On Personal Truth
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:date: 2016-10-31T22:48:00
:category: faith
:tags: postmodern, conscience, theology
Our Senior Pastor John Mullen talked one Sunday during communion
about the distance between head and heart and that it is
absolutely crucial to transform the truths which we have only in
our head to those which are in our heart, and which are the only
ones which actually drive our behavior. He suggested the Lord’s
Supper as one God-given tool for surmounting them. I completely
agree with him. The Lord’s Supper is one mighty tool we were
given for this purpose.
However, I don’t think it is the only tool. Yes, knowledge
limited to our head will not save us, unless it gets down to our
hearts and thus truly to our lives. However, it often feels from
many evangelical teachings that the solution for the lack of
heart-knowledge is to increase our head-knowledge. I think it
often goes much deeper than that. I think we need to get down to
find out more what prevents the content of our head to get down
to our heart.
[...] and you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.
-- John 8:32 (NET)
It may be a presumption, but I would add here to the Biblical
text “and ONLY the truth shall make you free.”
Postmodern philosophy is often accused (a bit unfairly I would
think, but that’s another topic) that its basic tenet is that
everybody had their own truth. It is certainly nonsense, if it
means that there is no single objective truth and what matters
are only diverging opinions. However, despite disagreeing with
this, I don’t think we should throw away this statement as such.
In fact, I believe we all have own personal “truths,” set of
things we truly deeply believe in, they are just so. This set is
product of our upbringing, education, experiences, etc. These
are truths for which we are truly willing to put down (to use the
Czech medieval phrase) our throat, honor, and estate, or at least
we know we should (if we were not such cowards).
The Lord is both kind and fair; that is why he teaches
sinners the right way to live. [...] The Lord always proves
faithful and reliable to those who follow the demands of his
covenant. [...] The Lord shows his faithful followers the way
they should live. [...] The Lord’s loyal followers receive
his guidance, and he reveals his covenantal demands to them.
-- Psalm 25:8-14 (NET)
Yes, plenty of the truths we believe in are wrong. After all each
of us, who did not grow up in the faith, had once as one of those
heart truths a belief that God does not exist. Of course, I do
believe that the best (if not only) measure of our faith and life
is the revelation of God. Plenty of these truths we got wrong, we
misunderstood what God meant to tell us, we are influenced by our
surroundings, wounds, our pride and sin. So, we have to continue
to educate ourselves, to eliminate error from our thinking, look
for new revelation, to be humble concerning our understanding of
the world. Yet, I still believe He reveals to each of us all we
need to follow Him and do His will.
These are truths for which we are responsible, and these
(personal, heart) truths are the ones by which we will be judged.
We are not responsible for understanding everything, but for what
has been already revealed to us. We are responsible for bringing
these truths to action, we are responsible for preserving them,
we are responsible for sharing with our neighbors, and defending
them against their opponents even upon that “throat, honor and
estate.
However, there is also other side of this, and here we get to
that distance between our head and heart. I believe we are also
responsible for **not** confessing truths which have not been
revealed to us. Did we ever confess anything just because it was
the easy way out of the situation, because we wanted to be
accepted, because we were afraid? If we did, I believe we were
blunting our judgement to discern the truth, we were actually
lying. We live in the middle of the secular world, and even in
the Church we live amongst sinners. When was the last time we
stood up and said that what is commonly believed or what we are
pushed to confess is not true or we just don’t believe it? When
was the last time when hearing a sermon you said to yourself (you
don’t have to create a protest movement) “this is not the Father
I know”, or “I don’t think I believe this”? If we accept any junk
which the world throws at us, we cease to be able to recognize
the truths we actually should hold as our own.
