Looking for Truth

The most important thing we can do in our lives is to pursue truth, and embrace it when we find it, and live it out in our lives. Does that sound bold? At some level, we all build our lives on truth. This does not mean we are immune from error – we can all be mistaken, and throughout our lives certainly will be many times – but rather, it means that we cannot live without truth.

Do you doubt this?

Consider the truth of your senses. When you cross the street, you probably look both ways to be sure that there are no cars coming. If you see a car, you wait until it has passed (or you make a mad dash across the street) because you are confident that if you see what looks like a car, it really is a car, and if that car hits you, it will really ruin your whole day.

Consider the truth of your self-awareness. When you have a headache, you take an aspirin, or perhaps you lie down, or perhaps you just grin and bear it – but you know your head hurts. Can you prove it? Does anyone know it but you? No – but you know it’s true, and you act accordingly.

Consider the truth of your relationships. Do you know that your mother, or your father, or your best friend, loves you? Yes? How do you know? They might just be faking it, after all. We can’t prove love, but we know when we are loved. Indeed we can’t interact normally with our friends and family unless we know that we love them and they love us. All the dysfunctional families we know (or are part of) show that this is so: when we are unsure of the truth of our family’s love, the result is chaos and disintegration. In contrast, when we spend time with the people whom we truly love and who truly (that is, in truth) love us, the difference is apparent: the love is real, and we know it (though we cannot prove it) and it makes all the difference in the world.

Consider the truth of reality itself. Every day we trust that the world will work according to the way it always has worked; we trust that scientists and engineers have based their inventions on accurate knowledge of the way the world works. We trust to the reliability, the robust status of truth whenever we fly on a plane, cross a bridge, take medicine.

And now consider the situations in which we want to know the truth. Does this person whom I care for really love me? Is it safe to cross the road? Will this medicine make me well, or make me worse? Am I happy or unhappy with the circumstances of my life?

The search for truth generates a lot of questions – with answers that are not simple. What is truth? How can we be sure of it? Where can we find it? What do we do about it? But the wonderful thing is that we have minds that are capable of asking those questions and of finding answers to them. When we seek truth, we can find it. Certainly, we may not always like what we find; it may run contrary to our preferences or our expectations. But if truth is truth, then – so what if we don’t like it? We still need to know – just the same way that I need to know if there is a car coming, or if the one I love doesn’t love me, or if I have a serious illness. To know is to be able to act on the basis of that knowledge, and to act rightly.

If nothing else, to search honestly for the truth and to act on it when you find it is to live a life of integrity. That is a satisfaction deeper than any surface pleasures, a satisfaction that no one can take away. It is not easy, but when was anything good ever easy? Unfortunately, our culture these days encourages us to take the easy way out, to go for what feels good rather than what’s worthwhile. Come on – you know that what’s cheap and easy isn’t lasting, or real. The things you work for are the things that mean something. Let us do the hard work – let us look for truth.

Related posts:

1. Truth and Compasses
2. Meditation on Psalm 4
3. The Gift of Time
4. Growing Pains
5. Hope and Love on the Way of the Cross: The Transfiguration of Jesus