An Elusive Truth

If you want the truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world it will fly; it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. C.H. Spurgeon

A reader wrote me the other day complaining the local paper will not print the truth. She was writing in response to my column on Gossip. I’m glad she wrote, for truth is very important. I don’t know of any religion where truth isn’t given priority. That begs the question, of course: What is truth?

Some truth is easy to figure out. 2 + 2 = 4 is a true statement (using base-ten arithmetic). You can use pencil and paper, an abacus, a calculator, or apples and oranges, and the results will always be the same: Two plus two equals four.

Many times, though, it is harder to pin down what is true. Let me give you a silly example. I can look outside and tell you it is partly cloudy as I write this. A person sitting next to me can say it is partly sunny. Who is telling the truth?

At this point you, the reader, will have several options. You can side with me because you know my powers of observation are impeccably accurate. You can side with my neighbor because you know you can’t trust anyone who writes for the paper. You can discount the issue entirely because it simply doesn’t matter to you whether it is partly cloudy or partly sunny – you are reading this well after the fact.

Or you can avoid making a judgment because you haven’t got all the facts in hand. You don’t know what I consider “partly cloudy” or what my neighbor considers “partly sunny.” You don’t have a view of the sky I am looking at (and it is changing as I am writing). Absent corroborating testimony and evidence, you are wise to abstain from reaching a judgment in the matter; after all, there is no shame in not knowing, and there is a certain kindness offered to both parties when you exercise the grace of ignorance.

We would like to think there is an objective truth – at least with regards to matters more important than the weather – but life is generally far too messy for that.

We see things, and we trust what we see (unless we’re watching a magic show), and yet we also know witnesses are notoriously inaccurate in their recollections and reports. They are affected by internal factors, such as the pumping of adrenaline in the face of stressful events; they’re affected by external factors, such as lighting, and their location in relation to the event they’re witnessing; and they can be affected by a whole host of other factors, such as their relationships with the other parties, or by what they have to gain or lose by giving their testimony.

In the face of all of this, can one ever know the unvarnished truth about anything?

The short answer is “no”. We can judge the evidence, reach conclusions, and make decisions to the best of our abilities, but we should recognize that only God knows the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – about anything and everything. The rest of us, not being God, will always fall short. We just need to be humble enough to appreciate that even when we think we know the truth, we could be wrong.

At least that’s what I think in this, our partly cloudy (partly sunny) world.