In the Christian story of Jesus’ trial before a Roman governor, Pontius Pilate challenges Jesus with the question, ‘What is truth?’
We may wonder what led a powerful and possibly war-wearing man to pose that question. It certainly is a question for us today. The question has many aspects:
What do we mean by ‘truth’?
How do we come by it?
And if we do find it, what do we do with it?
In a time when it is said that we may have ‘alternative facts’, what is truth?
I begin with a fundamental conviction that whoever we are, we do actually need and live by something we could call truth. We have to assume that things we read, hear, and act upon are in fact the case. Even if we consider all ideas to be only ‘opinion’, nonetheless we act as if at least some things are true.
My conviction is stronger than that, by choice. I have always placed a strong value upon the idea of truth, as a value for living.
But this idea of truth for living is not about facts. We live in an age blinded by the idea that knowledge and truth are essentially about information. For sure, we have gained a great deal through the scientific method of enquiry and the desire for accurate information about the world around us, and ourselves.
But there are other forms of knowledge and truthfulness. When I speak of truth as a habit of living, I am especially interested in truth as a moral and spiritual dimension of our lives, a dynamic quality of being. Such truth, or truthfulness, can and must change. It learns and grows as we live by it and into it.
Jan Hus was a radical Christian believer in the period of turmoil which was later known as the Protestant Reformation. He lived in what we know as the Czech Republic from 1369 – 1415. Like Luther after him, he challenged many of the ‘established’ ideas and practices of the established Church and was eventually burnt at the stake for his trouble. He lived by a famous dictum, to which he also exhorted others:
“Faithful Christian, seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, adhere to the truth, and defend truth to the death.”
His ideas remain a common conviction of the Czech nation to this day, in the form of the phrase, ‘Truth prevails.’ They do not have to be limited to ‘Christians’—hopefully not!
Truth as a habit of life means that we must indeed seek and value the truth. This means, like Hus, not accepting all that is given to us just because it is spoken by people in power or authority. Truthful living requires a questioning stance and thus that we should be engaged with and for the truth.
Hus saw too that we may be tempted to abandon what we know to be true, perhaps for convenience, or to ‘fit in’, or because it is difficult living with not knowing—far more comfortable to live with half-truths than the perpetual struggle with complexity and ambiguity. Yet that is what it often means to live in and for the truth. Often, it seems to me, we live in and for a truth which we do not fully comprehend.
This is what I think it means to live truthfully. Sometimes it means speaking the truth and sometimes it means knowing that there is nothing we can say. A truthful silence may be what is demanded of us. That was Jesus’ response to Pontius Pilate: a courageous, truthful silence.
Church people sometimes quote the scripture verse ‘speaking the truth in love’, from Ephesians 4. 15. That clause belongs within a section about a mature community of faith. Speaking the truth in love requires not speaking, if we are unable to do so in an affirming and helpful way; but it also challenges the common idea that Christians should always be ‘nice’. On the contrary, the courage to deal with realities, to confront cruelty, abuse, deceit, in others, but also to acknowledge our own need to grow, to admit failings, to seek support when we need it, to offer nurture and moral challenge—all these things may be part of being and living truthfully.
In Shakespeare’s wonderful play Hamlet, which I have loved since my teenage years, a leading statesman Polonius (much of the time a great wind-bag) speaks with deep emotion to his son Laertes, who is about to leave home—and amidst his advice he utters the now famous words, ‘To thine own self be true’ (Act 1. Scene 3).
Be true to yourself, we say—but to do so we must know ourselves. This requires deep courage: a willingness to reflect on what we think, feel, and want: to know our habits, and also to know that we can change, and choose what we wish to do, how we wish to live.
To be true to oneself is to live in and for the truth. It means to live authentically, or as we Australians sometimes say, to be fair dinkum.
It is not about ‘sticking to the truth’, as if nothing may change. Rather, it is a constant journey of learning, growing, and becoming.
This habit of life is about seeking to be truthful, being and doing what we currently know to be genuine, honest, worthy of our best efforts and energies.
Finally, then, it has also to be said that this habit of life is never gained alone. That’s part of the idea of the biblical saying about speaking the truth in love. It belongs within a community. Being true to oneself is not a solo activity but is lived, learned, and developed further within the circle of relationships—and if that circle is not helping us to grow or be truthful, we need to find one that does.
‘To thine own self be true’ is a life-long quest, undertaken by each of us but also groups and tribes, communities and nations. It is one of the key disciplines of belonging.
Seek the truth.
Live the truth.
Become the truth.
Belong to the truth.