Truth as a Way of Being in Relationship

Truth is a way of being in relationship

Imagine you were to ask me the question, “Is Mike true?”  If I were a Greek philosopher and thinking about truth as it was introduced in the first chapter of this book, I might hear you questioning Mike’s existence. Is he real or a figment of my imagination?  But I am not a Greek philosopher; I am Mike’s wife.  I take for granted that Mike exists because I’ve been sleeping next to him for a quarter of a century.  I see him at the breakfast table in the morning.  We text or call each other on average five times a day.  When I hear you ask “Is Mike true?” I do not hear you wondering whether Mike exists; I hear you wondering whether Mike is faithful. Whether I can count on Mike.  I think back to the morning that we stood in front of the church and promised to “be true” to one another “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.”  The word we use to ask about existence is the same, but obviously truth in the context of a long-lasting relationship means something different.

Our Jewish ancestors in the faith who scribed the Hebrew Scriptures were also not Greek philosophers. They were people who lived day in and day out a relationship with God that stretched back further than any of them could remember.  As far as they were concerned, God was present at their breakfast table each morning.  They did not write with the intention of trying to prove God’s existence to those who did not believe in God; they wrote for family members to record their memories of how God had been with them through thick and through thin.  They wrote to tell the story of their “marriage” with God—or to use the biblical term, their “covenant.”  They wrote to reveal not if God was true (i.e. real), but how God was true (i.e. faithful).

The Hebrew word for truth—emet—appears in the Hebrew Scriptures 127 times.  It is comprised of three Hebrew letters: aleph (the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet), mem (the letter in the middle of the Hebrew alphabet), and tav (the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet).  All three of these letters have two “feet” that they stand upon, or two places where they touch the line upon which they are written.  Scholars of the language emphasize that the very construction of the word says something about how our ancient ancestors in faith thought about truth:  Truth encompasses everything from the beginning to the middle to the end.  Truth is straightforward and comprehensible.  In contrast, sheker—the Hebrew word for a lie—is also comprised of three letters, but all three come from the end of the alphabet and their order is jumbled.  Each of the letters in sheker touch the line on which they are written only one time, as if they could be easily knocked over.  But emet is well-grounded, firm.  It stands on two legs.

It is this last aspect of emet that makes it difficult to translate the word adequately in English.  Yes, emet means much the same as what today’s average person in the global West might associate with truth: grounded in reality, sound, honest.  But emet has nuances beyond what we hear.  Emet is sturdy, trustworthy, stable.  Emet stands the test of time. If you lean on emet, it will hold you up.   Hence, in English, we find varied translations of the same lines in the scriptures.  Depending on your Bible, Psalm 119:160All of your words are truth. Every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever. SIN AND SHIN might say either “the sum of your word is truth” or “permanence is your word’s chief trait.”  Jeremiah 7:28You shall tell them, This is the nation that has not listened to the voice of Yahweh their God, nor received instruction: truth is perished, and is cut off from their mouth. can read that in the land of Judah “truth has perished” or “faithfulness has disappeared.” To the Western ear these might sound quite different, but for our biblical ancestors truth and faithfulness were synonymous. Truth is not only a way of thinking or speaking; it is a way of being in a relationship. 

This point—so often lost in societal debates about truth—has not been lost on Pope Francis.  In his 2018 Chrism Mass homily, he talks about drawing close to people and being in relationship with them as “God’s pedagogy.” The pope states:

[W]e need to realize even more that closeness is…the key to truth. Can distances really be shortened where truth is concerned? Yes, they can. Because truth is not only the definition of situations and things from a certain distance, [discovered] by abstract and logical reasoning. It is more than that. Truth is also fidelity.”[i]

As preachers who want to help our congregations embrace truth as a way of life, the pope reminds us we cannot ignore this fourth way of understanding the term.  Whatever spirituality of truth we propose would be fundamentally deficient without it.  The good news is that this is the dimension of truth many of us already probably preach about the most without knowing that we are doing it.  The challenge is to connect the preaching we are already doing to the larger framework of “living truth.”  Many in our congregations will probably never have thought of truth in this way.  Indeed, sometimes they will contrast truth with mercy.  They will feel pulled between being faithful to a friend and “telling them the truth.”  As preachers, our job is to help hearers understand that the contrasts they pose are two sides of the same coin.  Living mercy will sometimes require offering the mercy of truth.  And living truth, will sometimes require “hanging in there” in relationships, even one doesn’t feel like it. 

Is truth just another word for loyalty?

