To Seek and Speak Truth

A Worship Service by the Reverend Jonalu Johnstone

First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday May 15, 2005

Readings

From Descartes'

Discourse on Method

From my childhood I lived in a world of books, and since I was taught that by their help I could gain a clear and assured knowledge of everything useful in life, I was eager to learn from them.  But as soon as I had finished the course of studies which usually admits one to the ranks of the learned, I changed my opinion completely.  For I found myself saddled with so many doubts and errors that I seemed to have gained nothing in trying to educate myself unless it was to discover more and more fully how ignorant I was…..

[He goes on to discuss the various areas of knowledge; I’ll keep my focus on two:  theology and philosophy, of which he says:]

I revered our theology, and hoped as much as anyone else to get to heaven, but having learned on great authority that the road was just as open to the most ignorant as to the most learned, and that the truths of revelation which lead thereto are beyond our understanding, I would not have dared to submit them to the weakness of my reasoning. 

I thought that to succeed in their examination it would be necessary to have some extraordinary assistance from heaven, and to be more than a [human being].

I will say nothing of philosophy except that it has been studied for many centuries

by the most outstanding minds without having produced anything which is not in dispute

and consequently doubtful.  I did not have enough presumption to hope to succeed better than the others; and when I noticed how many different opinions learned men [and women] may hold on the same subject, despite the fact that no more than one of them can ever be right, I resolved to consider almost as false any opinion which was merely plausible.

From Adreinne Rich's

"Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying"

In speaking of lies, we come inevitably to the subject of truth.  There is nothing simple or easy about the idea.  There is no “the truth,” “a truth” – truth is not one thing, or even a system.  It is an increasing complexity.  The pattern of the carpet is a surface.  When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet.

This is why the effort to speak honestly is so important.  Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler – for the liar – than it really is, or ought to be.            In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves.  We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives.  Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another.  Thus we lose faith even with our own lives.

The unconscious wants truth, as the body does.  The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire.  The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.

An honorable human relationship –that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” – is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in so doing we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

Prayer and Meditation

Rev Barbara Pescan
 

In this familiar place, listen:

to the sounds of breathing, creaking chairs,

shuffling feet, clearing throats, and sighing all around

Know that each breath, movement, the glance

meant for you or intercepted

holds a life within it.

These are signs

that we choose to be in this company

have things to say to each other

things not yet said but in each other’s presence still

            trembling behind our hearts’ doors

these doors closed but unlocked

each silent thing waiting

on the threshold between unknowing and knowing;

between being hidden and being known.

Find the silence among these people

and listen to it all – breathing, sigh,

movement, holding back –

hear the tears that have not yet reached their eyes

perhaps they are your own

hear also the laughter building deep where joy abides

despite everything.

Listen:  rejoice.            And say Amen.

To Seek and Speak Truth

A Worship Service by the Reverend Jonalu Johnstone

First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday May 15, 2005

Truth was a pretty darn obvious theme for us to use in the first year of QUUEST. 

Unitarian Universalists love truth.  Well, no, really, we love the SEARCH for truth.  We speak well of the truth, but I’m not sure we believe in it exactly.  In other religions, they’ll tell what you what’s true.  We don’t do that. 

We’re like the Enlightenment thinker Gotthold Lessing who summed up our approach.  He wrote: 

If God were to hold out enclosed in His right hand all Truth, and In His left hand just the active search for Truth, though with the condition that I should ever err therein, and should say to me:  Choose!  I should humbly take His left hand and say:  Father!  Give me this one; absolute Truth belongs to Thee alone.  [Wolfenbüttler Fragmente

We agree with the reading from Adrienne Rich this morning:   “There is nothing simple or easy about the idea [of truth].”  Rather, we think, “There is no ‘the truth,’”  and we’re not too sure about “a truth.”  Or as Gertrude Stein once put it, “There ain’t no answer.  There ain’t going to be any answer.  There never has been an answer.  That’s the answer.”

And at one level, that’s fine.  The search for truth keeps our minds sharp and pushes us to new experiences and encounters.  We stay fresh, lively, engaged.  Yet, we’ve all had the experience of asking what we thought was a simple question that led to research which got us so thoroughly inundated with information and opinions, that by the end of it we felt further from the answer than we started.  Like Descartes, whose thorough study of every topic under the sun led him only to know that he wasn’t sure of much of anything.  So, maybe we come closer to the answer, but less certain of it.  The more you know, the more you know you don’t know phenomenon.

