4/19/53

Scripture: John 18: 28-38.

For many students, a college education is an introduction to truth and a training, or discipline, in its ways. It may be other things - an advanced school in getting along with people, a storehouse of knowledge, a training ground in some skills. But, presumably, the search for truth comes high in the list of motives for seeking a college education. Therefore it may not be amiss, on "College Sunday," to center our thinking for a time on the idea of truth. The Gospel of John has things to say about truth which are interesting and thought-provoking. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth ... for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." [John 1: 14, 17]. And, "Why do you not understand what I say? -- You are of your father, the devil. --- He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." [John 8: 43, 44].

"Pilate said to him [Jesus] ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered: ‘You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.’ Pilate said to him: ‘What is truth?’" [John 18: 37, 38].

"Jesus said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.’"

[John 14: 6] (We thought on that theme last Sunday).

"He who does the truth comes to the light." [John 3: 21].

"And I will pray the Father and he will give you .... the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you." [John 14: 16,17].

"When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you in all the truth." [John 16: 13].

Then in the first epistle of John, there are these words: "Let us love one another; and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. [I John 4: 7,8]

Jesus said to those who had believed in him: "If you continue in my word, you are my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." [John 8: 31,32].

Here, then, is a group of words and sayings of Jesus about truth. The question of truth is universally human. But like some other human questions, it was studied more intensely among the classical Greeks, before it became a passionate search among some others. John was the gospel writer who wrote more particularly in the Greek world, and to the Greek world, than did the other gospel writers. It was probably the aim of John to give the Christian answer to the Hellenic, or Greek, mind. The answer is given to us also, for we are seekers after truth. And we may, at times, seek it as desperately as did any of the ancients.

It is often at an early age that we are moved by a desire for truth. A great deal of the truth which a child first gets is offered to him, or imposed upon him, by parents. It can hardly be otherwise. But the weight of undisputed authority, be it that of father or mother or teacher or gang or older friend is not able to dictate forever what is to be regarded as truth. Sooner or later the child revolts against some of what has been given to him as truth. He may deny an authority altogether. Or he may deny one in the name of another. He might use teacher against parent, or gang against teacher, or a friend against the gang, or society against the friend.

Whether in obedience or revolt, the time comes when some new road to truth is open to us. And often that way is in the scholarly work of the academic world -- as in high school, and in college, or in graduate school. When some intellectual truth appears to us, we take it so eagerly. It seems so safe, so dependable, so independent of authority and willfulness. We feel liberated from prejudices and superstitions. Sometimes we feel as if made humble and more honest.

Where else could we look for truth but in the schooling of the academic world? There be some who take it for granted that school is the only logical place to look for truth. And among those who look for truth in scholarly pursuits, some think it is found in only one area. Some take it for granted that poetry may express beauty, but hardly truth. Ethics may guide to a good life, but will hardly lead us to truth. Religion may produce deep emotions, but it should not claim to have truth. "Only science gives truth," so say they. Science gives new insights to the way nature works. It illuminates the texture of human history, and opens the hidden things of the human mind. It gives a feeling of joy like that from nowhere else.

Well, whoever has experienced the transition from dimness or darkness to the sharp light of knowledge, through the scientific method, will always praise scientific truth and understanding. And he may be inclined to say, with medieval theologians, that the principles through which we know our world are an eternal light in our souls.

And yet when those who have finished their formal schooling are asked if they have found the truth which is relevant to their lives, they often answer with hesitation. Some will say they have lost it; others that they don’t care much for it, because life goes on from day to day without reference to it. While others will say that a book, a person, an event outside their studies gave them a feeling of truth that matters. But most will agree, now, that scholarly work alone cannot give the truth relevant for our time.

Where else can we get it? Pilate seems to doubt that it can be found anywhere. "What is truth?" he asks, with an air of skepticism which evidently suggests his own doubt that it can be found or defined. The same question expresses the doubt and despair of millions of our own contemporaries in schools and studios, in business and professional life. We are children of our period in history, as Pilate was of his time. Both are periods of some disintegration, and of world-wide loss of meanings.

Yet this must be said. The depth of Pilate’s despair over truth reveals that the passion for truth was still alive within him. Pilate was the unjust judge. For that, he is rightly condemned. But from his question, "What is truth?" even though it may have been asked in cynicism, we are reminded not to give in too quickly to those who want to ease our anxieties about truth; not to be seduced into a "truth" which is not really the truth -- even if the seducer is one’s own party, or church, or family or school. There may be those who ought to go with Pilate on his questioning, in seriousness, until they find an answer.

There is a two-fold temptation to evade the burden of asking for truth. One is to claim that my group, or family or school or tradition already has the truth. The other is to have no care for truth.

1) The first of these temptations is that of those who, in the gospel accounts, pointed to their tradition that went back to Abraham. --- So they had all the truth and were not seekers after it but guardians of it. It is easy for this frame of mind to send us back to the church Fathers, or the popes, or the Reformers, of the Constitution, for authoritative truth. My church, my nation, my father or mother gave me the truth; and so I don’t need to worry about the question of truth.