Once we begin to foster a connection between truth and particular relationships, many in our congregations may immediately associate the “truth” we are talking about with loyalty.  Loyalty is an interesting term.  Currently in the English language it is defined as having an allegiance to a person, a group, or a cause.  Like “faithfulness,” it implies rooting for another, sticking with another even if one doesn’t necessarily benefit from doing so.  In everyday usage though, it often implies a willingness to take the other’s side, to publicly defend the other regardless of the rightness or wrongness of their actions.  There is no exact equivalent for loyalty in either Hebrew or Greek, so it appears rarely in the Bible, though some translations do use it to capture the essence of the word hesed (also translated “loving kindness”) or pistos (also translated “faithful”).  Although there is a Latin equivalent of the term—fidelitas—the word does not appear in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa.  He does not name it as a virtue.  The closest he comes to describing what we might call loyalty is in his writing on what he labels “piety.”

What the wider Judeo-Christian tradition seems to recognize is that allegiance is a good thing, but only so far as the person or cause that I pledge myself to is good.  There is no virtue in being loyal to a criminal gang.  Furthermore, there is no virtue in publicly standing up and defending the actions of a friend or family member who has done something you yourself would judge as wrong.  Rather than talking about loyalty, the tradition tends to describe “being true” in terms of devotion, fidelity, faithfulness, or steadfastness.  All of these words imply an allegiance but not necessarily an uncritical one.  The emphasis is not on standing by the other person regardless, but on being the kind of person that one can lean on regardless.  Not being unquestionably trusting, but being utterly trustworthy.

For a preacher looking to nurture a spirituality of truth, the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures emerges as the story of a God who is “true” to the people of Israel.  However, the scriptures do not describe a God who stands by and supports the people as they do whatever they please.  God loves the people too much not to care where their actions lead. Rather, God gets angry and frustrated. God cajoles and pleads.  God often laments.  God constantly calls them to be their better selves.  God forgives and lets bygones be bygones.  The only constant is that God remains with the people and does not abandon them.   God is faithful to relationship with them, even when they are not faithful in return.

But in their better moments, they are faithful, and in glorious ways. In one of the most moving passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, commands three Jewish employees of his government—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—to bow down before a statue of himself or be thrown into a fiery pit. “Who is the god that will deliver you [then]?” Nebuchadnezzar asks.  In reply, the three note that their relationship with God is not dependent on God doing their bidding:  “If our God, whom we serve can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us!  But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up” (Daniel 3:17-18If it be [so], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up.).  Regardless of whether God rescues them or not, they have decided to be faithful to God. Many of the passages we are given to preach upon will flesh out the deep and abiding fidelity the people of Israel have shown their God, a fidelity that surely shaped Jesus’ own understanding of “being true” and is meant to shape ours as well.

Shouldn’t I also worry about being true to myself?

The phrase “To thine own self be true” certainly sounds like the sort of thing one might find in the Bible, and the sort of thing that then might be a crucial component of this fourth dimension of truth that we are talking about.  Many of our congregants will assume this to be the case.  Nowadays the phrase is often used to mean, “Make sure that you are being honest with yourself” or “Do the right thing; not what everyone else around you is doing” or “You are a unique person; don’t try to be someone else.”  All sentiments aligned with Christian thought. The phrase, however, comes not from the Bible but Shakespeare, in the tragedy Hamlet.[ii]  It first appears in the mouth of the character Polonius who uses it to advise his son, “Watch out for your own interests first.”  Current use of the phrase often carries those undertones as well:  “Don’t let other people keep you down; do what’s best for you.”  “Listen to your body and go with your gut.”  “Don’t stay in relationships that aren’t working for you.” Sentiments that rub up in some ways against Christian teaching.

From a biblical point of view, each of us is made in the “image and likeness of God” but each of us has also been born into a “fallen” world and continues to participate in deeply embedded patterns of sin. In this biblical sense, one’s true self is not something fixed that one has to discover and be faithful to. One’s true self is something that one is always moving toward by the grace of baptism—continually turning away from a life marked by sin toward a life that looks like Christ’s.  The apostle Paul is especially forceful on this point, “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) 

In his letters, Paul admonishes hearers not to trust their “flesh”[iii] because it will take them backward rather than forward on this Christian journey.  What Paul means by “flesh” is not an exact parallel for what many now would call “gut” but it is also not entirely different. I suspect that most of us who currently work in the field of spirituality and discernment would say that feelings are very important. Because we are made in the image and likeness of God, the “gut” is a valuable source of information. It’s worth listening to your body and being attentive to what it is trying to tell you.  But until one’s gut is entirely conformed to Christ, it should not be the determining factor for one’s choices in life, and I don’t think that many of us could currently say our guts have achieved that level of development.  Feelings can give us a clue “something important is happening here,” but they shouldn’t dictate our actions.

