Explore everything around you, penetrate to the furthest limits of human knowledge, and always you will come up with something inexplicable in the end. It is called life. - Albert Schweitzer
If you travel north on Route 9 through Dutchess County you will come to the town of Hyde Park, and just past that, the Vanderbilt mansion. Built by Cornelious Vanderbilt, it is made of granite imported from Europe and sits on hundreds of acres of park-like land overlooking the Hudson river. Turning of off Route 9 you enter the grounds through a gate and proceed down under a canopy of trees and over a small stream then up, past the formal rose gardens on your left and the front yard of the mansion itself. You can park there or continue on , following the road down again as you head towards the river, over the railroad tracks and finally parking at the river’s edge. The mansion and its grounds are now property of the US Forest Service, having been given to the government by Cornelious’s descendants. Apparently, the Vanderbilts had a number of houses equally impressive and so now my family and I had the opportunity to walk the grounds, hike the trails, or simply sit on the top of the hills and watch the river , framed on top and bottom by green meadows, trees and wildflowers and the matching hills which rise from the banks of the Hudson on the opposite shore. Sophie and I met here often and so it was that one day, with the lush high grass rolling to the Hudson, we sat beneath a sherbet sky of light blue and peach and whites and talked about.....
"Truth?, that's a big subject. Truth is the gentle lapping of the river against the rocks on it’s shore, the hum of bees and dragonflys busily at work. Truth is a child clutching her mother’s hand yet running with abandon after a butterfly or a squirrel in the branches above her head. Truth is shielding your eyes against the sudden brilliance of the sun as it floats out of a cover of clouds and the crisp blue of a summer sky. It is taking a deep breath and feeling your lungs fill with air, rushing oxygen through your body and the sudden smell of jasmine as we walked through the gardens. Truth is knowing that you can lay down and sleep and all will continue on as before, without your attention or anxiety or effort. That you can accept all that you see and smell and hear as a gift, understanding with quiet thankfulness that you are a part of the whole. No stranger, you are meant to be here."
Sophie held my hands in hers as she finished her thought and I was moved by what she said. I was moved, but not satisfied, looking for something less poetical as an answer. Sophie gave me a look I had become accustomed to, which seemed to imply that I was pushing past the gift to play with the box it came in, but nevertheless , after a moments deliberation, decided to indulge my misplaced priorities.
" Okay, let’s start with this. If you are seeking after truth you are concerning yourself with ultimate reality. And when you concern yourself with ultimate reality, you are concerning yourself with God. Find God, and you find truth in it's most essential nature. That is truths primary manifestation, however there is another aspect to the question of truth which we should also deal with. That is the idea of simply dealing with honesty and integrity with the reality around you. Acting in harmony with your inner knowledge of what is right, in other words, being true to your truth. The two should be connected, your truth should be informed by the source of truth, and having settled that, your actions should reflect your understanding, but sadly that is often not the case. That is why it has become so popular to speak of personal truth and relative truth. So where would you like to start?"
I wasn’t ready to work through a probing discussion of my own ability to live what I knew, and so turned the subject back to the Sophie’s initial reference about God. As long as we could discuss things in the abstract, I would be safe from her penetrating observances, which were always dead on and which generally made me squirm uncomfortably. Once we went down that road, no amount of clever reasoning or philosophical digressions on my part could distract her from her course.
Seeing an opening, I said that I was a little surprised to hear her speak so convincingly for the case of a personal God as ultimate reality. I knew that she found great value in the teachings of many different systems including Buddhist and Taoist teachings. She often formulated her teachings in ways that seemed to me to be distinctly Eastern in approach, and I had always considered the Judeo/Christian concept of a personal God to be in opposition to Eastern teachings. Sophie nodded her head as I spoke and ran her hands across the patch of wild violets that grew at the base of the tree which she was leaning against. She seemed to be lost in thought , remembering, pursing her lips as she formed her words before speaking.
