Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Truth part 2

I have a request.
Brian commented, "I'm not sure where you landed on this. Maybe you didn't land, but the ending felt like an abrupt landing. I'd really like to hear you say some more about this."
Well the last post may have pushed the deep thinking part of my brain past its limits, but I'll try to explain my thoughts (if that's possible).
I have always watched people from a distance, to watch how they act and react. To listen to their words, their passions. To read their body language, the volume of their voice and their swagger. But what I find most interesting is how people convey to others and how people respond to the truth.
If that truth is the Word of God, people respond differently. The parable of the sower is a good example of what people do with truth. They accept or reject.
Now let's just say for fun we want to change the truth.
Let's say we don't like what we hear, so we create our "truth". When told we are wrong we cry foul and say "there really isn't one truth" and "our truth is just as good as yours!"
But is it the truth?
Hitler was a master at creating and conveying his special "truth". He worked the podium and speaker in such a way that made people follow him to their ultimate defeat and destruction. I think these people wanted so badly to believe in what Hitler was saying, that they looked the other way and began to believe every word that he said.
Is truth, like beauty, in the eyes of the beholder?
Let's take something from today, like global warming. You can find a hundred scientist who say it exists, and you can find a hundred who say it doesn't. And while I'm sure they can all give us data to prove their points, I wonder, does how they see the world influence how the see global warming? Would a scientist who worked for Greenpeace see the data in the same way the Heritage Foundation scientist would? My guess is no.
The data would be the constant, or truth, yet these two very different groups would see the data or truth in a very different light. Each would promote their version of the truth to be the correct truth.
I guess maybe what I'm ultimately saying is that we have so many different views of the world and we now have so many ways of distributing our views that we have the ability to convince people of things, that may not be the truth.
Look at reality television.
While it claims to be "reality", I would contend that it is really the farthest thing from reality. Even shows that do a good work, like re-doing homes or the super nanny, are not reality. If you have brats for kids or need a home make over, chances are they are not going to pull up at your door. The real reality is your going to have to fix those things yourself. Waiting on the lottery? The truth is that the odds are so far out that you might have a better chance of being hit by lightning.
And yet.
Because people want to believe in something, a truth that really isn't truth, that they continue to hope their six numbers come up, or the super nanny just happens to hear the kids fighting and pops in.
Truth is sometimes what we want it to be, not what it really is.
Many people want to believe there isn't a hell, they want to believe that everybody goes to heaven with a harp and a new set of wings. That becomes their truth. They simply refuse to listen or believe anything else.
I hope as a people we never stop searching for the real truth, but when we find it we must set aside our feelings and judge the truth on its own, without an agenda.
This probably will not answer Brian's questions, and the truth is it may have him asking even more questions.
But for right now, my brain hurts.

1 comment:

Brian said...

Here's my biggie question. You said, "I hope as a people we never stop searching for the real truth, but when we find it we must set aside our feelings and judge the truth on its own, without an agenda."

Is this possible? I think you are assuming, "Yes." The problem is the answer is at closer to "No."

For example, Dobson now says Global Warming is true. http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=22617 He didn't think that was true before. Now he admits he may have been wrong. The truth is we probably don't know.

Hitler was a master, but did he know he was lying? What about Joseph Smith? What about Muhammad? I suspect they all believed their own lies. Did Bush believe we would find WMD's in Iraq? I imagine he did. But it was not the truth.

But the truth is we do not know the complete truth. We can't. We are too finite to have that kind of view. Leonard Sweet has said we are right about 80% of what we think is true. The problem is we don't know which 80%.

I believe the Bible is true. No question. But we have interpreted it wrong on numerous occasions. I'm sure I've interpreted it wrong on occasion because the odds are too high that I haven't.

Where you may fear is that with a belief like mine about truth, how can you believe anything? Perhaps it is exactly my healthy skepticism that keeps me focused on the truth. The truth in fact seems more true to me.

We are so self-centered a people that we will always skew the truth. That is why we need each other to identify truth.