Would Jesus tell any of us who take this position that the truth we have is not the truth to make us free? Is not that precisely a point of issue between Christ and the thought police of any realm? When one’s own truth is called the ultimate truth, there is not freedom, but demonic bondage. For this is an attempt to be like God.

2) A second way of avoiding the question of truth is that of not caring for it -- the way of indifference. It is the way of the majority of people in our day, as well as in the time of Jesus. Life is a mixture of truth, half-truth and falsehood. One can live with this mixture and take the chance of dying with it. There may be boundary situations, an event of tragedy, a deep spiritual fall. But, as long as they are far removed, the question of truth can also stand far away.

Probably a little of Pilate’s method is mixed in -- in other words (1) some skepticism, where doubting is not dangerous; (2) some dogmatism where acceptance is requested or required; and (3) a shrewd method of trying to balance them in such a way as to avoid a frank facing of the question of ultimate truth.

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But if you want to face the question of truth today, the fourth gospel, John, has something to say for your attention.

1) The first is this: the truth of which Jesus speaks is not a doctrine, but a reality. And the reality is Jesus himself: "I am the truth." This is a profound change in the meaning of truth for many of us. For us, statements are true or false; people have the truth, or they have not. But Jesus claims to be truth, even the truth. If Jesus says, "I am the truth," he indicates that in him the true, genuine, ultimate reality is present. In other words God is present, undistorted, approachable; and we may know Him there.

Jesus, then, is not the truth because his teachings are true. His teachings are true because they express the truth that he is. He is more than words. He is more than any word about him. The truth that makes one free is not the teaching of Jesus, nor the teaching about Jesus, but Jesus himself. Here is a life of utter sincerity; a living embodiment of truth, an incarnation of the way, the truth, and the life ---- of God.

These gospels which relate the teachings of Jesus are not the truth so much as a pointer to the truth which he is. Not his words, but his life is the truth that makes one free. And his sayings are not to be proof-texts for life, but a guide toward finding freedom in his true life. The church very early forgot the word of the gospel that Christ is the truth, and began to claim that her doctrines about him are truth. And so the church became authoritarian about her doctrines. This tends to make the authoritarian church usurp the place of God. And that is a form of idolatry.

The free churches must guard against this sin, this missing of the mark, must remember that the church is the gathered company of those who believe in God as revealed in Christ. This is the greatness of Protestantism, that it points beyond the doctrines of the church, and beyond the teachings of Jesus to the being of our Lord, whose being is truth.

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How do we reach this truth?

Not by assent, by saying only, "Yes, I believe;" "I agree;" like the poor wretches who are shoved into the party line in Soviet-dominated (or other) police states; like those pathetic Jews of the past decade in Europe who felt forced to accept baptism to escape extermination; or those who say "yes, yes, yes" just to take a place in the membership of some church in order to make social contacts or family life more endurable.

We reach the truth, not by passive assent, but by doing it. This is more than obedience to the commandments. It is being that kind of life of which the precepts of the commandments are merely an evidence.

Well, "How can this happen?" The fourth gospel says "by remaining in him." "Abide in me, and I in you," says Jesus. The truth which liberates is the truth in which we participate; which is part of us, and we part of it. If the real, ultimate reality which is his divine being, become our being, we are in the truth that matters.

If we yet ask, "How can this happen?" there is yet another answer of deep significance: "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." Pilate heard just enough of that voice to make uneasy his sense of justice; but by no means enough to awaken him to the truth that is Jesus.

But someone may ask, in despair, "but if I can’t be told what if true; if truth is not the teaching of a master -- even of Jesus, how can I ever reach the truth?" "Who tells me that I am of the truth? How shall I know?"

Nobody can tell you. But there is this criterion: If you ask the question, "Am I of the truth?" and ask it seriously, you are of the truth.

If you do not ask it seriously, you don’t really want to be the truth, and you don’t deserve the answer. Indeed, you can not get it! He who earnestly, seriously, asks the question of the truth that liberates, is already on the way to that truth and freedom. He may still be in the dogmatic bondage of self-assurance, but he has started to go away from it. He may still be in the bondage of cynical despair, but he has already started to emerge from it! These people are of the truth, and on the road to it.

On this road, you will meet the truth in many forms. It may be in a sentence of a book, in one phrase of a sermon, in a measure of song, or just in a mood that envelopes you at church or in your study, or at morning watch. The sentence, the phrase, the melody, the mood --- these are not the truth. But they open for you that truth that you are becoming, and you are suddenly at strong peace, a new life, being spiritually reborn into the truth. You are something different and better.

You will again know fog, and darkness, and roughness. But you have experienced for this once the truth that means a freedom no teaching or law can give, and that no earth can take away. And it may even be that in some such moment, you are grasped by the picture and power of him who is the truth. Paul was so found and grasped. And he lived to say, "I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." [II Timothy 1: 12].

The Christian College; the Christian church; the Christian family -- these are people of the truth in a life. People who will, not just to understand, but to be the will of God.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 19, 1953.