"I know that it has become widely accepted that everything is relative, but never be confused about this; there is such a thing as absolute, objective truth. Non negotiable, can't change it truth. Truth that stands outside of you and which you must sometimes seek out alone down paths which no one can travel for you. Truth which, when found, must be surrendered to. But man does not want to surrender to anything beyond himself, and so he forms his own truth and calls it good. Now, look around you, these mountains and this river, the sea that it flows into, the tree I am leaning against, the flowers at my feet and the birds which circle overhead. These don't exist because of man’s desire for them. They are real whether you choose to recognize them as part of your reality or not. In the same way, if God exists, he does so regardless of whether anyone believes that he does or not. If God exists for me but not for you, one of us is incorrect. It is impossible for something to be and to not be at the same time. I have lived a long time, and have come to believe that he does exist and that all of creation provides a reasonable grounds for that belief. Go back as far as you want, do you want to start with the amoebas? Good, tell me its origin. Do you want to start with the enzyme or energy or some yet undiscovered substance which underlies all? At some point we are brought up short by the overwhelming mystery of being. I think that mystery cries out for a creator as the single source which stands outside of everything. Others do not, and that is their choice to make. However, once you can accept the need for an ultimate source of creation you have found an ultimate source of truth. And if we are created, then we should expect to see a yearning in man for truth which reflects our origin, an expectation of truth which calls us back to our starting point. Do we see this? I think that we do, in every person. We all have this expectation of truth, we are all looking to go home again."
I replied that not everyone accepts the idea that objective truth exists. Many people feel that truth is personal, based on what is right for them. These are sincere people who honestly feel that if each person was left to formulate their own truth the world would be a more tolerant, loving place. This century has seen a multitude of arguments to support the idea that truth is relative. Sophie listened, then shook her head.
"Even a relativist has truths. When he states that true understanding can only be found within the framework of situational or relative truth, even though he restricts that truth to a personal one which may differ from individual to individual, he is setting forth a general argument which must be true for everyone to be valid. In short, the relativist says that it must always be true for everyone that there is nothing which can always be true for everyone. That is why relativism is a house of cards. It argues against itself by definition."
"Then why do we so easily embrace the idea that we are our own truth, that God is not a reality? I think that it is our best attempt to reconcile this inner expectation and need for truth with our need, equally as strong, towards self rule. We don’t want to be accountable to anyone but ourselves. By locating truth within us, we address both needs and find some small sense of integration. The problem is that we are stuck between two desires. We want the option to act independently, but pull up short of the kind of existential autonomy of Neitchze’s superman which unapologetically sees the good in whatever is good for us individually, effectively laying aside any question of a moral imperative as irrelevant or even non-existent. We want to weigh justice in a personal scale yet, suspicious that we are not the final arbiter, we hedge our bet. Suspended between these polarities, we want to do as we please, but we also want to be able to feel good about it as well, to feel that everyone understands what we were faced with and affirms the rightness of our action. In the end, we define our truth personally and affirm it by group consensus. "
"And yet there is something odd about us humans, something that seems out of place in this framework of personal truth. We are the only animal that hopes. Have you ever considered the oddity of that? We are the only animal that looks to the future and hopes for a better tomorrow. Where does this idea come from, that things can be better in the future? Against what measurement are we defining better? That hope is only reasonable in the context of the existence of absolute truth as a potentiality. In other words , when I look around at the world and believe that it can be better, I must have some idea of what better would look like. To hold a concept of better requires some standard of good against which to compare the present. But if there is no objective good, but only what we decide individually, we have no source for comparison. Yet we do all the time. We hope for justice and mercy and an end to oppression and hunger and abuse, all pointing to some objective standard which identifies these things as good intrinsically. You see, in the deepest part of ourselves, we are split. We don't believe ourselves when we dismiss the idea of God. And yet, like a willful child who pretends his parents have disappeared when he can’t get his way, we can’t help but be aware that they are still right in the next room. That awareness underlies our deepest questions, prompts our deepest fears and our highest hopes. Our own yearnings argue for a source. "
Again, playing the devil’s advocate, I mentioned that there are many people who seem to have no hope.
Whole philosophies, in fact, built on the idea that life is futile, that there is no reason for hope. What about them? After all, even a single exception disproves the argument for God based on hope. Sophie nodded her head, she had thought about that herself.
