Truth-An Endangered Species
As the years pass and the wonder of childhood imagination is eroded in
the face of reality and in the recognition that life may not be lived in
an imaginary world, the search for truth becomes all-pervasive, drawing
implications for the essence and destiny of life itself-connecting the
what and the why. No thinking person can avoid this search, and it can
end only when one is convinced that the answers espoused are true.
Aristotle was right when he said that all philosophy begins with wonder,
but the journey, I suggest, can progress only through truth. And so we
move away from the world of imagination to the cerebral world of
knowledge and truth. We move from the childhood sounds of ecstasy to the
young world that seeks in language to explain the struggles of the heart
and mind. Why this? Why that?
Scripture provides a fascinating discussion between the Roman governor
Pontius Pilate and Jesus in the eighteenth chapter of John's Gospel.
Jesus has been brought to him by the high priests, who want to execute
him because of his claim to be equal with God. Pilate asks Jesus, "Are
you a king?" We can well imagine a sardonic grin planted on the face of
this nervous puppet of Caesar's, as he inquires into the kingship of a
Jewish carpenter. Jesus responds with a question: "Are you asking this
on your own or has someone else set you up?" Pilate is somewhat
exasperated by this seeming insolence. "Look," he answers, "I did not
bring you here-your own people have done that." Then Jesus says, "My
kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to
prevent my arrest. But now my kingdom is from another place." Pilate
says, "Ah! So you are a king!"
The response of Jesus discloses Pilate's real predicament. "You are
right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and
for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the
side of truth listens to me."
Pilate mutters, "What is truth?" and walks away.
The answer of Jesus is both subtle and daring. The fundamental problem
Jesus was exposing to Pilate and to the world is not the paucity of
available truth; it is more often the hypocrisy of our search.
Truthfulness in the heart, said Jesus, precedes truth in the objective
realm. Intent is prior to content. How can one deny that at the core of
so much conflict today is the untruthfulness in our hearts? Wars are
fought over lies. Peace treaties are concluded, laden with lies. It is
truth that has died, not God. Humanity loves to chase a lie till it
believes the lie, which frees the individual from any impinging moral
reality.
After disclosing the true nature of the human heart, Jesus makes the
most provocative statement during that penetrating conversation with
Pilate. He affirms that the truthfulness or falsity of an individual's
heart is revealed by that person's response to him. The implication is
uncompromising. He was and is the truth. What you do with him defines
the truthfulness of your search.
But that could be a rather presumptuous claim. Was this statement made
in a vacuum? Not by any stretch of the imagination. From his birth to
his death, from the way he lived to what he taught, from the wealth of
prophecy to the completion of fulfillment, from the historicity of
Scripture to the transformation Scripture brings about in lives, by his
death and his resurrection-he sustained that massive claim. The coeditor
of this book, Norman Geisler, succinctly states and defends the
uniqueness of Christ in his exhaustive work, Baker Encyclopedia of
Christian Apologetics.
Christ is absolutely unique among all who ever lived. He is unique in
his supernatural nature, in his superlative character, and in his life
and teaching. No other world teacher claimed to be God. Even when the
followers of some prophet deified their teacher, there is no proof given
for that claim that can be compared to the fulfillment of prophecy, the
sinless and miraculous life, and the resurrection. . . . Jesus is
absolutely unique among all human beings who ever lived.?6?
Never has a life been lived the way Jesus lived it. Even the skeptic and
famed historian W. E. H. Lecky grants this when he says:
The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue,
but the strongest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an
influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three
short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften
mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the
exhortations of moralists.?7?
There you have it from even one who has no prejudicial commitment to
him-no one ever spoke like him or lived like him. That immediately sets
him apart from everyone else who has ever lived. Contrast his life to
that of Mohammed or Krishna and you will see there is a world of
difference. From his pure life comes the reminder that if the heart is
not truthful, then the very truth of Christ is missed. But like Pilate
of old, we miss the striking force of truth. We miss seeing who he is
because we are blinded by the power of preconceived notions. We come
determined not to find his claim to truth.
Jon Krakauer, in his book Into Thin Air, tells a gripping story. His
book recounts the ill-fated ascent of Mount Everest in 1996, in which
many lives were lost, including those of the most adept leaders. At one
point he recounts an episode with Andy Harris, one of the expedition
guides, who had been exhausted by his conquest of the summit. On his
descent, he had started to run out of oxygen, when he came across a
cache of oxygen canisters. But Harris, already starved for oxygen,
argued with his fellow climbers, mistakenly insisting that all the
canisters were empty. Those to whom he was speaking repeatedly assured
him that the canisters were indeed full. They themselves had left them
there. But Harris was beguiled by a brain devoid of oxygen and made the
false judgment that what he held in his hand could not help him.
What a remarkable parable of life that is! In a similar way, Pilate was
standing face-to-face with the truth, but snared by the disorientation
of power, he walked away from the source of all life.
If that is all Jesus had asserted-that our response to him betrayed our
own prejudice-the argument would at best be circular and at worst no
better than anyone else's claim. But Jesus had a basis on which to make
such a statement. When a life is so lived that we see how life is meant
to be lived, we must at least give ear to what that person says about
what living means. And here, his description of reality moves us to a
closer understanding that in him alone the ideal and the embodiment were
unbroken. He was God incarnate, who never broke the demands of his own
proclamation. He took us beyond words to himself. Any other claimant to
divine or prophetic status separates himself from the ideal. Jesus, by
contrast, identified himself with his teaching. "I am the way, the
truth, and the life," he said.
He was born in the context of three great cultures-the Hebrew, the
Greek, and the Roman. For the Hebrews, the ideal was symbolized by
light. For the Greeks, the ideal was in knowledge. For the Romans, the
ideal was in glory. Light, knowledge, and glory-the three great
abstractions of cultural pursuits. The apostle Paul was a Hebrew by
birth, a citizen of Rome, raised in a Greek city. He well understood the
pluralism of his time. Writing to the church in Corinth, he said, "God,
who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our
hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6, emphasis added). Every ideal was
demonstrated and lived out. This could not be said of anyone else.
Here we come to the next realization. Just as wonder was found in a
person, so the Scriptures claim and prove that truth is fully embodied
in a person, the person of Jesus Christ. It is not merely that he has
the answers to life's questions; he is the answer. We find the truth not
merely in platitudes or in creedal affirmations but in knowing him. When
his questioners asked him for bread that would satisfy, he pointed to
himself-"I am the bread of life," he said. As we study his claims and
his teaching, we find a message that beautifully unfolds, encompassing
the breadth of human need and the depth of human intellect. Truth was in
his very person. In a world starved for truth, he stands as the eternal
example of what ultimate truth and reality are all about.
But just as wonder fades with the search for truth, so truth longs for
that which is not merely propositional or demonstrated but which gives
relevance. Here we move to the third component.
[1]
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6 Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2000), 140.
7 W. E. H. Lecky, A History of European Morals from Augustus to
Charlemagne II (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1869); quoted in F. F.
Bruce, Jesus, Lord and Savior (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
1986), 15.
[1]Geisler, N. L., & Hoffman, P. K. (2001). Why I am a Christian :
Leading thinkers explain why they believe (274). Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Books.
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