Tag Archive - truth

Your Truth and My Truth

April 30, 2010 in GODSTUFF with 17 Comments

Look at others and their truth.  Do you like a part of their truth?  Then put it in your world and make it part of your truth.  Don’t like their truth?  Say to yourself, “It’s okay for them but I want something different.”

The point here is to live YOUR life and YOUR truth the way you want to so that you wake up excited and ready for each moment of every day.

There is no right and wrong here.  YOUR truth is just as real as someone else’s truth.  We are all unique to what we desire….

Source: Beth and Lee’s Blog

Vacuous: 1. Devoid of matter; empty. 2. a. Lacking intelligence; stupid. b. Devoid of substance or meaning; inane: a vacuous comment.

The idea above is vacuous, and my main intention here really is definition 2b, although I would say as gently as possible that it fits 1 and 2a as well.  One of the strangest, goofiest, and most backward ideas that is currently accepted in mainstream thought is the notion that you can have one truth and I can have another truth, and yet our two different truths can both be true, even if they completely contradict each other.  Of course in such a strange way of thinking, that obviously false idea can be true by the simple act of my declaring it so!  The problem is that truth itself doesn’t work that way.

“There is no right and wrong here.”

If what you are talking about is actually truth, then there most certainly is a right and wrong.  By definition, truth is about what is right and what is wrong.  If I say, “I have wings and can fly to the moon,” that statement is false because the reality is that I do not have wings and therefore cannot fly anything except maybe a kite.  If I say, “I have three daughters, age 16, 14, and 13, that statement is true because the reality is that there are three girls in this world of that age, who have my last name, and half of my chromosomes.  Falsehood is that which is wrong (does not align with reality), and truth is that which is right (aligns with reality).  If I say I have wings, that is false and I am wrong.  But I am quite right in saying I have three girls – one might even say I am being truthful in making the claim.  So if one is actually talking about truth, one is by definition talking about right and wrong.

If one is not talking about right and wrong, one is not talking about truth but something entirely different, which I suspect is what Beth and Lee are actually doing in their post.

Continue Reading…

More About Truth

December 3, 2009 in GODSTUFF with 0 Comments

G.K. Chesterton, in his book “Heretics” says we are like people standing under a street lamp who begin to demand, each for his own reason, that the lamp be torn down.  A monk in the crowd suggests that before destruction commences, there should first be a discussion about the value and purpose of light.  But no discussion ensues. The people simply rip the lamp from the pavement.  Upon doing so, they congratulate themselves smugly.  Then they realize they cannot see.  They are in utter darkness.  They do not know how to get home, and cannot find those with whom they came.  They begin wildly clawing in the dark, which turns to panic, and comes to blows – people striking out in the dark, not knowing who they are striking.  Eventually everyone is tired from fighting and it dawns on them one at a time that a bit of light might be useful for various reasons (values and purposes).  Only now the lamp is torn down, and what they might have discussed before under the light, they must now discuss in the dark.

It is not just intellectuals who are interested in truth.  Normal, everyday, non-intellectual people live their lives in the pursuit of truth.  About a thousand times a year, such people come to me and ask the question, “What should I do?”  People who want to know what they should do are people who are seeking truth.  The “right” course of action is the one that aligns with the reality of the situation.  If my daughter has a horrible toothache, and I choose to take her to buy peanut brittle instead of to the dentist, I have made a wrong choice – one that contradicts the reality of the situation.  In light of my daughter’s toothache, what is the right thing to do – what is the thing that corresponds with reality as it actually IS?  Going to the dentist.  Truth is the thing that aligns with reality.

Truth matters to you in the way you live your life moment by moment.  There are realities in your marriage, realities at your job, realities in your personal and emotional life.  Those realities must be understood so that you can make accurate choices based on them.

Continue Reading…

Truth series conclusion

October 5, 2009 in GODSTUFF with 0 Comments

We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal.  We may be true or false, the choice is ours.  We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face.  But we cannot make these choices with impunity.  Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them.  If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!

Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation

The Theology of What Not to Wear

September 15, 2009 in GODSTUFF, REFLECTIONS with 2 Comments

I’m kind of stuck in limbo, between the guy side of me that hates TV shows like What Not To Wear, and the counselor/theologian side that finds them irresistible.  For here, played out on TV for all, are stories of transformation.  In 40 minutes, a 40 year old woman who still dresses like a 12 year old girl will find her true self, but not until she stands in front of the 360 degree mirror and faces the truth.  There is a way forward, and hosts Clinton and Stacy always know how to find it, but the journey is always through layers of fear and falsehood Continue Reading…