One day in the distant past a leader asked, “what is truth?” Our current cultural chaos still wants an answer to this question. When Pilate poised this question it was in the midst of a trial where the preferred narrative was based on lies, fear and self service, sound familiar. At times I wonder if we have not made the idea of truth a cliché. Webster defines a cliché as a hackneyed theme, character or situation. Hackneyed is defined as lacking in freshness or originality. Have we grown immune to the reality of truth, that thing we have somewhere deep inside, hidden because we have intentionally covered it from the light. The cliché is that we say we desire truth but somehow it only applies to others, we do not want to be bound by the artificial constraints we believe truth imposes.
We build little plastic castles of deception, as Ani Difranco calls them with a foundation of selfishness. We build a world that is lush, verdant and comforting, insulating us from the truth that demands an honest humble self analysis. I believe that in our current constructions of truth, we consistently change it to keep it fresh or original, and with each new expression the reality of truth becomes so thin it is almost a vapor. We create new realities to replace the old that we see as stale and lacking a crispness because the old version was hard to swallow. You see truth is not supposed to be a comfortable container for our personal whims. I do believe there is a truth and it has been placed in each of us when we were created.
I am not here to define what it is because I do believe it is a communally held understanding of who and what we are created to be. Maybe the words of Pilate are our plight, maybe we are destined to a continual journey of revision, maybe our beings are trapped in rebellion to the freedom truth brings. I think we all have an innate sense of what this truth is, we know deep inside that when we turn away or are in opposition to this truth we silence its voice, make our minds, our hearts, our souls immune to its freedom.
I have been reading The Magician’s Nephew again to my younger eight children and at the end of the story there is an exchange between Polly and Aslan about Digory’s Uncle Andrew, who has been overwhelmed by the world of Narnia being born. Polly asked Aslan to comfort Uncle Andrew and Aslan says this,
“If I spoke to him he would only hear growlings and roarings. Oh Adam’s son how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”
We have created a world where we have silenced the voices we do not want to hear, silenced the exchange of ideas. We have in essence narrowed our views and live in a tunnel, yes there is light at the end but we only see one way to get there. In reality our world is filled with open spaces where we can explore, connect, challenge, encourage and empower others. The truth is we all have a right to respect and dignity and our voice. We all have the same desire to be heard, to be noticed, to be loved. Yet we have made our versions of truth a weapon to slay or control the ones we stand against. We have diminished the idea of truth to a momentary expression of a manufactured reality devoid of compassion, of openness, of love. Yes we accept the ones who see and think and act the way we want to but for the others we turn our backs. We have created a shallow, gray, comfortable world where we operate in self absorbed lives. In this manufactured world we change, manipulate, sell, trade and steal truth from each other as if it were nothing more than a commodity.
We have become Uncle Andrew and we only hear growlings and roarings unless it is the voice we desire to hear. We were given a freedom to choose and in that choosing we have a power, a strength, a tool yet, we are unable to wield it. We are narrow, untrained, and immature in our knowledge of the real power of truth. We have misused the very idea of truth to control and destroy. In reality it was meant to empower, to build, to support those in its service. My fear is that we may have made it such a cliché that we will be unable to rediscover it. Make no mistake it is there, it never left, it never weakened, we just adorned it so gaudily that it has become unrecognizable. The hope we must cherish is that somehow we will realize what we have done. In this realization we will unleash a flood of love, of compassion, of strength and we will be utterly changed and our hackneyed little plastic castles will melt away. The weight of joy we will experience will transform our hearts, our minds, our souls and we will hear the soft voice of truth speaking peace, speaking hope, speaking love. No more will we hear growls and roars but the sweet fragrant voices of truth.