Truth rant, again

 John 14:5-7

And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

⁵ Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?”

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

⁷ “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”

Verse 6 and on to 7a is probably one of the most outrageous, extreme, ideology-shaking, and perplexing statements of Jesus. “I am not going to show you the way and truth and life. I am THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE.” Not a way, truth, and life. The only one, which tracks with the next sentence. “No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.”

This is a passage to contemplate, ponder, meditate on.

Yet let me just pick on one thing. On some TV show a bunch of women were screaming about “that’s your truth, that’s not my truth.” This so gets under my skin for two reasons: epistemology and theology. Substitute the words “world view,” “experience,” “perspective,” even “narrative” or “identity,” but truth doesn’t work there. Truth does not grow from emotions.

The theology part is clear. Jesus claimed to be the truth, so you can’t be a Christian and say each person has “their truth.” Well, you can, but you would be denying one of the bases of your faith.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies learning, knowledge, and, well, truth. In Western civilization, we investigate the world around us to discover truth. In a courtroom, the legal process is supposed to (though sometimes it doesn’t) discover the truth. Science has a method of observation and experimentation to discover truth. The stuff of the legal process is facts, which are true statements attested to by witnesses or documents. Science has to use very carefully detailed procedures that go up against peer review (and much of scientific research is a collaborative process) that could be considered factually true. Truth comes from truth or truths.

Imagine a courtroom where a witness says, “I saw the defendant at the scene of the crime on the day in question.” “But he couldn’t have been there. Twenty other people saw him at his place of business at the very same time.” “I doesn’t matter. That’s my truth. I feel it’s right. I don’t feel that he was at his place of business.” That’s nonsense, of course.

Aristotle said this way of “learning” or “discovery” results in contingent truth, which could be revised with more research. But it’s not the province of one person.

So, let’s please stop this nonsense about “my truth” and “your truth.”