Mr Joseph Vempeny Posted on : 11/03/2010 22:05:34

The Sublime Truth

“He who believes in truth believes in God.” Gandhi

“Truth? What is that?” About two thousand years have passed since Pilate put this question to Jesus. And this question was prompted by a statement made by Jesus when he said “For this I came into this world; that I may bear witness to truth.” From the nature of Pilate’s question and from the way he behaved after asking the question it was quite obvious that a reply was not expected. That is probably why Jesus did not give an answer to the question then. Our loss! Even if Jesus had given a reply one should wonder if Pilate or anyone else present there would have understood the meaning and depth of the reply. Even the disciples, who were with Jesus for two years on a full-time basis, could not understand much of what he wanted to communicate to them. Is our plight much different? How well do we, who had been learning and teaching the words of Jesus for the last two thousand years, understand his message? Today if you put the question, “ What is it that Jesus came to bear witness to?” to the leaders or theologians of the various denominations of Christendom what a rich variety of often irrelevant and mutually contradictory answers can we expect? If we put the question: “what is truth” to people of various persuasions what a variety of answers can we expect?

A verse from ancient Indian Scriptures that comes to mind while thinking of truth goes like this: “The truth on this earth is hidden under a gold bowl”. This is a very old line and I wonder if this has not lost much, if not all, of its relevance in today’s world. The line implies that if you try and succeed in removing the bowl we can reach the truth. Sadly that is not the case today. For most people today truth is not something under the bowl. It is the material with which the bowl is made - gold. For them there is only one truth in the world - money. All the rest is falsehood or humbug. They have faith in only one thing - wealth. They do not believe in anything else.

Jesus once compared the rich man’s passage to heaven to the camel’s passage through the eye of a needle. He said in another context that you either serve God or mammon (wealth) - you can’t have two masters. These teachings bring to light the truth about the first commandment prohibiting idolatry. Paul in his letter to Galatians says that greed is a form of idolatry. In today’s context idolatry is not keeping a picture or statue in a house or temple but serving with all one’s mind, soul and heart the mammon or wealth. This is not just a rich man’s problem either. Even poor people are not free from the evil of greed. Irrespective of what you possess, you must be poor in spirit. The spirit of non-attachment to material possessions is the key. ‘To be’ is more important than ‘to have’. People can make money to live but must not live to make money. We must depend only on God and not on wealth. The ‘Contemporary English Version’ of the Holy Bible gives a unique translation of the first part of the Sermon on the Mount. In place of the old translation of ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit’ or the more modern ‘ Happy are those who are spiritually poor’ this version begins the sermon with the words ‘God blesses those people who depend only on him’. This version makes more sense to me. This is applicable to all the verses of the passage called the beatitudes. When we trust in God and depend on him and him alone, life becomes much more livable, much happier and more serene.

Some people feel strongly that they cannot or must not believe anything that science cannot prove. The unprecedented progress in science during the early part of the twentieth century made many people lose their bearings and think that science had answers for every question. In those days it was fashionable to deny the existence of God. The idea of creation was substituted by that of evolution. What is the relevance of a God if we are not created by Him but are pure products of evolution? But today the situation has changed. After the giant strides taken by science in the twentieth century, many have come to realise that science does not have all the answers. In fact, when we find the answer to one question, ten new questions pop up to baffle us. Those branches of science that deal with cosmic and biological evolution cannot explain or even guess as to how or where it all started. Where did the matter or energy for the big bang come from? How did the first unicellular organism come into being? Science has no answers to such questions. These are beyond the scope of science. At one stage some scientists, just to prove the irrelevance of the idea of God, tried to argue or convince themselves that the first unicellular organisms were formed by mere chance, by the chance combination of certain chemical substances. But then they had no idea of the complexity of the D.N.A. molecules or of that miraculous “something” called life – at least not as we have today. But then again in no science book can you read that God created life or man or the universe. It is not for the scientist to say if there is God or not. Even as we do not turn to the Bible or the Vedas to learn about nuclear physics or computer technology, so too, we do not turn to textbooks of science to learn about God.