"Even those who say there is no hope still secretly hope. Even a nihilist holds ideals which are considered worthy of attaining. Even the existentialist ultimately admits to transcendent truth. I mentioned Neitchze’s superman, but even for him there were truths, things which he called good, though he wouldn’t use that word . He said that Courage, even in the face of meaninglessness was to be valued, the mark of his superman. But why? In a world where there is no meaning, no absolute truth, why assign value to courage?. I'll tell you why, because he knew there must be more, that somehow there must be foundational truth or everything collapses, even relativism. We see that there are truths which even the most hardened man, when pressed, will tell you are good. Things like justice, perseverance, and sacrifice. Things like honesty, courage and compassion. Our whole concept of the hero, existential or not is built on these values. We don't need to defend the inherent goodness in these values, they are obvious to everyone. We never fight very hard against those things which we discount completely as unreal".
" Neitzche argued against objective truth but searched it out in spite of himself. Wanting truth but refusing to accept its responsibilities, he was searching with his eyes closed, and he died in an insane asylum claiming he was the Christ. Finding no other source and torn between his philosophy and the pull inside of him, he finally had to surrender to the need for absolute truth. But finding no other place to place it, he located it with himself, and died identifying himself by the name of the source he would not recognize. He could not surrender and it drove him insane. And so, being our own source of truth cannot last, we don't have the resources, yet we do not surrender. Rather, we change direction, embrace newer philosophies, .and try to keep moving. If it were not for our own willfulness, the existence of God would be as obvious as the world around us. But it is not that we cannot see, it is not our minds which will not understand, but our hearts."
"So, you ask me what is my truth, and I'll tell you. It is not fashionable, but I believe in God. I believe in a source of all beauty, all order and all diversity. A source of all love and all justice. The beginning and the end of all things. I believe that he was incarnate in the person of Jesus from Nazareth. I believe him when he said that he came to rebuild a relationship between the Creator God and his creation. I believe him when he said that love is supreme over all. I believe that he was killed and resurrected, and that those two events somehow made it a possibility for humans to go home again, to once again look into the face of God. I believe that every human is immeasurably worthy of respect and dignity precisely because of that act which was set in motion before the dawn of time, before the first sparks of creation flew from the fingertips of the creator, and that we have no idea how important we are to God. Not as a race but individually. Each of us. All of us. Those who believe in him and especially those who don't. That's my truth, and since I'm being so frank, I think it's also objective truth. That is, true for the one who believes it as well as for the one who doesn't. "
"So that's why I am convinced that you must decide on what place foundational truth holds for you. Why you must seek out its source. Will you continue to believe that meaning is grounded in meaninglessness, that order finds it’s genesis in randomness? Is beauty formed as an accident or does it reflect a perfect source? Or will you stop fighting and give yourself to the truth that haunts you in the quiet early hours of the morning?"
As I listened to Sophie speak I was taken back by the forcefulness of her delivery. so in contrast to the gentle singing of her earlier remarks. It felt as if she had spoken every word in a single breath, full of assurance and even a little frustration. As she spoke, she leaned forward from the tree, then closer to me, sitting on the backs of her ankles and then forward again, now kneeling with her back straight. As she finished, she was standing straight up, looking out over the hillside , facing the river and no longer looking at me but straight out, over the far hills, past the horizon and into the clouds above. When she finished, she stopped completely, adding no footnote, no additional comment, and lowered her eyes down to where I was still sitting on the ground, now at her feet. Something had happened while she spoke. My heart was beating faster, my ears had pricked forward like an alert animal obedient to the command. But to what? I wanted to reply but I couldn’t. Looking away from Sophie’s gaze, I said nothing. Silence was the only reasonable response.
