Thus spake Pontius Pilate to Jesus -- according to the editorial committee that gave us the Gospel of St. John. So what is it?
The late British writer Graham Greene framed the question in this wise: "Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests?"*
Truth may be an ever underway and therefore ever changing set of memories, aspirations, disappointments, resolve and even information. Or yet, what the Greek word for truth (αληθεια) in the Pilate-Jesus exchange above suggests, viz. that which denotes the reality at the basis of an appearance or the uncovering of what is actual truth.
The truth of a matter may not be manifest at all and probably in most cases is not. A man tells a woman to whom he is attracted, "I love you." The three words come as a surprise to her as she thinks that he is attempting to beguile her into intimacy far too soon, if ever she would accept it. She may be likewise attracted but wants to know how deep and trustworthy is his overture. She seeks the truth, or the reality at the basis of what has transpired.
I would like to believe that I fell in love with my wife of 36 years at first sight. I feel as if I had, but I did not. Neither did she succumb to the vapors on that occasion. Over several months there emerged growing mutual attraction, a sharing of ideas and aspirations that came to full bloom as we realized that we were approaching the point of no return. We did not turn back.
Truth seldom is easy to come by. Most triumphs of science I know about were gained by painstaking, backbreaking experimentation, testing and analysis -- often over periods of years. Truth is elusive and may well be like Greene's pendulum: at a point at which it never rests.
I have sat through enough trials to know that truth is often a stranger to the administration of justice. I have seen people convicted of crimes I know for certain they did not commit. The appearance of the evidence suggested that they did. But the reality underlying the appearance was never gotten to, not through the fault of any one attorney involved but because a court of law is an arena of competition in which the truth is not sought so much as the goal of conviction or exoneration.
In politics, the truth of any matter is hopelessly orphaned. Appearances count for everything. It is not off-limits to veil the truth, much less to bury it when it serves the politician's purpose. Oft-times, the truth is the last thing anybody wants to know.
Then there is THE truth brought to you by your friendly neighborhood church. What is meant by "truth" in such places is likely to be found be found in a statement of faith, in a reading or two or three from the Bible or directly in a sermon. Why is it called "the truth"? Because it has proceeded from pages made sacred by ecclesiastical authority over time and because some large numbers of people accept it and never seem to doubt. In such a context, truth is proclaimed a priori.
Part of that truth is that "God the Father Almighty" is the "Maker of heaven and earth." Unless a believer is willing to have those terms unpacked and their meaning translated through the rigors of modern science, I fear that the mere saying of the statement does not make it true.
Church truth goes on to proclaim that a first-century Palestinian man was born of a virgin and, after his execution, was resurrected from dead and then ascended to the right hand of the God who made heaven and earth. Hmmm. What are the actual bases in reality of these verbal appearances? How can one test their validity? Can they mean something different than they plainly say? In other words, is there truth somewhere in it all that can be made manifest?
That, I would say, is the church's problem, and more power to its theologians. I'm wondering, though, how such an enterprise can succeed.
Speaking of religious congregations, I can tell you something from personal experience, which does partake in truth, and it doesn't take much of an effort to see it. It's a given community -- people who gather once in a week to follow a tradition they grew up in or to which they converted or are there because it's an accepting, no-questions-asked environment.
The best moments come as they greet one another, ask how things are going and make it clear that they are friends who care and on whom friends of theirs can depend. I see it all the time.
That's one of the points on Greene's swinging pendulum at which the truth about the whole enterprise is disclosed. There is no mistaking what it means.
* Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair. London, England. The Penguin Group. 1962.