There are also those who are scared at the thought that their faith will be compromised if they accept certain facts proved or taught by science. I happened to come across many such people during my long teaching career. Rose Mary was the brightest student in one of my matric batches in Zambia. She told me that she did not intend to take Science for university courses. The reason was her fear that higher studies in science might cause her to lose her faith. She thought that knowledge of science and faith in God cannot go hand in hand. On another occasion at the end of a discussion on the Big Bang and cosmic evolution one student approached me with the question: “Do you believe all this?” When I answered in the affirmative, the next question: “Don’t you believe in God?” For these people the basis of their faith is not God or Christ or truth, but a few verses from the Bible. They want to believe that the time lag between the creation of the universe and the creation of the human being is 144 hours or six days, the seventh day being the day of rest. But it is a generally accepted fact today that from the creation of the universe to the creation of man it took something like 15 billion years. For these people it is not enough to believe that God created this universe and everything in it, all the living beings and humans. For them faith means believing that all this was done in six days.

What is crucial to their faith is some passage from the first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. If we insist that these verses of the first chapter must be taken literally should we not take literally the verses of the second chapter as well? If we do that we will be faced with a sharp contradiction between the two descriptions of creation. In the first chapter we read that creation of man came after all other forms of life were created. According to the second chapter man was created first and all other living beings were created later. Those who insist on taking every verse of the Bible literally should have the tough job explaining this contradiction. What a sensible believer should do is to try and grasp the message of such passages instead of taking the literal meanings thereof. For example, let us take these two chapters. The first chapter gives us the order of creation, life in water first, then on land and finally man in the image and likeness of God. The message of the second chapter is that every thing was created for man, that man is the centre of creation.

There are also people who will go to any extent, inflict any amount of damage or destruction on others to fight and destroy any system that may pose a ‘threat’ to their faith. It is as if these fundamentalists and fanatics have a fear or an instinctive feeling that the foundations on which the edifice of their faith is built is very shaky. True faith or strong faith does not need any defenders of this sort. More than anything else these people fear knowledge - new knowledge - that may force them to realise that what they had been convinced of all these days was wrong. It is as if they are afraid of some light that may shine into the darkness, which they have embraced. Theirs is the blind faith that has no place for reason. I will cite two instances to illustrate the point I am trying to make.

It is said that when the leader of the invading Arab forces saw the library of Alexandria he asked, “What are all these books?” When he was told that those were great books of knowledge and wisdom he ordered them all to be burned saying, “We have one book, the Holy Quran. We do not need any knowledge or wisdom that cannot be found in the Quran”. His orders were carried out in what is called the rape of Alexandria, though it is believed that some of the books were saved from the fire by some conscientious curator.

Christian theologians of the dark ages in Europe were not any better. The invention of the printing press caused much panic among these. Till then the only books were those written or copied in the Christian monasteries and they decided what books were to be written. These theologians also were afraid of the proliferation of knowledge among the common men, which may threaten their supremacy. The books they made in their monasteries were meant for the clergy. All the knowledge the layman should have access to, have to come from the mouth of the clergy. Secular knowledge was a threat to them. They wanted every one to remain ignorant and believe whatever they taught them.

It would appear that today the main obstacle to accepting scientific facts without jeopardizing one’s faith is the principle of evolution. Is there a competition between the scientist and the theologian? By accepting evolution of life as a fact is the theologian losing against the scientist? It is not as if the whole process of evolution was masterminded by some scientist. When we believe that the God who created heaven and earth and all that is seen and unseen is the one who guides and controls every step of evolution - when we believe that evolution is a continuing act of creation - the apparent contradiction between science and faith shall soon disappear. This will make one’s faith strong and unassailable.

In my personal experience scientific knowledge and religious faith were never contradictory but often complementary. Our faith can provide many answers that science cannot give and science can provide certain answers not found in religious texts. It is only when we are able to find such correlation between science and religion in place of contradiction that our knowledge becomes balanced and complete. Some Christians think that one is saved because one believes in Jesus. This can be attributed to some of the passages from the letters of Paul in the Bible where he emphasizes that salvation is brought about by faith in Jesus. Many people have taken this literally and out of context and believe firmly that salvation comes by faith and faith alone. It is such people that I call Paulists.

