Paying Attention To The Sky

You Can't Handle The Truth?

Christians are people dedicated to living in the truth, because Jesus described himself as the Truth (John 14:6). We who worship Jesus cannot live in falsehood, because he is the criterion by which true and false are discriminated, the light in which the difference between good and evil is seen. Those who wish to live in the shadows must marginalize him, as Pilate did rhetorically — “What is Truth?” (John 18:38) — and as his own townspeople did more directly:

“They led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff” (Luke 4:29). But if we accept him as Messiah and Son of God, we must live the truth that he is, even when it costs us.

A key aspect of the peace treaty that emerged after the wars of religion and that helped to define modernity was a sweeping tolerance with regard to moral and metaphysical viewpoints. Because Europeans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not able to adjudicate such questions without violence, it was deemed wiser simply to accept a wide variety of opinions on ultimate matters, and this agreement has been largely accepted in the modern (and postmodern) West, What this has led to, of course, is a suspension of conflict (at least in some cases) but also a bland relativism, or even indifferentism, in regard to the most compelling and interesting questions that face us.

In the social theories of John Rawls and Stanley Habermas, we find the modern peace treaty vividly on display. In order to secure real justice for all, Rawls argues, the participants in a society must operate behind a “veil of ignorance,” setting aside their personal convictions, preferences, and commitments. Thus they produce, at least in theory, a community without prejudice in favor of any particular person or group. Of course, in the process, they also produce an utterly beige society, void of those very depth-level commitments that make human life interesting and rich.

And Habermas holds that the good and just community is tantamount to a place where the dynamics of effective, open communication are fostered and respected. In his ideal scenario, the many representatives of a pluralistic society are assembled around the table of democratic conversation, and persuasive argument based solely upon a generally accessible reason is the guiding method. The problem here is that the voices of those who hold convictions through faith (and who do not therefore accept the canons of reasonableness proposed by Habermas) are systematically excluded from the conversation. The assumption behind both theories is the typically modern one that religious commitments are essentially unjust and violent and must, accordingly, be marginalized.

In the film The Contender, this modern hostility to religion is, refreshingly, out in the open. One of the characters comments to another: “Church and state were separated in this country, not to protect religion from the state, but to protect the state from religion.” But nowhere is the peace treaty more radically expressed than in the extraordinary PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PA. v. CASEY decision of the United States Supreme Court in regard to abortion. Carrying the modern setting- aside of religious and metaphysical truth to its logical extreme, the justices commented: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, of the mystery of human life.” In the interests of holding together a pluralist society, the justices leave the determination of the deepest and most important questions wholly to the whim of individuals, freedom having completely trumped truth.

But Christians can have no truck with this form of liberalism, for we do not think that Christ’s truth can be bracketed or set aside for the purposes of an ersatz peace. In fact, we sniff out behind the rhetoric of inclusion and tolerance a rather fierce violence against religion in general and Christianity in particular. Rather, we are convinced that authentic peace and liberty will be achieved only in correlation to the Word of God which appropriately grounds them. Paul can say, “It is for freedom that Christ set you free,” and he can proclaim himself “a slave of Christ Jesus” (Romans. 1:1), because he is not saddled with a modern conception of freedom. He knows that when we are enslaved to the truth that appeared in Christ, we are free to realize who God wants us to be. Pope John Paul II stands in this Pauline tradition when he insists, in Veritatis Splendor, that freedom and truth must always be yoked together, lest freedom lapse into arbitrariness and truth devolve into oppression.

George Weigel has written that the Beatitudes — with their promise of eternal happiness for the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers, and the persecuted — teach us that our acts have the most profound consequences, because what we do makes us into the kind of people we are. And what we are determines what we can be; for God calls into the happiness of his own beatitude all those who have made themselves into a gift living the Beatitudes…Lord Acton insisted Freedom is not the power to do whatever we like. Instead freedom is having the right to do what we ought. Freedom and goodness are intimately, inextricably related…like learning the piano…anyone is free to pound away at the piano…a rudimentary savage sort of freedom which cloaks an incapacity to play even the simplest pieces accurately and well. Those who have done their exercises have really mastered the art of playing the piano and by becoming artists they have acquired a new freedom. This deeper, richer, more human freedom is a matter of gradually acquiring the capacity to do what we choose with perfection….We are made for a freedom that is lived by developing the habits of mind and heart — the virtues that enable us to satisfy our natural attraction to happiness, our natural disposition toward the good….To grow in a moral life is to develop our moral habits so that we know and do what is good almost as a matter of instinct. That is how we grow into the kind of people who can live with God who is all goodness

Hence, a key practice of the Christian church is the telling of the truth, even when it hurts – it helps us grow. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that one of the first pastoral interventions described in the Acts of the Apostles is a truth-telling that shames two people right into their graves. So much for the Christian minister as one-sidedly kind and gentle! And it is surely significant that the entire coterie of Jesus’ apostles (John excepted) died martyrs’ deaths. Disciplining one’s speech in the interests of getting along did not seem to be, for them, a high priority. Can we read that terrible and wonderful book of martyrs, the Apocalypse of John, without seeing the power of bold, truthful proclamation in the early Christian church? And the cloud of witnesses grows up and down the Christian centuries, taking in a huge number in the century just concluded: Padre Pro shouting “Viva el Cristo Rey” to his executioners; Franz Jaggerstatter and Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenging to their dying breaths the lies of Nazism; Dorothy Day enduring taunts, imprisonment, and marginalization because she spoke of Christ’s nonviolent love in the midst of a war-loving society; Martin Luther King taking an assassin’s bullet because he insisted on being a drum major for New Testament justice.

