For Truth-Seekers Only

I remem­ber a ques­tion that a grad­u­ate stu­dent posed for us many years ago. The ques­tion has haunted me ever since: “Can you hon­estly say that you are deter­mined to seek the truth at all costs?” I know what he was imply­ing. We get com­fort­able with a few ele­ments of truth and stop look­ing. Worse yet, we think that part of the truth is all of the truth, then make peo­ple around us mis­er­able with it (often cham­pi­oning “isms” that bind more than lib­er­ate).

Truth has many facets. In ref­er­ence to spir­i­tual truth, Jesus pointed to him­self. He was and is “the real McCoy.” He gave us the keys to putting the big­ger pic­ture together. Despite his appeal to “the truth that makes you free” — people have set­tled for lim­ited views of him. Here­sies have tried to make him every­thing from a lit­er­ary fic­tion, to just a man, to some sort of desert appari­tion, to merely some sort of polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion­ary. By reduc­ing the whole to a pos­si­ble part, they have sought to nul­lify him. What is it that keeps us from embrac­ing the whole?

Humans fix­ate to con­trol. We want a pre­dictable world. Our secu­rity needs drive us to lie. Tighter blind­ers limit us to a few com­fort­able views. By sur­round­ing our­selves with like minds, we engage in “group-think” nar­cis­sis­ti­cally. It feels good. A sense of intel­lec­tual arrival sets in. We become our own gods. What a rush!

The next time you bring novel infor­ma­tion to the table, watch peo­ple wince. Watch them retreat into their com­fort zones. Bet­ter yet, watch your­self do it. The ori­en­ta­tion reflex slows down as we age — if we do not con­tin­u­ally seek the big­ger pic­ture. It is not a mat­ter of age alone. I have met eigh­teen year olds that have per­son­al­ity rigid­ity issues that are noth­ing short of fright­en­ing. (Come to think of it, I might have been one of those once upon a time. How about you?)

So, today, for the umpteenth time, I pose the ques­tion to myself again: “Am I really a truth-seeker at all costs?” I have to admit that the few pieces of the big puz­zle that I know have got­ten awfully com­fort­able. I also know it is too easy to spend my life try­ing to get peo­ple to see the pieces I have dis­cov­ered and ignore the ones they have found.