How can anyone really know the truth?
You hear that all the time today. Four years of Trump and 20,000+ lies coupled with a right-wing disinformation machine spewing daily doses of lies and toxicity, have spawned the Q-ANON conspiracy movement, a political party detached from reality, and rendered the truth unknowable in any meaningful way for countless others.
We are at an impasse. But, is it an impasse of truth?
The philosopher Nietzsche once said: Memory and Pride were arguing. Memory said, ‘it happened like this’ and Pride said, ‘It couldn’t have happened like this;’ and Memory always gives in.
To those who wonder whether anyone can really know the truth, the answer is, “Of course!”
Everyone can know the truth. The truth lives in plain sight, even today. There for all to see.
What’s difficult to know and recognize is how Pride works to obscure Truth. Because Pride steps in and, as Nietzsche says, Truth suddenly gets “complicated.”
But, we don’t have a Truth problem at all. What we have is a Pride problem.
Here’s a secret. You want to know the truth? Want to know where you can always find it?
Look at yourself. Look deeply and honestly with clear eyes and an open mind. See how Pride works in you. When you begin to see that you will immediately recognize how people use that Pride to “muddy the water.”
They want to make the entire notion of truth so exhausting that you eventually give up on it. Throw up your hands and declare, “it’s impossible. I give up. Truth is too hard to ever know!”
Now, you’re open to their “truth.” Your frustration is their golden opportunity.
Remember, Truth is available and knowable by anyone and everyone. You, me and everyone.
But Truth is not anyone’s personal property. It is not something we possess.
Truth can be served. Truth can be loved. Truth is a light that shines in the darkness.
But truth may not be conscripted to serve anyone’s narrow interests. Truth is its own reality, and our shared reality. The source of our Common Good.
Truth is the only tool we have for understanding our world. For building and maintaining relationships with each other and the knottiest of all relationships; our relationship with ourselves.
Yes, the self is where Pride often rules with an iron fist.
In the self, Pride creates its own myth and we become the hero of our own story, entitled to create our own truth and a personal reality “made to measure” for our personal interests. This is how we are seduced by Pride, both individually and collectively.
So, instead of using Truth to learn about the world as it is; where the walls and pitfalls are, Pride has us invest our energy in denying that walls and pitfalls exist. It’s just fake news.
Pride tells us that we are large, and we are in charge.
Which works well for a while…until it doesn’t, and we run into one of those “fake” walls. Crash headlong into hard facts and intractable problems that defy our prideful and self-serving attempts to manage them. As we see all too clearly today.
We’ve run into the old, unyielding wall of racial injustice. We’ve fallen down the yawning hole of inequality and landed in the big pile of White Supremacy at the bottom of it. Again.
The oppressed raise their voice in protest. Black Lives Matter. The self-interests of the powerful and historically privileged push back. ALL Lives Matter.
While in the meantime, 400,000 people are dead because keeping them alive did not serve the prideful interests of those who had the political power to do anything about it.
Easier to say, “Ignore it. It will all go away.”
It hasn’t.
Pride is not interested in serving Truth. Pride wants to dominate the Truth. Pride wants to control the shape of reality and sends us chasing after small lies with the implied promise that those lies will eventually add up to a Truth we can use to get what we want.
Meanwhile, we are blinded to the Truth that would possess us. That wants us more than anything else. The Truth which says, “Everything you seek is already yours.”
God’s Love is the deepest Truth of all. The first Truth our Pride won’t let us trust.
We wind up frustrated, polarized and fearful. And we ask, “Who can really know the truth anyway?”
When the truth is, we have always known the Truth.
What we need now is the faith to act on it. The strength and the courage to open our eyes, still the noise of Pride and listen with the ears God gave us, to that still, small voice. Ignore the whirlwind outside.
Socrates gave us the maxim a long time ago; “know thyself.”
Or, put another way; …the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. (Deuteronomy 30:14).
It is time for us to turn from Pride and trust the Truth that is ever with us. And then act bravely, boldly, and in good faith.
Charles Oberkehr 