But we keep repeating the process.  We keep seeking the elusive answers to the questions of this life, confident that somehow, somewhere, it will come.  Maybe if we change the method – move to empiricism or to mysticism; surf the net or dig through the library; interview the wise, or eavesdrop in the mall.  What is it that our principles commend? – “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning."

Free – unfettered by loyalty to false idols or ideals.  And responsible – accountable to the community.  That requires that truth not be simply our own independent pursuit.

I love Descartes’ search through the various subjects for truth – what did he finally come to?  Not a truth, but a method.  Here are Descartes’ four rules:

1)      Never… accept anything as true unless I recognized it to be evidently such.

In other words, Descartes encourages us to trust that gut instinct that says, “Yeah, that’s it!” when we hear a new theory that fits the puzzle pieces together that we’d previously struggled with.  And if it doesn’t ring true, forget it!  The limitation here is clear – what if what is true simply appears false to me?  Ah, well. 

Descartes’ second rule:

2)      Divide each of the difficulties which I encountered into as many parts as possible, and as might be required for an easier solution.

3)      Think in an orderly fashion, beginning with the things which were simplest and easiest to understand, and gradually and by degrees reaching toward more complex knowledge.

4)      Always… make enumerations so complete… that I would be certain nothing was omitted. [from Descartes, Discourse on Method, translated by Laurence J. LaFleur, p. 12.

In short, Descartes believed he could think himself to the truth. I think, therefore, I am – you remember that one.  Like us Unitarian Universalists, Descartes prized reason.

Now, unlike many UU’s, he went on to “reason” himself into belief in God, the human soul, and the potential for creation of robots – though he didn’t use that word and was convinced they could never learn to talk.  This, in itself, may demonstrate the limitations of reason.  We need more than reason alone to lead us to truth.

We UU’s are great believers in scientific truth.  Unlike other denominations, we never struggled against the theory of evolution.  Young Charles Darwin, after all, did attend a Unitarian day school, and have a Unitarian minister for a grandpa.  Even more significant, nineteenth century Unitarians lapped up the application of critical methodologies to Biblical texts. 

We have long embraced the idea of on-going revelation, that revelation is not sealed.  That is, there was no one appearance of God or truth in flaming light and ever-after, truth depended on that single text, or prophet, or disclosure.  That’s just not how the world works.  We have faith that we keep learning more.

Though it gets a bit tricky when we try to discover just how objective truth is. I’m reminded of the contrast between the three umpires in their description of the calling of strikes.  The traditional umpire claims, “I calls ‘em as they are!” confirming the solidity and certainty of truth.  The modern umpire declares, “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em,” acknowledging the particularity of his point of view.  The postmodern umpire asserts, “They ain’t nothin’ ‘til I calls ‘em.”  In that view, human observation and comment not only seek and discover reality, but actually create it.

Let’s face it – we come to different truths based on our particular experiences.  Growing up in the ‘50’s, ‘60’s, and early ‘70’s in suburban Virginia, being a daughter and a sister, going to state schools as an undergraduate and prestigious universities for graduate school – those experiences shaped the way I see truth and the way I seek it.  Having a feminist mother and a doting father taught me different ideas about the roles of men and women than other people learned.  Movement between segregated and integrated schools generated particular lessons about race and its consequences.  Reading the Bible led me to reject as completely unbiblical some of the religious “truths” I had been taught in Baptist churches.  Experience influenced my take on truth.

How, then, can that really be called truth?  If different people see it different ways, are we entirely in the realm of opinion and distant from the domain of truth?  Are we limited to calling truth that which can be proven through replicable scientific experiment and analysis?Is that more potent than our reasoning or our experience?  Or is scientific truth a bit meager for us to live by?

John Cobb, a process theologian retired from the school of theology at Claremont, has argued that Immanuel Kant did us a great disservice by splitting off theological truth from scientific truth.  Metaphysics, which once included the study of existence, the question of God, and the examination of first principles became a catch-all category of odd occult theories and obtuse speculation; that is, the big questions, the unanswerable ones that we can’t keep ourselves from speculating about, were dismissed by many as part of the truth.

