The Meanings of Truth
Bearing (strategic) witness to the truth
In my last newsletter, I made the case that during these days of persistent lies and misinformation, Christians will keep telling the truth, motivated not from partisanship but from our allegiance to our Savior who is truth embodied. Our truth-telling cannot be limited to narrowly defined theological matters nor restricted to church space; as God’s caretakers for creation, we are responsible to speak truthfully about everything, everywhere. This is especially true when the lies being advanced disproportionately harm our vulnerable neighbors, those to whom God’s people are meant to show particular care.
It’s one thing to be committed to the truth and another to be purposeful about how to speak and live truthfully, especially as the exhaustion builds from the constant lying. Surrounded as we are by Pilate’s cynicism – “What is truth?” (John 18:28) – we’d do well to have a plan.
In his book The Ministry of Reconciliation: Spirituality and Strategies, Robert Schreiter describes “three different meanings of truth.” Schreiter is concerned with the role truth plays in the reconciliation process but the three meanings he identifies can be applied more broadly, including to our present deceit-drenched circumstances.
The first meaning of truth is “a correspondence between what happened and what is said about the event.” The second is a coherence theory of truth which “helps explain complex events where not single act can prove or disprove a judgement.” The final type is existential truth, “which is a truth that is felt as illumining human experience.”
In the moment we’re currently living through, I think it’s the first two meanings that are most relevant. It’s helpful, though, to imagine existential truth as where we hope to arrive one day. I take the work of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project to be an example of this meaning of truth. By “unearthing and confronting” local “histories of racial injustice,” EJI is inviting communities to tell more accurate stories about their communities in a way that fosters healing and justice.
Schreiter’s first meaning of truth, the correspondence between events and how those events are narrated, is one of the ways Christians can intentionally speak truthfully. When President Trump repeatedly disputed the size of the crowd for his inauguration, claiming it was much bigger than it actually was, many of us were confused. Why lie about something that was so easy to fact-check?
Faced with such unsophisticated lies, it’s easy to roll our eyes and move on. But, over time, the effect of these obvious deceptions is to normalize suspicion about any account of reality which does not conform to one’s partisan priors. It’s no wonder that conspiratorial thinking has found such fertile ground in the Trump-MAGA movement.
When confronted with lies that separate facts from what can be said about those fact, Christians will insist that truth can be known. Not always perfectly, of course. For example, sizes of inauguration crowds are always informed estimates. But reality can be grasped. Public transit records, aerial photography, and National Park records all make it plain that Trump’s inauguration was notably smaller than either of Obama’s.
The second meaning of truth is just as important these days. “Coherence theories of truth,” writes Schreiter, “work by accumulation of evidence when no single item can say the judgement one way or another.” He is thinking about how a repressive government “is not a series of isolated individual acts; it has to be grasped as having some kind of coherence… or shaped by ideology.”
As an example, we might think of the way congresspeople from both parties regularly talk about the need for immigration reform. Yet, for all that talk, meaningful reform remains elusive. Why? Looking for a coherence theory of truth will suggest that both parties are getting something from the current dysfunctional immigration system. On the right, immigration is used to stoke economic and cultural fears. On the left, the possibility of closed borders and mass deportation is used to energize the party’s base while also attracting new voters. Whatever our public servants might say about their desires for immigration reform, a coherence theory of truth reveals otherwise.
(Cards on the table: I think more of the blame on this issues lies on the Republican side of the aisle. The way migrants, immigrants, and refugees have been used to stoke anxiety and fear has proven too effective for them. I’m old enough to remember being on conference calls during which Republican leadership made the case for legislative reform. How times have changed.)
By looking for coherence we can resist the tactics of whataboutism which attempt to distract from the truth by amplifying exceptions while ignoring overarching themes and trends. Coherence allows us to acknowledge those exceptions – life is complicated! – without losing our grasp on reality.
Christians won’t give up on the truth, even as deception is weaponized and deployed at a dizzying rate. Holding together reality and how reality is described, looking for coherence amidst all of the purposeful obscurity, and nurturing truth in our communities so that it becomes our existential experience, these are practical ways we be faithful to our Christian responsibility to bear witness to the truth.
In my next newsletter I’ll share a few last thoughts about speaking the truth, about how we honor the truth in the context of our local communities among neighbors we know and love.
The View From Here
The boys and I rode our bikes to the lake for a quick dip to beat the heat the other day. There’s so much to love about summertime in Chicago!