Since Christianity views “self” as something always in the process of conversion, being “true to self” is not a language that is used historically in the Catholic tradition.   In places where contemporary culture might appeal to the notion of being “true to self,” the tradition is more likely to appeal to “conscience” or “dignity of the human person” or “image and likeness of God,” while adding caution or nuance around anything that makes it sound as if we should put ourselves before others or make decisions on our gut-sense absent of some larger moral code.   As preachers who want to encourage growing in a spirituality of truth, if we decide to use the term (since it is so very common in the culture), we’ll want to do so with caution.  It seems to me that we don’t want to speak against “being true to self” (Self-awareness and integrity are virtues we espouse. One can’t “love one’s neighbor” if one hasn’t learned how to love and value oneself).  At the same time, we don’t want to offer a blanket endorsement of “being true to self” (Being self-centered and impulse-driven are vices). Like relativism, the way the phrase is used in contemporary culture is too ambiguous in meaning to be advocated or condemned from the pulpit without further clarification: Are we talking here about fidelity to “the Old Adam” or “the New”?

One of the most challenging contemporary uses of the phrase has to do with how we use it when trying to decide whether to stay in a tough relationship.  The temptation is to pit being true to another person against being true to oneself. Figuring out what to do in tough relationships is, well…tough. The judgments we make about relationships can be some of the toughest judgments we have to make in our lives.  But from a Christian point of view, “being true to self” is too amorphous a concept to rely on as a guide in such situations. 

But what does truth look like when we disagree… and maybe don’t even like each other any more?

Being true has little to do with agreeing or with feeling affection.  The pages of scripture and the lives of the saints are filled with stories of people who figured out how to remain in relationship with God, with others, and with causes and organizations even when they didn’t always see eye-to-eye and wearied of the relationship itself.  The first impulse of the tradition seems to be “Try to hang in there.”  This impulse should guide not only our ongoing search for facts and our struggle to form good judgments, but also our relationships with other people.  The practices for talking across differences of opinion are intended to help us refine our thinking and broaden our understanding, but as an added bonus: they also give us a way of faithfully remaining in relationships when it would be easier to opt out. They help us to “hang in” both the conversation and the relationship itself.

But what about when it no longer makes sense to continue the conversation?  What can we do when we’ve listened and we understand where the other is coming from, but we still don’t agree?  Being true does not require continuing to “beat our head against a brick wall.” There are ways of “hanging in” the relationship even if not in the conversation.  We can still: 

• will the best for the other even when the other appears headed in the wrong direction
• remain in the present moment and not hold on to unresolved disagreements from the past in such a way that they continue to poison the present relationship
• look for common ground by identifying topics we can agree on and focusing our energy on those
• pray for one another
• engage in activities of daily life with one another, especially joint service and shared hobbies
• seek opportunities to do an act of kindness for the other
• avoid ultimatums except as a last resort.

In our preaching, we can lift up stories of people “hanging in there” the best that they are able with each other or their community, including their church community.  Many of the saints that we celebrate during the liturgical year provide great models of remaining faithful to the church in tough situations without losing their own integrity in the process.  These are important stories for our congregations to hear, as they try to figure out creative ways of being true simultaneously to their consciences and to particular relationships.

At the same time, we have to acknowledge—albeit with sadness—that not all relationships on this side of eternity are sustainable.  God has the capacity to be faithful to people in ways that we as humans do not.  Sometimes patterns of abuse, addiction, and even profound, sustained differences of perception make it untenable to stay actively engaged in even a committed relationship.  Every community, cause, and person must have boundaries on what stances and behaviors they are able to tolerate and, in the end, what they cannot.

Vows of fidelity are taken particularly seriously in the Christian tradition.  They are promises intended to create relationships so solid that the community can build upon them and trust they will not crumble.[iv]  Vows are for life.  But even that statement needs to be understood in two ways.  Vows are meant to be permanent, but they are also intended in the plan of God to be life giving for the persons who take them and for the community.  If they lead to the disintegration of the person and the harm of the community, then they have stopped serving the purpose for which they are created.[v] We can continue to pray for each other, try to let go of past hurts, and wish each other the best—remaining true in the most fundamental of ways—but sometimes we will need to step back from an active relationship until circumstances change, not because we are being selfishly “true to self” but because we are trying to be “true to self” in the sense of integrity.  Ultimately, this is a decision that will need to be made between the person and God.

