What Is Truth?

David Orendorff · John 18:33-38 · November 26, 2006

The Sanhedrin, the highest council and court of the Jewish people, had Jesus on trial all night for religious heresy, for not telling the truth about God. Early in the morning, they brought him before Pilate, the Roman Governor of Israel. They want Jesus crucified but they do not have to authority to murder him, for this they need Pilate to pronounce the sentence.

Poor Pilate, he knows he is being set up. He doesn't want to mess with the question of "religious truth" and so he offers to exchange Jesus for the robber and murderer, Barabbas. But the Sanhedrin would rather Jesus die and they shout for Jesus' death and Barabbas' freedom. Pilate avoids the religious debate and answers "What is truth?" with political pragmatism, ordering Jesus' crucifixion. But Pilate's the question of truth lives on.

Pilate’s question is the last time John will use the word "truth" in his gospel. In the opening the gospel he announces the coming of Jesus with, "And the Word Became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." 1 John 1:14 John uses the word "truth" 25 times in his gospel. When "truth" is also counted in John’s letters he uses "truth" another 60 times, more than half of all the NT usages. 2 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1966), 499 John cares about the truth and he wants those who read or hear what he writes to know it.

So what does it mean for John that "Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father but by me."?3 John 14:6 The noted scholar, Raymond Brown, says that "grace and truth" mean for John "enduring love."4 ibid 14 The truth for John is not in creedal statements of who Jesus is but in action statements of how Jesus was. The truth Pilate asks for is not about Jesus’ title but about Jesus’ actions which reveal God as enduring love.

John writes that Jesus said, "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." 5 John 13:34-35, and 15:12 Jesus commandment is not creedal (e.g. I believe Jesus is God) but is action (e.g. I will love, with an enduring servant love, others as Jesus has loved me).

It is best said for me in John's first letter: "For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another...By this we shall know that we are of the truth...Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and whoever loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God; for God is love."6 I John 3:11, 19; 4:7-8

I spend so much time belaboring this because John's writings about truth have been used abusively. They have been used to draw circles that make creedal exclusions rather than active inclusions of love. They have been used as an excuse for persecution, execution and war. Too often, John's loving truth has been used for violence and hate.

I am sick in my soul of those who call themselves Christians because they say the so called "right words" and yet batter our world with division. I plead and I pray that it be stopped. And I ask that you be no part of its graceless terror. If it is not servant love, it is not truth. If it is not grace, it is not truth. If it is not of compassion, of forgiveness, of building up even my enemy, then it is not the truth. If you cannot die for it and thereby serve God and each other in servant love it is not truth.

It is my daughter, Johanna, who has set me off like this. While in college Johanna forwarded to me via e-mail a piece purporting to be truth. It was entitled" It Takes Guts To Say 'Jesus'. It reads:

This is a true story of something that happened just a few years ago a USC. There was a professor of philosophy there who was a deeply committed atheist. His primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester attempting to prove that God couldn't exist. His students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable logic. For twenty years he had taught this class and no one had ever had the courage to go against him. Sure, some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever had 'really gone against him'...

Nobody would go against him because he had a reputation. At the end of every semester, on the last day, he would say to the class of 300 students, 'If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!' In twenty years, nobody ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next. He would say, 'Because anyone who believes in God is a fool. If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking. Such a simple task to prove he is God, and yet he can't do it.' And every year he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it would shatter into a hundred pieces. All of the students could do nothing but stop and stare. Most of the students were convinced that God couldn't exist. Certainly, a number of Christians had slipped through, but for 20 years they had been too afraid to stand up.

Well, a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to get enrolled in the class. He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about this professor. He had to take the class because it was one of the required classes for his major. And he was afraid. But for three months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to stand up no matter what the professor said or what the class thought. Nothing they said or did could ever shatter his faith, he hoped. Finally, the day came. The professor said, 'If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!'

The professor, and the class of 300 people looked at (the freshman), shocked, as he stood up at the back of the room. The professor shouted, 'YOU FOOL! If nothing I have said all semester has convinced you that God doesn't exist, then you are a fool! If God existed, he could keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the ground!' He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto the pleats of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. And as it hit the ground, it simply rolled away, unbroken. The professor's jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man and then ran out of the lecture hall.

The young man who had stood up proceeded to walk to the front of the room and share his faith in Jesus for the next half hour...

I wrote back to Johanna:

Interesting forward. First, I suspect the story is apocryphal and the professor and doesn’t really exist, but is a convenient foil for anti-intellectualism. Secondly, in order for an empirical experiment to meet the criteria necessary to prove God it must be repeatable and independent of the individual (a different person would also have to drop the chalk, and then another, and another, each getting the same results - you know this). I dislike this kind of God proof because it places God into the category of verifiable natural science and limits the spiritual to the empirical. A bad choice.

John Wesley, and hence Methodism, begins the understanding of God with "God is Love." For Wesley, who argued that there is a spiritual reality that permeates and supersedes empirical reality, God is not found in how chalk falls, but in doing no harm, worship, prayer, study, fasting, spiritual companions and acts of compassion, particularly the compassion which risks its life for the life of another.

When a police officer risks, or even gives, his life for a criminal's life, then, I say, you have seen the evidence of God. When the poor shares his food with the rich, then you have seen the evidence of God. When a man will die for the truth of love, as did Jesus, and Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., and thousands of martyrs testifying with their lives that God is love, then you have seen the evidence of God.

I do not know why you forwarded this story. I did find it interesting and stimulating. I hope my little sermon has not been too didactic or patronizing. I find this an important point in my trust and belief in God.

We love you. Dad and Mom

Johanna wrote back to me saying:

I don't have much time now (a class in ten minutes), so I'll just say that I sent you the forward as more of a "Trickster God" story than proof of the Creator. Love you all.

She and God were playing with me. They pushed my red button and laughed. But I did not feel it was a wasted play because it gave me the opportunity to again think through what I believe to be the truth.

One of the great influences on my life has been Mohandas Gandhi. When the film with Ben Kingsley came out, I told Vickie I wanted to move to India. She told me it was very hot and very humid there and that I might want to think about this some more. She was right. I am here and India is way over there.

Gandhi titled his autobiography "The Story of My Experiments with Truth." He says of what he has learned:

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could do. In doing so, I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth and nonviolence"7 Eknath Easwaran, Gandhi the Man, (Petaluma, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1960), 142

Gandhi begins his "experiments in the practice of truth" where John Wesley begins, "do no harm." Gandhi likewise writes: "(Nonviolence) must have its root in love."8 ibid. 158

And again Gandhi writes:

The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is. Love is the subtlest force in the world. 9 Young India, December 4, 1924; quoted from The Essential Gandhi, ed. by Louis Fischer,(New York: Random House, 1962), 198

Like Jesus, John and John Wesley, Gandhi's life was rooted in servant love as the final and greatest truth. In the face of violence, hatred, war, starvation, cruelty, and the morning paper, it is hard to trust this truth, yet trusting and acting in servant love with the whole of our lives is the call of faith.

Gandhi with Jesus encourages us to hold fast to love in even in the most unloving of times or places. He says, "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murders and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always. Whenever you are in doubt that this is God's way, the way the world is meant to be, think of that, and try to do it his way."

What is truth? For me it is that God is servant love and that I am servant love. In my broken and faulty way I try to live as close to this truth as possible. And when I fail I pray love will forgive me and perfect me. I invite each of you to do the same.

Amen and Shalom.