“The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty, and truth” (Albert Einstein).
TRUTH IS NOT THE CREATION OF WEAK PEOPLE’S IMAGINATIONS; IT’S A STRONG AND NOBLE REALITY. Many of those who think it’s intellectually unsophisticated to talk about truth wouldn’t be qualified to carry the briefcase of a man like Einstein, who not only talked about it but also honored it, sought it, and used it to noble ends.
We may as well admit it: we fight hopelessly anytime we fight against something as robust as truth. Reality is sturdy; ultimately, it is unassailable. In the short term, we might get away with conduct that’s based on falsehood, but eventually the truth will assert itself. As Edgar J. Mohn colorfully said, “A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.” So philosophically, we ought to stay away from untruth. But not only philosophically, we ought to avoid it personally. It simply does no good to deal in deceit. “Every time you try to smother a truth, two others get their breath” (Bill Copeland). So wouldn’t it be smart just to go ahead and commit ourselves to the truth?
Doing that, however, requires more strength and diligence than we might suppose. Truth is not always easy to find, and the reason is one we may not like to confront. “We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn). For every instance when we haven’t looked hard enough for the truth, there are hundreds of other times when we’ve run away from truth that was in plain view. Our difficulty is not so much ignorance as it is cowardice. To put it bluntly, a commitment to truth is a severe test of our bravery.
A fearless commitment to truth is one of the major components of moral human character. As far as I can see, it might even be the greatest of all. No matter what other virtues we may possess, without a commitment to truth, everything else fades away.
But we don’t honor truth by paying lip service to it; we do it by submitting to it. That means we must follow it rather than try to lead it. There’s just no calculating the good that can happen when we expend our energies in the service of truth — or the damage that’s done when we use our powers to subvert it.
“I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth” (Elie Wiesel).
Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com
