These days, we hear a lot about facts and truth: ‘fact-checking,’ ‘alternative facts,’ ‘post-truth,’ ‘fake news.’ We’re told to ‘follow the data’ and ‘let science be our guide,’ while others talk of conspiracy theories and media cover-ups. Make no mistake: I’m all for science and facts. I’m troubled by the amount of misinformation that’s being spread in our society.
But in times like these, when fear and anxiety are rampant, I also worry about our human tendency to create idols. I worry that in our zeal to convert others to the ‘right’ side, we can lose sight of our ultimate purpose. It’s so easy to dehumanize those who disagree with us and to recast our civic debates into battles of light and darkness. All of our energy is then given a singular focus: we must win. If our side (or our candidate) loses, then darkness will prevail.
I find myself thinking about God’s people in the book of Exodus. They had just been delivered from slavery in Egypt, and now they’re out in the wilderness, trying to figure out what on earth they’re going to do. Moses is up on the mountain with God, but he’s been gone for an awfully long time. They start to worry that he isn’t coming back. Maybe God has abandoned them. They need a solution. The solution they come up with is an idol, a golden calf. They plead with Aaron, “Come, make gods for us who shall go before us” (Ex. 32:1).
We might scoff at the idea of making a golden idol, but we’re no less prone to fear that God has abandoned us. When we give in to that fear, we find ourselves walking down a different path than the one God has called us to. We lose sight of the fact that our calling in life is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt. 22:37).
Poet-priest Malcolm Guite has written a series of poetic dialogues on this commandment. The fourth of these dialogues, “IV. With All Your Mind,” speaks powerfully to our present moment:
.....With all my mind? With all my open questions?
.....My restless questing after hidden truth?
.....With all my science, all my suppositions?
.....My search for certainty, my lust for proof?
.....With all my mind? its logic and obsession,
.....Its wordless reveries, its language games,
.....Its reason and its deep imagination
.....Its mysteries, its riddles and its dreams?
.....With all your mind, with every gift I gave you,
.....For every drop of truth is drawn from me.
.....Not that your mind itself will ever save you,
.....But that it lives within my mystery.
.....Ask and be answered, seek and you will find
.....I am the life of every loving mind.
We should be zealous for the truth, but we can never lose sight of truth’s source: every drop of truth is drawn from me.
When Jesus says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:32), he didn’t mean, “If everyone would just spend more time at the library or in the laboratory, then society will be saved.” He also didn’t mean that we should be seeking after some esoteric ‘truth’ that is opposed to science and common sense. Jesus is reminding us that the source of truth is Truth itself: the triune God whom we worship.
Blessings,
Fr. Stewart
