So... What is Truth?

Can we know?

Thank you, each of you, who wrote to reaffirm my writing effort. Your encouragement means more than you’ll ever know!

This week, if you’ll allow me to, I’d like to unpack the answer to Pilate’s seemingly flippant, agnostic sounding question: “What is truth?” (John 18:38)

I do want to be kind to Pilate and acknowledge that, while to us his question seems to lack sincerity and to be sarcastic, we really don’t know his heart. It might be the greatest understatement of all time to say that Pilate had a few things going that day!

So maybe him not sticking around for Jesus’ answer had more to do with distraction, pressure, and preoccupation than anything else. I think we all know how randomly we have thrown off a thoughtless comment in such situations. So, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

But regardless of Pilate’s heart or motive, his question still stands.

What is truth?

Can we identify it? Can we actually know what truth is?

These questions may be the most important questions any of us will ever face. And we do need to answer. We cannot escape. How we answer will not only affect how we live but will also determine how we die.

NOTE: True to my commitment to answer your questions about our plain people’s Christian faith and way of life, I’ll do my best to answer this “What is Truth” question in a way that is consistent with the beliefs of plain people.

Truth is surprisingly simple.

It is reality. It is what is real. It is what is factual. It is the way things actually are. It is what is.

We may not like reality, but we cannot change it. We can fight it. We can argue against it. We can wish the truth was something else. We can disbelieve it. We can deny it. But in the end, reality does not change. Reality is not adjustable. Reality is true and the truth is what is real.

Here is a simple illustration that I used when our children were young to explain this principle. Sorry if it’s a bit childish... but I think it still has value. :)

Imagine if a friend and I are sitting in our living room at the farm and I mention Interstate 81. He may ask me where I81 is and I would tell him that it runs just beside our property. I may point toward the west and say, “It’s over on this side.”

What if he did not believe me? What if he did not trust my word? I could show him a map, right? But what if my friend chose to disbelieve the map?

I could say, “Well, just listen, you can hear it.” But what if he chose to say, “But I think that sound is something else... I do not believe it’s I81.”

So I could take him outside and point and say, “See? Can you see those cars and trucks? That’s I81.” But he could argue, “I think it is an optical illusion. I don’t think we can ever really know. You have your opinion and I have mine... You need to respect my opinion. And besides, even if it is a highway, I think it is I80 instead of I81.”

I could take him out to the road and we could look at the US I81 signs and he could feel the rushing wind from the speeding trucks and feel the rumble... but in the end it is up to him if he chooses to believe or still chooses to doubt my word, the map, his eyes and his ears, the road signs, etc.

But one thing for sure, what my friend believes will not change reality. It will not change the truth. He may laugh at me and tear up the map. He can print his own map, but it will not change the reality of the road.

If he gets on I81 North and believes very sincerely with all his heart that he is on I80 West and is heading to San Francisco CA, he will be very disappointed.

Sometime or other, maybe when he enters Canada, he will be forced to admit that in reality he has been on I81 North and not I80 West. He has been believing an untruth. He has been trusting in a falsehood. It was not real. He was deluded even if it was by his own closedness to truth.

God’s Written Word is Truth. It never contradicts reality.

We believe God’s Word is reality, We accept that God’s Word is The Truth. Historically our people have called it The Divine Truth.

We often say that the thousands of Anabaptist Martyrs of the 1500’s & 1600’s died for their faith. And that is all true, but it is interesting to pay attention to how they actually said it in the martyr accounts. They most often said they died for the truth or for the divine truth. They knew full well they were locked in a pitched battle between truth and falsehood!

They had faith, sure, and at great cost made a conscious choice to suffer and die for it. But their faith was not in their faith. Faith has to be anchored in something. Their faith was not in themselves or their own thoughts or wishes but was in The Truth from the God of Truth and his Word of Truth revealed by his Spirit of Truth.

I know I have said this before, but it bears repeating. If you want to understand us as Plain People, you will need to understand our full-commitment-above-all-else to God’s Word as his unquestionable revealed Truth.

We do not think of God’s Word as true only for us. We don’t consider it a reality just for our people. We don’t believe that truth is subjective or variable. We believe it’s no more variable or subjective than the location of I81. In fact we believe it is more solid, secure and settled than the location of a highway ever can be.

One of the most explicit scriptural passages on this is the words of Jesus in John 17:17 spoken just hours before he voluntarily gave his life for us.

In this passage, Jesus prays a very passionate and loving prayer to his Father God about the future care and protection of his followers. He pleads with his Father God to “Sanctify them through thy truth.”

Then, it’s like he realizes that sometime in the future folks may disagree about what truth is and what he, as the very Son of God, actually meant by this statement, so he settles the argument before it starts with this once-and-for-all clarification: "Thy Word is truth."

Jesus said it... That settles it... We believe it!

But, not all Truths are in God’s Written Word

Dogs, cats, cows, etc. have four legs. This is a truth. It is an undeniable reality. God does not tell us this truth in his Word. He does not need to. God is not a ‘breath-in, breath-out’ kind of God. He expects us to figure out some of his truth using our powers of observation and the brains he has given us.

The trick question we played on each other as children is, "How many legs would a dog have if you’d call the dog's tail a leg?"

The answer of course, is that the dog would still have four legs since calling his tail a leg does not make it a leg. It doesn’t matter if you’d get a few million people to chant in unison with you that "the tail is a leg." The truth remains. Reality remains. The tail is not a leg.

We could argue and say, "But what if we were to do a surgical procedure so that its tail looks like a leg?" Again the truth, like all truth, is unchanged. Surgically altering the tail to look like a leg does not make the tail a leg.

Truths of this type are called deductive truths and it’s very important to know and accept they are real truths and are still directly from our Father God, the originator of all truth.

Even though deductive truths are not spelled out in God’s Written Word, they are clearly revealed in God’s Spoken Word. God’s will is revealed through his creation which exists by the deliberate design of his creative mind and by the power of ‘The Word of His Mouth.’ We are without excuse. Romans 1:16-25

Yes, Pilate, we can know the truth. But first we really, sincerely must have ‘the want to’ know. Without ‘the want to’... we will never know. It’s impossible to wake up a man who pretends to be asleep.

"Through faith we understand that the worlds (and all that in them is) were framed by the word of God." (Hebrews 11:3)

Think about it... I will be.

Blessings and prayers…

So long—until next time.

Your Mennonite Christian plain farmer friend,

Edwin Shank

"Intensely striving to be... A follower of Jesus indeed... In whom there is no guile"

“For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;... That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.” ~ Romans 3:3-4