What is Truth: Part Two

In my last post, I wrote about how the cultural noise in our society can distort truth to the point that grave injustices occur. It's always important to keep this in mind, especially as we head into another presidential campaign season. However, I recognize that there is more to this question of truth than the truth about our external reality. And there are more distractions than those that come at us from the outside. As much as we’re bombarded with news, opinions, editorials, and conflicting accounts of what’s true from outside sources-- the fact is-- it can be pretty noisy in here as well. Sometimes all that outside noise can actually be a preferable distraction to our own insecurities, doubts, and anxieties about our lives. We all have times in our lives when we feel like the Israelites, wandering through the wilderness of this world. Or maybe we feel like Jesus, praying alone in the garden, wondering if God has abandoned us. Or pleading with God to take our burdens from us. At times like that, we can tend to ask ourselves, what is really true about God? What is really true about God’s will--- God’s purposes for our lives? Is there even a purpose? Is God even still listening? What is truth, we ask ourselves, when our lives get turned upside down?

It’s appropriate, I think, to be reflecting on this idea of truth as we journey through the 40 days of Lent. Lent is traditionally a time to turn down the noise-- both inside and out-- to tune out all of the voices of fear, all of the voices of self-doubt, and any other voices that might be overpowering the truth of God’s love in our lives. Lent is a time for discernment— a time to discern what is really true about ourselves, our lives, and about our relationship with God. St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that we are “not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may discern what is the will of God.” It is through our times of solitude and quiet reflection that we find the wisdom necessary to discern truth about who we are as beloved children of God.

While reflecting on this question of truth, I want to offer a metaphor used by theologian Karen Baker Fletcher. It’s a metaphor that she uses to talk about how we do this work of discerning God’s truth in our lives. She writes that discerning God’s truth is a little bit like a dance. It requires us to remain nimble— to be able to respond to God’s ever-present and always active Spirit in our lives. She says that if we let our views become too narrow, if we let our ideas become too static, we might miss out on the dance. We might miss out on the next step that the Spirit is nudging us to take. We might miss out on the help that God is sending to guide us in our journey through the wilderness. I love this metaphor because it challenges us to embrace a concept of truth that is dynamic and living. It challenges us to look beyond the sound-bytes and easy answers, because at the end of the day, this kind of Truth is not something that someone else can tell you. It’s not something you can get from Fox News, or MSNBC, or CNN. You won’t find it in the New York Times, or on a blog. It’s not something you can read in a book. It’s something you can only know if you allow yourself to be open to, and transformed by God.

This Lent, and even as we move out of Lent into the Easter season, we are called to be participants in this dance with God. In our times of quiet reflection, in our moments of discernment that happen throughout our day, we are called to listen. We are called to listen for the still, small voice of the Spirit as she moves us towards the next step in our search for truth. I suppose if there is an answer to our question this morning— what is Truth— it is to be found there: Truth is a journey. It is the journey that all of us are on— throughout these 40 days of Lent, and throughout our lives. We don’t ever really stop looking for it. But every step we take on that journey brings us deeper into relationship with God, and brings us to deeper understandings about ourselves and the world that we live in. This Lent, let’s take that journey, let’s enter into that dance, together.