Scientific truth is one thing – supported by a standard process:  observe, develop a hypothesis, set up an experiment to test the hypothesis, see if the experiment’s results are consistent with the hypothesis.  Yet, every scientist knows that a theory is never proven true.  It can only be proven false.  Data can be consistent with a theory, but cannot crown it true.

But, somehow we have to live in the world as if things were true.  We have to live as if gravity works, whether or not we understand the theory behind it.  We have to live as if switches will actually turn the electric appliances off and on, whether we have any sense for how current works.  We have to live as if our spouse will come home each night; as if our children will outlive us; as if goodness triumphs over evil; as if justice, beauty, and love can make the world a better place; as if our lives make a difference.  And as if when those things aren’t true, hope abides anyway.

That’s straying pretty far from the scientifically verifiable, but you’re not going to convince me to doubt these things – even when the evidence sometimes contradicts my belief. 

But as Adrienne Rich says, “The unconscious wants truth.”  We have to live our lives not fully knowing exactly what is right, but we can’t allow our ignorance to immobilize us.  When you buy a car, there’s always more research you could have done, more test drives you could have taken, more questions you could have asked – some you may regret not asking soon – but you have to make a decision.

And we have to live our lives – choose spouses, have children, take jobs – as much in accepted theories of the truth as we do in confirmed knowledge.

What’s more, we have to use utterly inadequate language to communicate at all. 

We invent concepts to make other concepts more understandable.  We compare love to a rose not because love literally flowers but because we cannot fully hold and describe what love is; we can’t do justice to it; we can’t express the truth of the depth and beauty of our love – so we call it a rose.  And thus, create possible misunderstanding.

So much of our communication is like this – we use symbols and metaphors to express reality, truth, and it’s never quite up to the task.

We compare the light to a wave – or is it to a particle?  Or is it both?  And how do we more closely approximate truth by calling it both?

That brings me back to the theories of John Cobb.  A theologian, not a scientist, he’s reflected on what modern physics brings to our knowledge of metaphysics.  At one time, we understood matter as solid – somewhere down in the center of things came the tiniest particle, the atom, an indivisible bit of substance.  Now we know that atoms, too, have pieces – not just the protons, neutrons, and electrons we learned about in school, but bizarre little things like quarks and photons and neutrinos and muons.  What we’ve come to understand from physics is that antimatter exists as surely as matter does, and that things aren’t quite as solid as we’ve believed – that the smallest particles may be as much about energy as matter.  Yet, we treat the material world as immutable, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Cobb proposes that the world is composed not of matter, but of events.  That God, contrary to the Nicene Creed, is not ousia – matter or substance – but actually motion or movement, process, creativity.  Cobb claims a material view of the world prevents us from acknowledging how different things affect one another, how they – and we – are interrelated.  Change, not stability, anchors the system.  Or perhaps, as the poet Muriel Ruykeyser has said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

I don’t know a lot about contemporary physics – it’s one of many areas in which the more I know, the more I don’t know.  And I’m kinda with Descartes on the question of philosophy—that it’s all in dispute, and therefore, doubtful.  So a theory like Cobb’s that turns on its head everything that we know and rely on offers a breath of fresh air.  If we don’t even know what the most basic unit of the world is, how can we know the truth of political spin cycles or religious declarations?  Yet, this unknown, unknowable world – a world of quarks and light waves, of Bibles and dinosaurs, of political spin and polite white lies – insists we get to know it, and love it.

So, here’s the hard part, if the truth is so uncertain, how dare we speak what we believe to be true?  If we ourselves are unsure, knowing that truth is relative, that others have their truths, that nothing is certain but death and taxes – how can we voice a scientific theory, a political position, a religious credo, an ethical pronouncement, a personal opinion?

We may be wrong.  But remember the master carpenter.  He asked an apprentice applying for a job whether he’d ever made a mistake. 

“No,” the young man insisted. 

“Can’t hire you then,” said the old man.  “When you do make a mistake, you’ll have no idea how to fix it.” [from The World According to Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers, p. 110]

Being wrong is just a way to come a little closer to what’s right.

Hans Christian Anderson’s classic story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” has become a standard metaphor for a truth that everyone prefers to ignore.  Like the advisors and the crowd who pretend to see the fabulous clothes rather than confess their own frailties, we often allow ourselves to be deceived rather than speak unpopular truths.

