I.

When you have to testify in court, the bailiff hands you a Bible (of all things) and you have to swear "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Yet I have never been in any context which is as bereft of the truth as a courtroom. That experience made me realize as never before that truth is an endangered species in our culture.

Because of our mortal, temporal condition, our self-interestedness, and the malleability of our memories, truth is very fragile and tenuous. It is easily lost and overlooked. In my experience, for all the oaths and Bibles in evidence in a courtroom, one should still probably assume that everyone is lying, or at least seriously spinning events to benefit their case. And it is the job of the judge or jury to sort it out and decide what seems most likely.

What triumphs in this system and in many other places in our public life, like politics and business, is rhetoric and entertainment. If you can tell with effectiveness a story that appeals to people’s self-interest, fear, anger, or pride, if you can tell a story that makes people feel good or laugh or warms their heart, then this often can become our mutually accepted version of truth.

We pay professionals very well to define what people think is true. Through the skillful use of the media, you can shape the popular conception of yourself, your cause, your product, your brand, and that of your competitors and opponents.

This would not be so bad if there were some basic commonly accepted principles guiding how we make this determination. Perhaps there were at one time. But there really aren’t any more.

We have sunk to the level where allegiance to basic truths and principles has largely evaporated, and truth is now reduced to whatever serves my self-interest here and now. Now we make up our truths and principles as we go along, and change them at will according to what we happen to want at the time.

II.

Such an approach, in which we succumb to cynical, relative, self-serving, and subjective agendas, in which the only justification or value is winning, in which the biggest battles are over who can develop the most emotionally convincing rhetoric, is fundamentally dangerous to the integrity of our communities and our democracy. But it is the natural outgrowth of the Modern Age and its philosophies which, by making people the measure of all things, eroded absolute truths and replaced them with self-serving, expedient, and disposable lies.

Instead of truth, goodness, and beauty, we have bias, conditioning, and subjective gratification. Instead of principles and values to which we adhere no matter what the cost, we have become like chameleons, whose every commitment and loyalty changes according to the needs of the time.

We used to see this in the rhetoric of the Nazis, and the Soviet Union, and continue to see it in that of other totalitarian and authoritarian governments, in which "truth" and "history" are invented and synthesized according to the perceived present needs of the State. We see it as well in the way the fossil fuel industry will deny or spin the scientific consensus on global warming. We see it today as each faction in the now multi-faceted Middle East conflict attempts to spin each day’s bombings and shootings according to their own agenda.

In all of this, the one common denominator is that my desire, my perceived needs, my comfort and pleasure, my prosperity, my power, my happiness, and my benefit is the one standard by which all truth is measured. If it’s good for me, for my party, my ethnic group, and my ideology, then we must proclaim it as true; if it is bad for me and my agenda it must be a lie.

So when we hear Pilate say to Jesus, "What is truth?" it is full of cynical, disillusionment. Because Pilate knows better than anyone that truth is whatever Rome says it is. Truth is what’s good for Rome. Truth belongs to the victors. Whoever has the biggest army with the sharpest swords gets to decide what truth is.

III.

Our Presbyterian Book of Order offers an opinion about truth. In Chapter One, it says that truth and goodness are so intimately connected that there can be no goodness that isn’t true, and no truth that isn’t good. We know the truth because it gives birth to good actions. The worst thing you can do is to say that truth is only relative, goodness is merely situational, and beauty is purely subjective.

No. The truth is out there. It is not just in here, locked in the closet of our own desires, perceptions, thoughts, fears, needs, and dreams. There is an order to the universe, and that order extends from the physical to the moral to the aesthetic. And to participate in that order is to exist; and to deviate from that order is to fall into nonexistence.

When Pilate cynically scoffs, "What is truth?" the irony is that the truth is right there in front of him, looking him in the eyes. The truth is a man whose hands are bound tight with rope; who is exhausted from being on trial all night. But he is the truth. He is the fundamental Reality of the Universe. Because he is the living embodiment and incarnation of God. He is God’s never failing love for the world, become flesh to dwell among us. He is the living Word of God, "he was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be.... In him was life, and that life was the light of all people."

If Jesus Christ is the truth, then goodness is whatever is in synch, in resonance, in harmony, in tune with him. This means that goodness is found not in selfishness, but in selflessness; not in acquisition, but in sacrifice; not in receiving, but in giving; not in being first, but in being last; not in winning, but in losing; not in what we get, but in what we contribute; not by our power, but by our weakness; not in what we consume, but in what we preserve and restore; not in what we get for ourselves, but in what we give to others.

If Jesus Christ is the truth, then living according to his example is to be real. And what is real is what remains, what endures, what stands fast against the eroding forces of time. What is real is what can be depended upon and relied upon and remembered forever.

IV.

In the end, the truth always prevails. The passing falsehoods of each successive generation evaporate like mist in the fields on an autumn morning. In the end the strong are remembered only for their crimes. They are recalled only as examples of evil and destruction we do not want to repeat.

But those who humbly and inconspicuously and often anonymously follow the truth... these are people we cherish and revere in our memories for all time. We call them saints, and we name our churches and our children, our cities and mountains and rivers after them.

The truth is out there. And it is not necessarily found in the visible, tangible, measurable facts around us, for in the hands of an expert these facts can be spun to mean almost anything. Neither is it found in our rigid and righteous demands for vindication, affirmation, inclusion, and justification.

The truth is found rather in the way we trust in God and give our lives in the service of God and others. We find the truth when we jettison the clutter of lies from our hearts, when we give up our selves and empty ourselves of all selfishness and avarice, greed and craving, and yearn only to be filled with joy and peace from above. We find the truth residing in a kingdom that "does not belong to this world," but this world belongs to it.

"My task," says Jesus to Pilate, "Is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born; for this I came into the world, and all who are not deaf to the truth listen to my voice." In all that he does, Jesus bears witness to the truth of God’s infinite, saving love for the world. In his teaching, and in his healing, and in his sacrificial death on the cross, he is showing us the truth.

And the truth is that in our losing we win; in our giving we receive; in our emptying we are filled; in our dying we are reborn to eternal life. Trust in God. God is true. God always wins in the end.

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