We sat like that for some time, just looking out over the field below and saying nothing. It didn’t seem right that I should be the one to break the silence and so I waited. Eventually, Sophie turned to me and spoke:
"Now, you asked how I reconcile that belief with my study of other belief systems. Part of the answer is that I don’t think that Christianity, as I experienced it for most of my life, has done a very good job of addressing the practical day to day aspects of living. I was told that peace and rest and acceptance were pleasing to God, but given no instruction in cultivating them. I was taught how to be, but no method for getting there. If I wanted you to be a better cook, I might give you a cookbook. If I wanted you to be a better mechanic, I would not direct you to the scriptures but to someone who knew about auto repair. I would need to provide you with information that was specifically pertinent to the skill that you were trying to develop. Yet the church has often been guilty of telling us to pray about it and wait for the wrench to jump into our hand rather than teaching practical methods for cultivating traits such as patience, acceptance, balance and others. I think that the East has done a better job of that. That’s not a criticism, just an observation. The balance between personal initiative and recognition of God as ultimate source can be extremely difficult to maintain, and I have looked around to find what I needed. That has not threatened my core beliefs because I don’t believe any single group of people have been alone or unique in their search for truth., and if we share a common source we might expect to find that we also share common questions and perhaps, answers as well. As an example, Jesus said that we should treat others as we would want them to treat us. That is an expression of an understanding so clearly reflective of a universal truth that it would be surprising if no one had ever come to it before, and in fact we find the same truth expressed in a number of different teachings. For example:
Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you would find hurtful. - Udana Varga
Hinduism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. - The Mahabharata
Taoism: Regard your neighbors gain as your own gain, and your neighbors loss as your own loss.
- Tai Shang Kam Ying Rien
Confucianism: Is there one word that will keep us on the path to the end of our days? Yes, Reciprocity.
"It would be foolish to say that because Jesus was not the only person to teach this that it must not be truth or, more common in our time, to say that because Jesus was not the only person to teach this his uniqueness and claim is compromised, even invalidated. If men seek truth from their own starting point, and they consider their lives in the light that they have, it seems reasonable to expect that basic truths such as the Golden rule would surface eventually. That should free us to look into other systems of belief for different phrasings of common truth, differences which might help us to break out of our preconceptions and see more clearly what has always been right in front of us. That's why I try to learn from many different sources while still maintaining the existence of a personal , creator-God as an objective truth. "
I understood what Sophie was saying but found it hard to understand how she could reconcile what seemed to me to be completely opposite approaches to the basic questions of existence. After all, hadn’t she just said that it is not possible for something to be and to not be at the same time? In the same manner, how can I accept a Taoist idea of universal force, for instance, and at the same time affirm the existence of a personal God? It seemed as if we would need to be extremely casual about the core tenants of every belief system in order to see them as coexistent. But by being so casual wouldn’t we dilute the essence of every system until we were left with a bland soup of vague principles and nothing more? When I was finished, Sophie replied:
"Think of it this way, picture a river with many small streams and tributaries. The water in those streams flows from the river, and is part of the river. However, it would be a big mistake not to remember that when you are traveling on them you are on a secondary stream, or you could end up in a very different place than you imagined. The stream is river, but it's not the river. See the difference?"
"That's what I mean when I say that there are things which are true, and things which are truth. There are tributaries which are river, and there is the river itself, and it's important to remember where you are, but it can be enlightening to travel down a few streams to help clarify your thinking. You make an important point, which is that while many different systems of belief may articulate true and helpful understandings about how to approach life and live it wisely and well, with wisdom and clarity, they can differ widely on the conclusions that they draw from those understandings. In other words, at some point every belief system sets forth an ultimate ontological understanding of who we are as human beings. Where we come from before we are born, what is our state after we die, how we fit into the big picture and how the history of that big picture can be understood. In some cases, individual conclusions differ so completely that unless we are ready to accept a universal relativism from an ontological standpoint, we will have to agree that when two opposing ideas are set out as absolutes, logic says that one must be modified. For myself, I find that Eastern approaches are very helpful in working out my day to day living, finding an approach to living that is restful and centered and simple, but I don’t think the conclusions about who I am and what my ultimate reality is to be very helpful. On the other hand, I believe that Christianity tells me clearly about my eternal attributes, placing me in perspective to the whole universe and defining how I came to be and what the distant and eternal future holds. Not perfectly perhaps, but more completely than any other. It's ultimate conclusions of man are, I think, on target. Unfortunately, it has been less helpful in teaching the way of daily life. often simply setting up standards and expectations and then leaving me to figure out how to get there. In short, Christianity gives me a true picture of the destination, the East gives me a more comprehensive travelers guide. So then, again we have river and the river, things which are true, and things which are truth. There is a difference."