There are all kinds of reasons for it.  One is our uncertainty.  Other people may be sure of their truths – that Jesus is their savior, that angels visit the earth, that extrasensory perception guides them reliably.  We UU’s tend to doubt.  Here’s a good place for compromise – not to question their commitment to their beliefs, but to insist that we need not agree with them. 

There’s the uncertainty of not having the perfectly effective symbol – the love is a rose problem.  The question of whether light is particle or wave?  How can we explain what we don’t have the words for?     

Then, there is the compromise between truth and feelings.  Need someone know a truth that hurts them?  A real ethical dilemma.  A clear place for compassion – putting ourselves in another’s place.  What would I want to know?

Then, there’s the question of, “Is it my truth to tell?”  Doctors, attorneys, ministers, even spouses keep confidences – not denying the truth exactly, but not telling it either because the particular truth does not belong to them.

Yet, often, too, the problem of truth-telling, as in the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a problem of courage. A Slovenian proverb says:  “Speak the truth, but leave immediately afterwards.”  We do not want to accept the consequences for announcing undesired truths.  We don’t want to appear to be too different from others, too arrogant, too rude.  We do not want to look as foolish as the boy who dares proclaim, “The emperor has no clothes.”  Yet, more than once when one person has expressed skepticism in a group, I have witnessed others join the cry – as soon as one had the courage to speak up.

If, as we UU’s suspect, the world really does have all these different perspectives and truths, different metaphors, different points of view… if we are approaching a truth that we gradually polish with more precision, then the truth is – we need everyone to say their piece to get the complete picture.  It’s as if we all sat in a circle around a floral centerpiece, each with an easel in front of her or him.  We each can paint the flowers we see from the angle we have, not what the person next to us or across from us sees.  And no one painting shows the centerpiece completely.  Only the aggregate, all the paintings taken together, can represent that complex arrangement.

So, how do we find truth?  We each must seek, yes, in his or her own way – with reason, experience, research, science, intuition, skepticism, all of it.  But we also have to bring our truths together in a community for testing, for sharing, for adjustment.

That is our real method of truth-seeking in Unitarian Universalism.  Indeed, it is our spiritual discipline. We rely on each speaking his or her own truth, and listening to all the others.   It’s easy to shout down the one who sits on the opposite side of the room and sees completely different flowers, except that tall one that she finds a new angle on.

That doesn’t make her vision less accurate than our own – nor does it make it more accurate. 

Sometimes, UU’s are mocked for their insistence on talking about the truth – the idea that we’d rather go to a discussion on heaven than to heaven itself.  For me, though, our religious enterprise is summed up in that circle of chairs – around a living room, or in the Eddy Room, or Jefferson Room, or at a restaurant, or anywhere at all – where each person utters her or his particular truth and the others affirm it.  Not necessarily agree with it, but in the process help shape everyone’s truth in the room.  Those are the places where I’ve seen lives transformed – in that instant of “Oh, that’s how you see it.  I see what you mean.”

Barbara Rohde expressed it this way:

On occasions when I have been able to explore with another person just where we differ, when we have both had the trust – and the time – to tell each other what we have seen and how we have come to understand it, I have found the experience to be energizing and clarifying.  My thought is clarified, but the boundaries of my self are also clarified.  I am more sure what is the “me” and what is the “not me.”  And I have found myself in some way bound to the person who is seeking with me.  The person who had seemed to be my opponent has suddenly become my partner.

            Over the years I have come to believe that the meeting of minds, in loving argument as well as in common purpose, is both creative and holy. [from In the Simple Morning Light, p. 47]

This spiritual practice of seeking and speaking our personal truths leads to a religion that the late great A. Powell Davies called

the religion that says freedom! – freedom from ignorance and false belief; freedom from spurious claims and bitter prejudices; freedom to seek the truth, both old and new, and freedom to follow it, freedom from the hates and greeds that divide humankind and spill the blood of every generation; freedom for honest thought, freedom for equal justice, freedom to seek the true, the good and the beautiful with minds unimpaired by cramping dogmas and spirits uncrippled by abject dependence…. The religion that knows that we shall never find the fullness of the wonder and the glory of life until we are ready to share it… [from “Is This Your Religion?” in Without Apology, Ed. by Forrest Church, p. 16]

May such a religion of truth and freedom be ours.  May we have the courage to seek such truth and speak it.

Amen.