What Is Truth?

‘Truth Is Ugly’ by Idle A While

What You Can’t Accept

10 March – This is the pastoral text / cellphone SMS of Fr Reuter: Pilate asked Our Lord: ‘What is truth?’ But he did not wait for the answer … When you are troubled, wait for the answer. It will come.

‘What is truth’ is a profound question to ask, and I don’t blame Pilate for not waiting for the answer that he probably felt he wouldn’t understand anyway. He must have heard of Jesus and his parables – like the parable of the talents: the woman gave what she had, two coins all in all, everything. And his paradoxes –‘Love your enemy!’

The truth is if you want to truly give, you give of yourself, you give part of what you need, even everything that you yourself need – if you give what you have in excess, that is not truly giving. And that of course is not your idea of giving. You give what you want to give, not what you are told or expected to give, not what the other fellow needs (you don’t know what he needs), but what you say he needs. To you, that is giving.

The truth is if you want to defeat your enemy, the only way to do that is to love him. And that of course is crazy! So you go on loving your family, which is not so bad; you go on loving your friends, which is not so bad either; you go on loving mankind, which is not so bad after all – but you go on hating people who don’t measure to your standards. How can you waste your love on people you hate? Those politicians and leaders/dealers – they are an abomination! You can’t see the wisdom in their continued position of power – even in their continued existence. Of course not. It is seldom that we can see the truth.

I’m imagining myself seeing an angel crying. I didn’t think angels ever cry, can ever have any reason to cry. Now, I’d like to imagine her crying because she can’t see why we can’t see the truth. Who was it who said, ‘And the truth will set you free!’ That is not correct, not literally. It is only we who can set ourselves free – once we see the truth. How can the truth ever set us free when we can’t see it? The truth will not go out looking for us – we have to go out looking for it. And God bless us if we find it and know it to be so.

When I saw the image, I immediately fell in love with it. It is ugly, it is beautiful! ‘Truth is ugly’ says Idle A While (Vanessa Paxton), who owns the image. It is too. You have to see beyond the ugliness to see the beauty. Ugliness is skin-deep, beauty is bone-deep. Beauty is in the eye of beholder, and so is truth, I do realize now, inspired by the photo: Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Thank you, Vanessa.