The message of Paul about faith must be put back in its context to make sense. What prompted Paul to say those things were the undue emphasis put by the Jews as well as the new converts to Christianity on the meticulous observance of the law. Paul tells the Christians that following the laws of Moses to the letter is not sufficient for a Christian. He also needs faith in Jesus. Taken out of context it would seem that what you believe is more important than how you live. Some even had gone to the extent of being convinced that the one who believes in Jesus need not obey any laws or commandments. To address this issue James had to write a letter in which he emphasised that faith without actions is dead. The message of James is that what you do is more important than what you believe.

What we often hear from the pulpits, from retreat centres, from all sorts of evangelical platforms is all about the life and miracles of Jesus and very little about what he came to teach or what he wanted to bear witness to. These preachers elaborate on what Jesus did and have very little to say on what he said. Those who blindly accept him as a saviour refuse to accept him as a teacher. Those who speak eloquently on the transfiguration on mount Tabor keep quiet on the Sermon on the Mount. When they teach about the importance of the sacraments they forget to teach the importance of love in our lives. What is the truth that Jesus came to bear witness to? Is it the fact that he is the Son of God, that he can work miracles, that he will come again? I do not think so. The truth that he came to witness is the very lessons that he tried to teach – the lessons of love, of forgiveness and of peace.

To believe in Jesus is to believe the things he taught us, to be committed to a life of selfless love that shall give us a foretaste of the Kingdom of heaven on earth or that could make heaven on earth. Through his teachings Christ has tried to give us a new revolutionary outlook on life, very different from the then existing ones, an outlook that could make life worth living, a life of happiness and contentment. His view of life was man-centered rather than God-centered. He taught that when you attend to the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the downtrodden, you are really serving God. He was the great revolutionary who stood firmly for the cause of the poor and the destitute. In his times the general view of the people was that the rich and the powerful are the ones with God’s blessing while those who suffer from poverty or ailments like leprosy are the ones cursed by God. The teachings of Jesus especially the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes were aimed at overturning these attitudes. Again, it was Jesus who for the first time gave us the new vision of God as a loving and caring Father.

When he taught us to address God as ‘Our Father’ Jesus was giving us a new vision in human relationship as well. It is the concept that we all, irrespective of our colour, creed or social background, are the children of God and thereby brothers and sisters. When we learn this lesson - if we can learn this lesson - and if we are able to treat God as our father and love him accordingly and if we are able to treat every other human being as our own dear brothers and sisters and love them accordingly, then, and then only, shall we experience the Kingdom of God here on earth and enjoy this in the next life. When we love each other and forgive each other’s failings God also will love us and forgive us. This is the foundation of true faith.

Truth is often hidden from us by the blindfold of prejudices that we often wear. The most common is the prejudice that I am right and everyone else is wrong, that my church, my religion, my tribe, my group only is right and all others are wrong. This prejudice is what sows the seeds of hatred and evil which grow and blossom into feuds and wars – wars between Catholics and Protestants, between conformists and reformists, between Jews and Palestinians, between Hindus and Muslims. It is this prejudice that prevents us from the search for truth. ‘Why search when we have the whole truth with us?’ is the attitude.

Carl Lumholts was a Norwegian explorer who in the eighteen nineties travelled through the Sierra Madre mountain ranges of Mexico in search of tribes not yet exposed to the modern, western civilization. He found many cultures that were very primitive. It seems that he did not try to civilize or convert them. On the other hand he claims to have been civilized and converted by them. This is what he had to say; “Primitive people as they are, they taught me a new philosophy of life, for their ignorance is nearer to truth than our prejudice”. It would be worth the while to spend a few moments to think if all the scientific, technical, commercial and all other forms of skills and learning that we have acquired all these years have taken us nearer to or further from Truth.

Let us also see, what answers can we find to the question, “What is truth” outside of the Christian context. We may say that truth is that which is distinct from illusion. According to many oriental systems of thought the whole visible cosmos and all that is ephemeral in this universe is Maya or illusion. The only truth is that which is not ephemeral, the changeless being which is the Brahman, Atman, Self or in simple English, God. For Gandhi truth was another name for God. Truth, Goodness and Beauty are the three attributes of God in Hinduism. Scientifically speaking, we may say that truth means the absolute reality, that which is not relative. Matter, energy, space and time are all relative. The only absolute reality is that from which all this arise, that which is not of matter, that which is above and beyond space and time, the cosmic spirit or God.