TRUTH!

Truth.

When I started studying Ethics and Theology back in seminary, I didn't realize that truth was such a complicated topic.  I always have a tendency to simplify concepts -- which serves me pretty well as a preacher, but makes me an awful philosopher.

Truth, apparently, has been the subject of much debate over the last millenium or two.

It's pursuit proved fatal to Socrates.  It proved fatal to Kierkegaard's love life.  It has formed the foundation of great scientific thinkers from Einstein to Stephen Hawking.  Physicists and pastors, historians and biologists, cultural anthropologists and organic chemists... What do all of them have in common?  The search for truth, of one kind or another.

And therein lies the problem with truth.  It's pretty easy to imagine that a theoretical physicist and a Hebrew scholar can sit in their offices (granted, offices entrenched within tall ivory towers), study to find eternal/universal truth and end up with completely different outcomes -- at least theoretically.  It's much harder to recognize that both scholars, using dramtically different techniques and sources, are in reality pursuing the same goal and more often than not seem to land in remarkably similar places.

It's nonsensical, but true nonetheless.  Once you dig beyond the language and symantics (isn't that right, Wittgenstein?) that might be what you find.  It should be what you find... if truth is really Truth.

The search for truth is complicated.  It's highly philosophical, dangerously theoretical, and yet absolutely essential for humankind.

Let me say that again.  It's absolutely essential for humankind.

So, the next time you're on your way to Starbucks or dropping the kids off at soccer practice or heading to the gym or doing any number of mundane things, let your mind drift into the great beyond and consider the topic of truth.  I'm not asking you to get all Platonic on the clerk in the check out lane at Schnuck's.  Just give it some thought every now and then.

Where do you think that truth comes from?  How do you define truth?

Does God define truth for you?  Does science?  Does religion?  Does TMZ?  Maybe you define truth for yourself?

Maybe you've never really thought about it before.

We're talking about truth in a few weeks at Cape Naz.  As you can tell (this is my second blog post on the subject), it's on my mind.  I'm not to the point of Socrates or Kierkegaard yet, but it's certainly becoming a current passion.  I'm efforting to simplify a topic that refuses simplification.  Maybe that's a good thing, though.  After all, if the Author of Truth is who we think He is, is who He says He is, and is who we need him to be, I'll be spending all of eternity discovering this Truth.