No matter how well we know our hearers, we never know all the circumstances of their lives.  Aware of that fact, I think we want to resist the temptation to tell people to stay or “go” in relationships.  From the pulpit, we can lift up the value of fidelity, as well as the importance of vows, and then we want to honor the autonomy of hearers to figure out what this means in their own particular situations.  Perhaps the best we can do is offer models of what “staying” and what “going” look like.  Even if they are imperfect models, they can serve as companions on the person’s journey.

But how can we be true to everyone?

Many in our congregations are people of tremendous fidelity.  They want to be true in good times and bad.  The internal struggle they face with regard to this fourth dimension of truth isn’t the fruit of an unwillingness to be true to others, but a sense of overwhelm:  How can we be true to everyone?  The answer:  We can’t.  God can because God exists without limits in terms of time and resources.  But we are human.

For the past thirty years, University of Oxford professor Robin Dunbar has been studying human relationships, looking in particular at the number of relationships humans tend to engage in at any one time.  Using research from the field of biology that correlates the size of a primate’s brain with the size of the primate’s social network, Dunbar hypothesized that—based on the size of the human brain—the average human would have a social network of around 150 people.[vi]   When he looked at historical data, he discovered his hypothesis strangely accurate: The average hunter and gatherer community tended to be around 150 people.  The average Roman military company was around 150 people.  The average village recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 A.D. was around 150 people.  To this day, the Christmas card list for a British couple averages 150 people. 

Dunbar observes that at any point in time we will have a larger circle of acquaintances with whom we keep loose contact—up to 500 people. And, persons are able to hold up to 1500 faces with names in their brains—news personalities, distant relatives, old classmates, and the like.  But they are only able to maintain ongoing relationships with about 150.  Within that 150, Dunbar notes persons usually have around 15 close relationships, and only around 5 intimates in the innermost circle.  Who is in each of these concentric circles is fluid and changes over time, but the size of the circles tends to remain the same because it is all our brains can juggle.

Many have asked whether Dunbar’s research is still valid given the rise of social media.  With What’s App and Instagram, we are able to keep up with far more people than we ever did before.  And Dunbar acknowledges that some relational trends seem to be shifting. Historically, humans spent 60 percent of their time with their closest circles of family and friends and 40 percent in wider circles of acquaintances.  Those percentages may now be reversing, but Dunbar suspects limitations remain. “The amount of social capital you have is pretty fixed,” he says. “[Relationships] involve time investment. If you garner connections with more people, you end up distributing your fixed amount of social capital more thinly so the average capital per person is lower.”[vii]

Biologically we are not wired to be able to maintain personal relationships with an infinite number of people.  We can be conscious of the fact that we all live on the same planet, and conscientious about the way that our actions affect others.  Through charitable giving, we can be generous with persons we have never met. We can even be friendly to everyone that we do. But we can’t be friends with everyone.   As creatures bound in earthly time, we will need to make some choices.  How do I decide who I am supposed to “be true” to? How do I prioritize how devoted to be in the various relationships in my life? 

Obviously, we are not the first generation to feel the constraints life puts on our desire to be in relationship. Already in the 5th century CE, the Father of the Church Augustine of Hippo acknowledges, “All men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.”[viii] 

Thomas Aquinas similarly notes we are called to be equally benevolent toward all—in essence, we are called to want the best for all.  Indeed, we can pray for all.[ix]  But, our beneficence—our doing good for others—realistically cannot be equal toward all, though he says we should “be prepared…to do good to anyone if we have time to spare.”[x] (Interesting that even in the Middle Ages Aquinas understood the time crunch!)  Like Augustine, Aquinas notes that, just like in nature where “fire heats most what is next to it,”[xi] we owe the greatest devotion to those closest to us and should radiate outward from there.  In Aquinas’ understanding, our first “truth” must be to God, then to our parents (extending to all kinsfolk), and then to our fellow countrymen (eventually extending to all friends of our country).[xii] 

It seems important to note that both Augustine and Aquinas lived in a time when most people were bound not only by time but by geography.  When they speak of being most devoted to those closest to you, they were likely thinking quite literally of the people with whom one would have the most physical contact.  At that time, persons who were poor, suffering, ill, and disabled were in the mix of those encountered daily.  Now, with the development of institutions like hospitals and nursing homes, as well as the emergence of urban planning, we may not see these people in our daily “mix.” Jesus said that the poor would “always be with us,” but now often it is at a distance of at least several miles.

