Will the Truth Really Set You Free?
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After deliberating for several hours in U.S. District
Court in Marshall, Texas, a jury found that Trinity Industries lied to federal
regulators when it changed the design of highway guardrails in 2005, making
them unsafe.
At least a dozen related accidents – some fatal – have been
reported. Vehicles run off the road and collide with Trinity-made guardrail end
caps that, instead of cushioning the impact, malfunction and spear the vehicle,
according to lawsuits that have been filed against Trinity. Trinity has denied
wrongdoing.
Appalling, but most of us
aren’t surprised when an individual or a company lies. As a society, we’re awash
in lies, including many that are far from “little” or “white.” Most people know
instinctively that lying is wrong, so instead of outright lies, we often engage
in half-truths, withholding of the truth and bald exaggeration. The bottom
line, however, is deception, an offense against the truth.
This is particularly evident now during an election season, when politicians strain our
credibility with charges against opponents, insincere promises and various
jugglery to interest us in “the sizzle instead of the steak.”
Here in Iowa, this is obvious
in television advertising on behalf of two candidates for the U.S. senate.
Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University, wrote insightfully
about the campaigns in a recent issue of the Des Moines Register.
Solutions to society’s
problems are seldom mentioned, he wrote. Instead, one candidate’s principal
message is that he is a “nice guy” while the other favors “sunshine,
butterflies and honey.” Basically, the TV ads ask voters to choose one
candidate because he is not the other candidate. Instead of disclosing their
positions on the issues, the candidates’ purpose is to manipulate voters
rather than inform them.
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Why should God seekers care
about this? Because as I mentioned in a recent blog, seeking the truth and
seeking God are – from a believer’s viewpoint – indistinguishable. To be
successful in their search, God seekers must cherish the truth, rejecting the contempt
for truth so often evident in society.
Tempted to be cynical, we –
like Pontius Pilate at Jesus’ trial – might ask, “What’s truth?” He asks Jesus
this question, according to the Gospel of John, after Jesus tells him that his
purpose in life is “to bear witness to the truth.” There’s no record of Jesus
responding to Pilate’s question because Jesus seems to have answered it earlier
when in a dialogue with Pilate he said that he was a “king” whose kingdom “was
not of this world.”
The specific truth Jesus
seems to have been talking about is that in life, there is much more than meets
the eye, that there is a domain, or “kingdom,” that requires faith to perceive,
even if faintly.
This idea harmonizes with
another famous quote of Jesus about the truth, namely, that it will “set you
free.” Just how will it do that?
I believe it starts in the
astonishing idea that other people are children of God, making them brothers
and sisters. I know, this sounds sappy, but I believe it’s hard to seek God
without understanding that we come to him/her through others. We are freed from self-absorption.
Mahatma Gandhi,
the famous father of Indian independence, understood this. He proclaimed the
truth through love and nonviolence. Jesus did the same but also invited people
to know God, his Father (or if you prefer, his Parent or Mother).
In the passage of John’s
gospel where he says that faith leads to freedom, Jesus couches his words in the
biblical language that his listeners would understand. He tells his smug
listeners, who took pride in being “descendants of Abraham,” that he’s talking
about freedom from “sin,” a word that is foreign and even taboo in today’s
society.
He wasn’t just talking about
individual bad acts, however. In much of the bible, “sin” refers to a general
condition of estrangement from God, of being so buried in one’s own concerns
and in the world one can see, God is effectively excluded. It isn’t about
coercion or about believing because someone else wants you to, but about
opening one’s mind to a reality that requires faith. That’s another way the truth
brings freedom. You’re no longer bound solely to the world you can see.
There is no believers' truth or unbelievers' truth. There is
just truth. And that’s what we seek in order to find God.
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