Each year as we gather for the
Readings for Holy Week services, I find that one or two verses stay with me for
days and weeks after Easter. This year
it has been Pilate’s probing question during his interrogation of Jesus, “What
is truth?” (John 18:38a)
Indeed, what is truth? It is a question which is as relevant and
urgent today as it was two thousand years ago.
When called to testify at a trial, one is required to swear or affirm to
“tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Is truth limited, then, to statements that
are admissible in a court of law?
Hardly. There are many things we
know in our lives which cannot be proven true or false by the standards of our
justice system.
Neither is truth simply the
recitation of facts. To be truthful
facts must be accurate; but without context, plain facts can be deeply
misleading. As an example, consider the
old Cold-War-era joke regarding a foot race between the top U.S. runner and his
counterpart from the U.S.S.R. The
American won the race. The next day the
Soviet newspapers reported that their runner had come in second, and the U.S.
runner had finished next to last. The
facts are accurate. The manner of
stating them is contrived to convey a false understanding of the results of the
contest.
