It is said that ‘the first casualty, when war comes, is truth’ (Hiram Johnson, 1866-1945, possibly quoting earlier sources). Even a cursory exploration of the events of the 20th Century seems to bear the statement out. Johnson made his remark during the First World War. What would he have made, a century later, of the age of the search engine and social media in which many hold very lightly to truth and for all sorts of reasons?
There is a lot going on at present in terms of understanding what truth means. A feature of the present age is an unwillingness to deal in absolutes. This means that for many truth is relative: there is no absolute truth, everything is just what ‘I decide it is’. Alongside this is a refusal to admit falsity of any kind because nobody can be wrong: their ‘truth’ is ‘truth’ for them. Or worse, all is false except my own version of the truth, an approach common in the atomistic world of social media. Even when truth is perceived it may be inadequately applied, meaning that people may simply lie about anything claiming to be truth or fail to see that truth (as opposed to opinion) has a universal application.
The idea of truth seems to have been lost or corrupted. It is generally accepted that much in the media and on the internet is a preponderance of lies. This is easy to accept, but in so accepting it, what is the standard by which we are to judge? Too many in contemporary society, not least amongst those deemed to be leaders, speak and act for short-term gain rather than from a definitive standard and this only encourages a downward spiral in standards which pits selfishness (not a new phenomenon of course) with the accepted standards of faith and a civilised society.
In the Bible the understanding of truth is not so much philosophical, but relational. In the Old Testament truth is whatever God says. This is because he is omniscient and none can challenge him; nothing else matters. Such truth is definitive: it tells us who God is, how the world works and who we are. To speak against the truth, to lie, is to challenge how existence fundamentally is. In the Scriptures it is impossible to admit any other version of the truth because that is how things are. It may be possible to conceive of something different as a modern relativist might, but that would be to lie; to say along with St. John, ‘the truth is not in us’.
In the New Testament truth becomes incarnate. In terms of the Old Testament this is just another way of saying that truth is whatever God says, it is just that now, in Jesus, that truth is embodied and because it is ‘made flesh’ we can relate to it in our human nature and be in relationship with it. This is a matter of grace which is why St. John can write in the prologue to his gospel,
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1: 14)
Where God is there is truth and where truth is, there is a mirror to God and rather than this being a dull philosophical idea, it is a matter of glory because God is truth.
When we hear the Christmas gospel again this year, give a thought to the importance of truth and pray that we human beings may live together in such a way that the truth is in us and that God in the child Jesus may be glorified.