C. TIS A PUZZLEMENT

One reason that answering questions is so difficult is that the answers often don't seem all that certain and stable.  Someone attended a twenty-year college reunion and was amazed to discover that the final exam questions were the same as those he had had to answer when he was a student.  So he asked a professor, "Aren't you worried that each new class can get the questions in advance from the previous class?"  "That's not the problem," the prof replied, "because each year we have to change the answers."

"Huge Wave", by Tim Holmes
Computer science information is changing so rapidly that teachers in that area have to warn their students that half of what they learn will be outdated by the time they apply for a job.  Changes in understanding are taking place in every field.  There's a line in Herman Melville's great novel,  Moby Dick,  in which someone describes the storm the ship is experiencing by saying, "Everything nailed down is coming loose."  

That's rather how it feels in our culture as we begin the 2lst century.  Every time has been a time of change, but never before have so many things changed so rapidly as in the present day– in economics, in medicine, even in virtually all of the physical sciences.

In the musical, The King and I, the king sings:

There are times I almost think nobody's sure

of what he absolutely knows.

Everybody finds confusion in conclusions 

    he concluded long ago.

'Tis a puzzlement

So how can you nail down any truth in a rapidly changing world like this?  What are the chances of bending any question mark into an exclamation point?  Isn't everything relative, changeable and therefore unsure?  You can see why some people give up the quest for truth altogether.  "Believe what you want to believe," they say.  So it follows, "Do what you want to do.  In the last analysis it makes no difference because discovering the truth, understanding reality is like trying to grab a cloud."

I don't buy that and I hope you won't either.  I believe there are some important and reliable ways to discern the Truth about Reality; and now you see I'm starting to use capital letters.  Capital T Truth and capital R Reality are to be distinguished from small t truth and small r reality.  Truth and Reality are as they really are.  On the other hand truth and reality are our  perceptions.  That doesn't mean our perceptions don't mean anything.  It simply means that we must be clear on what we can and cannot expect in our quest for Truth, whether that Truth is about ourselves, about life, about creation, about meaning and purpose, even about "God."  If we're clear on what we can and cannot expect, we're off to a good start in our quest for Truth.

So what's the question?  Maybe the very first one is the question Pontius Pilate asked in the presence of Jesus: "What is truth?"  He asked that question in  response to Jesus saying, "For this I was born and for this I came into the world, To bear witness to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth hears my voice." (John l8:37-38).  That's quite a claim and I've had to take a hard look at that too in the course of this quest.  Because the "truth according to Jesus" has often been understood differently by different people at different times and that's just as true today.  That suggests that the "truth according to Jesus" is just as slippery and hard to nail down as any other truth.  But that Truth that Jesus said he was ("I am the Way, the Truth and the Life...." John l4:6) is one thing.  Our perception of it may be something else.  We needn't give up he quest in the face of that; we need only remember the distinction." (We'll get to Jesus much later.)

There is an old Chinese proverb which I lie very much and try to keep in mind in my own pursuit of truth:  'THERE ARE THREE TRUTHS; MY TRUTH, YOUR TRUTH AND THE TRUTH."

Like the content of computer science, the thing about our perception is that our perception of the Truth is likely to change.  It is, in fact, supposed to change.  That's part of growth, which means that if  our perceptions are not changing in some respect, we're probably not growing.  Change isn't always easy, which is why you've heard of "growing pains," but that's the nature of the game called "life."  If you're willing to endure and survive the pains of growth, you've come a long way toward growing closer to the Truth, even if we don't ever grasp it in its entirety.

So I have some questions for you for starters: 

What do you think truth is?                                                                                     

How do you know it when you see it?                                                                       

What is your own experience of discovering a truth in the world?                         

How did you learn it?

Carry on.

NEXT TIME:  TWO KINDS OF WORTHWHILE DREAMS


 TOOLS AND APPROACHES  -  C     


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