Truth

One

The Definition of Truth

“What is truth?” this is the question Pilate asked Christ, the Lord of Truth, the Truth Incarnate, after Jesus had said, “All those who listen to the truth hear my voice.”

Obviously, truth is something every disciple of Christ needs to be committed to, and to do that, one needs to believe that there is such a thing as truth.

But what is a good definition of truth? Just this: Truth is a reality that can be known by the mind. 

This is what our mind was made for, to know reality and especially reality outside the mind itself. So why is it so essential for a disciple of Jesus to be concerned with knowing and grasping reality with the mind?

Two

God as Supreme Truth

Jesus came to lead us to God, but God, of course, is the Supreme Reality. And if Truth just means a Reality insofar as it can be perceived by the mind, well, then that means God is the Supreme Truth.

That’s why Jesus promises that the Spirit He sends will, “Lead us into all Truth,” because when we behold God, face to face, our minds will be directly encountering the supreme reality and therefore the Supreme Truth. 

To know God is to know the Truth. If you don’t believe in truth, if you don’t care about truth, then you do not know God and you do not care about Him.

And you have no part in the life of Christ, who identified Himself as the way, the truth, and the life.

Three

All Other Truth Comes from God

Truth is reality as it can be known by the mind.

That means wherever there is something real, even real creatures, there is some truth that we can discover.

So even finite truth is based on finite reality. The truth we know about the world is based on the real structure of the world. But where does the real structure of the world come from? From God, of course.

So not only is God the Supreme Reality, and therefore the Supreme Truth, God is also the source of all created realities, and therefore of all created truths.

By choosing to create this world, permitting certain evils, and bringing about greater good, God is the reason this amazing story of the cosmos and of humanity exists.

So all created truth comes from God and expresses the truth about God.

Which means that if you are really relentless in pursuing even the truth about the world, about created things, they will lead you back, like a trail of breadcrumbs, to God Himself. 

Finite, created truths will lead you to the Infinite Uncreated Truth if you’re willing to follow them.

Four

Indifference to Truth is Indifference to God

In the last analysis, no Christian can be allied to those who aren’t really concerned with what’s really true.

There are a lot of folks out there, some of them very famous folks, who are respectful towards Christianity, and who think it has a lot to offer. They just don’t think it’s true. They think it’s an interesting set of ideas, with a lot of good insights, and they support Christianity as a cultural phenomenon. They’re just not committed to it themselves. 

For a Christian, that attitude is always evasive and, ultimately, cowardly.

The question isn’t what ideas are interesting, or historically relevant. The question is: what is the truth? If Christianity isn’t the truth, then let’s find the real truth. But if it is true, then let’s embrace it fully.

But don’t be indifferent to the truth. You can never serve the God of truth that way.

As the Catechism says, “God is the source of all truth. His word is truth. His law is truth… Since God is ‘true,’ His members are called to live in the truth.

Five

The Eighth Commandment

Truth is what our minds were made for. We were made to see the Uncreated Truth and to know the created truth that can lead us to Him. But that means truth is also what our neighbors’ minds were made for. So part of love means helping them to see the trail of truth, and where it takes us. And never to put a barrier between our neighbor’s mind and the truth it was designed to follow.

So when giving us the Ten Commandments, the Lord declared that we must never bear false witness against our neighbor. That means we have to be fully committed to the truth, both for ourselves and for others. Anything less, laziness about truth, deceitfulness, scandalmongering, the mindless acceptance of tired misinformation or false maxims - will make you less of a Christian. It will make you unfit to behold the Truth itself.