What Is Truth?

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.

What God Showed Up?

On Christmas Day our congregation worshiped by praying the Christmas liturgy followed by a service of Lessons and Carols adapted from the historic Service of Nine Lessons and Carols presented each Christmas Eve by the choir of Kings College, Cambridge, England.  In our slightly shortened version, seven scripture lessons tell of the Incarnation in the birth of Jesus.  A familiar Advent or Christmas carol is sung in response to each lesson.  The entire service is a moving declaration of the foundation of the Christian faith – Jesus, the Christ, was born among us and recognized by those who heard the good news as Immanuel, God with us.

A few days after Christmas I saw a post on Facebook quoting the Rev. Franklin Graham as saying that Donald Trump’s win was the answer to the prayers of many: “Trump won because ‘God showed up.’”  I found this troubling because what I have learned of Trump’s words and actions so far seems to be at odds with the God who is described in the liturgy and scripture lessons we had read in church just two days before.  Thus I undertook a comparison.

Demand Honesty; Preserve Our Republic

I wrote the following letter to the editor on 11/29/2016. It was published in the 12/09/2016 print edition of LNP, the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, daily newspaper.

How do we live as a nation among nations with a Head of State whose word means nothing?  To Trump down is up, dark is light, the grass is purple, and the sky is orange.  Then tomorrow he will contradict everything he said today and declare that he never said anything different.  Truth means nothing to him.  Facts are irrelevant.

He has said that he will pull the U.S. out of the Paris Accords on Climate Change.  He has named climate change deniers to critical positions on his staff.  On Sunday (11/27) his prospective Chief of Staff Reince Priebus stated that Trump “has his default position [on climate science], which most of it is a bunch of bunk.”  His disregard for the basic principles of science is stunning in its ignorance.

Trump’s words and actions are the tactics of an abuser.  They threaten the safety and well-being of our country and of our world.  The worst of the damage resulting from his inaction on climate change will not become evident until after he leaves office.  The harm to our international relationships will be much more immediate.  Our allies will lose trust in our ability to keep our word and to fulfill obligations.  They will quite likely diminish or withdraw their support and cooperation.  Our adversaries will delight in the uncertainty, taking advantage of the confusion and mistrust to further their own ends with little restraint.

We must be vigilant.  We must refuse to normalize Trump’s behavior.  We must demand honesty in our government. We must struggle in whatever way we can to preserve our republic and to insist that all our elected officials respect and adhere to the provisions of our Constitution.  The generations coming after us deserve no less.

 

Religion in the Presidential Campaign

To one extent or another religion is a topic of discussion in the campaigns of most of the contenders for the U.S. presidency.  This column provides a brief run-down of the religious views, insofar as they can be determined from public statements and analyses, of the remaining candidates for the two major parties’ nominations.  I list them in alphabetical order by last name.

Having attended mass with his Catholic wife for many years, Jeb Bush formally converted to Catholicism in 1995.  From all reports he is sincere and devout in his faith, which clearly influenced many of his actions as governor of Florida.  In his presentation to a 2009 conference, he stated, “As a public leader, one’s faith should guide you,” and that attitude was in evidence when, for example, as governor he established the nation’s first faith-based prison and attempted unsuccessfully to compel a hospital to keep Terri Schaivo on life-support.  He differs from Catholic doctrine on the matter of capital punishment, however, having presided over 21 executions during his time as governor.  Since the publication of Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, Bush has acknowledged that earth’s climate is changing due, at least in part, to human activity, but he has not articulated any clear program to address the problem.