And in the last decades of the twentieth century, Christian truth-telling was, once again, dangerously at work. Václav Havel, the president of the Czech Republic and one-time dissident playwright, commented on the role that he and his fellow writers played during the dark years of communist domination in eastern Europe during the 1970s. In a society dominated by lies, they decided simply to tell the truth. They knew that Communism thrived on untruths concerning God, human nature, and social structures, and they realized, furthermore, that the tissue of deception held together only because of the constant threat of arrest or, in direst circumstances, military intervention. Like the guileless child in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, Havel and his companions resolved not to cooperate with an illusion supported by fear. For their troubles they were, of course, arrested and persecuted, but through their speaking and writing they, in Havel’s words, “cleared out a space for the truth,” And into that space people came and found they were able to move; and soon, more joined them, then more and more — until the society of lies was no longer able to sustain itself

Something very similar happened in Poland during the l980s. When John Paul II arrived in his homeland for his first visit as pope in 1979, his countrymen came out by the millions to hear him, despite numerous obstacles — physical and psychological — thrown up by the communist regime. In a remarkably prescient editorial, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that, in the wake of that visit, communism in Poland was finished. This was before the formation of the Solidarity trade union and a full decade before the actual fall of the Soviet-backed regime. But what Brzezinski saw was millions and millions of people moving into a space of truth that the pope, by his words and presence, opened up. In the face of that, the illusion simply could not be maintained, no matter how many tanks and bombs defended it. And the forced dispelling of the illusion is precisely what took place throughout the eighties in Poland, aided and abetted at key moments by a pope who wasn’t afraid to speak the truth about God and humanity.

What I hope these last few paragraphs have made clear is that Christian truth-telling in the twentieth century has challenged both of the great ideological options of the modern era. Both liberalism (by bracketing the truth in the name of freedom) and communism (by distorting it in the name of justice) have become the enemies of Christ’s truthful church. And this is why both have tried — the first more subtly and the second more brutally — to silence that dangerous community.

Now having seen the necessity of prophetic speech in the Christian church, what can we say about the rules that ought to govern and limit that speech? Because the central message of Jesus is compassion, because the Lord names sin clearly and then reaches out in love, the discipline of Christian truth-telling must be this: even true speech, offered in a spirit of retribution and hatred, is to be avoided because it undermines itself, becoming spiritually false in the very act of utterance. Or to state it more positively: Christian speech is true, not only to its object, but to itself only when it is realized in love. John Shea formulated a principle in this regard that is as helpful as it is difficult: criticize someone precisely in the measure that you are willing to help that person deal with the problem that you have raised. If your commitment to help is nil, you should remain silent; if your willingness to help is moderate, your critique should be moderate; if you are willing to do all in your power to address the situation with the person, speak the whole truth. This is not unrelated to Aquinas’s point about relating anger to justice: one could be perfectly right in one’s criticism, but morally wrong if that critique is not made in the real desire to ameliorate the problem.

Another extremely helpful guide to the practice of truth-telling is found in Matthew 18, where we find a sort of moral application of the principle of subsidiarity. Jesus is instructing his community in the difficult task of correcting an errant brother or sister: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one” (Matthew 18:15), Avoid the practice of gossiping and complaining to others about a grievance; rather, confront the person who has offended you directly and courageously. That way, the difficulty is addressed, the loving concern of the complainant is evident, and the process of rumor, attack, counterattack, innuendo, and scapegoating is arrested.

Now, if the person does not respond to this loving intervention, “take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (Matthew 18:16). Thus, the wider community is involved, but only minimally — enough to bring the offender to repentance. Only if this small circle of the church is ignored should one bring the complaint to the whole community. What is so rich here is the pursuit of the issue (since speaking the truth, even when it is dangerous, is essential), coupled with a deep care for the person in question and also for the entire family of the church (since love is our constant call).

And then the wonderful conclusion: “and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17). This sounds, at first, like a total rejection, but then we recall how Jesus treated the Gentiles and tax collectors — eating with them, pursuing them, drawing them into the circle. There might be a moment of rejection and expulsion in the process of fraternal correction (as we can see, for example, in the Pauline epistles), but it is only provisional and only for the sake of eventual reconciliation,

St. Augustine, who was never afraid to speak the hard truth when necessary, followed the recommendations of Matthew 18 very concretely. Over the table in his episcopal residence where he dined with the priests of his diocese hung a sign that read: “If you speak ill of your brother here, you are not welcome at this table.” And it is said that the bishop of Hippo would enforce the rule, pointing to the sign when one of his charges began complaining or gossiping.

Most of the above was adapted from The Strangest Way by Fr. Robert Barron with the asides and additions duly noted.