Furthermore, in the time of Augustine and Aquinas, when someone moved away, there was no way of remaining in sustained contact with that person, opening up space for new relationships to form.   Now, because of apps like Facetime and Facebook, those at a distance do not feel so far away.  It is possible to communicate daily, even hourly, with people we rarely see in person while paying little attention to those with whom we share physical proximity.

On one hand, the benefits of technology for maintaining relationships at a distance are amazing.  On the other hand, we could ask: What happens when we disconnect emotional closeness from physical closeness?   Certainly we can keep some treasured relationships going that we might otherwise have lost.  But who are we then not relating to?  Who is not making it into our 150?

Perhaps what we can take from Augustine and Aquinas is the acknowledgment that it is natural and understandable to prioritize some relationships over others.  We cannot be equally “true” to all.  Phew!  At the same time, in an era when there are fewer of Augustine’s “accidents of time, place, and circumstance” and we have more control over who we connect with every day, are we making space for those who are now on the margins of society?  Like everyone else, those who are poor, suffering, ill or disabled desire not just friendliness but friendship.  Everybody wants to be part of somebody’s 150. 

Summary

Living in a post-truth society continues to raise challenging questions for those of us trying to pattern our lives after Jesus: Not only “What is truth?” and “How do I arrive at ‘truths’?” and “How do I speak and act truthfully?” but, in the end, “What does it mean to be true?”—in essence, “What does it mean to be faithful in a relationship and why should I care?”   Without addressing this final dimension of “living truth,” whatever spirituality of truth we attempt to cultivate in our preaching will be incomplete.

Drawing on the wisdom of our Jewish ancestors in the faith concerning truth as “emet,” in the act of preaching, we want to:

• foster a connection in the minds of hearers between being faithful in relationships and “living truth”
• highlight that being true in a relationship is not the same as uncritical loyalty, agreement, or even affection toward the other person
• encourage the kinds of skills and capacities needed to “remain” in relationships, which includes communication skills but also other ways of remaining in relationships even when we’ve reached impasse in conversations
• acknowledge that we can’t be true equally to everyone and aren’t expected to be, while at the same time encouraging hearers to stretch their circles of friendship to include those who might not otherwise enjoy friendship 

As with the discernment of reality, the formation of judgments, or figuring how much to say to whom, “living truth” in relationships does not come with a foolproof “how to” guide, only a well-worn map by which we can trace the paths our ancestors in faith took as they tried to faithfully live their own relationships.  We discover in the words of Dostoevsky, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.  Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all.  Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over… But love is labor and fortitude.”[xiii] We remain grateful for our ancestors’ witness to this deep truth.

[i] Pope Francis.  Chrism Mass Homily 3-19-2018.  available at: https://www.romereports.com/en/2018/03/29/pope-francis-full-homily

[ii] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III, lines 78-81.  Full quote: ““To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

[iii] See for example Galatians 5:17-20For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, that you may not do the things that you desire.But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.Now the works of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness,idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies,, Philippians 3:3-9For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh;though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If any other man thinks that he has confidence in the flesh, I yet more:circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee;concerning zeal, persecuting the assembly; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.However, what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ.Yes most certainly, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them nothing but refuse, that I may gain Christand be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;, Romans 7:5For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit to death., Romans 8:5-8For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace;because the mind of the flesh is hostile towards God; for it is not subject to God's law, neither indeed can it be.Those who are in the flesh can't please God.

[iv] The Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada makes this point well in the liturgical introduction to The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage: “In marriage, husband and wife give themselves to each other, to care for each other in good times and in bad. They are linked to each other’s families, and they begin a new life together in the community. It is a way of life that all should reverence, and none should lightly undertake.”

[v] Terrance Klein. “Vows Are for Life” America Magazine (October 1, 2015) available at: https://www.americamagazine.org/content/good-word/vows-are-life

[vi] Maria Kannikova, “The Limits of Friendship” New Yorker (October 7, 2014), available at: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships

[vii] Robin Dunbar, interviewed in Maria Kannikova, “The Limits of Friendship.” 

[viii] Augustine of Hippo.  De Doctrina Christiana, Book 1, Chapter 28

[ix] Thomas Aquinas.  Summa Theologiae II-II, q.31, a. 2 reply to objection 1

[x] Ibid. II-II, q. 26, a.6, reply to objection 1

[xi] Ibid.  II-II, q. 31, a. 3

[xii] Ibid. II-II, q.101, a.1

[xiii] Fyodor Dostoevsky, “A Lady of Little Faith,” chapter 4, The Brothers Karamazov (available in multiple translations of the book available online, including: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dostoyevsky/d72b/chapter9.html )