Truth_The Beauty of It [jessi]

Pilate is one of the most lamentable creatures in the New Testament. Harried and harassed on all sides by Caiaphas and the Jews, his wife, a rival politician and his own conscience, Pilate finds himself backed into a corner. And in the meantime he’s face to face with the Savior of the world. The bible makes it pretty clear that Pilate doesn’t want to kill Jesus, but what choice does he have? During their interview Jesus tells him “for this I came into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” I keep changing my mind about Pilate’s tone in his response. Is he really laughing when he says to Jesus, “What is truth?”

Pilate, a minor character in the drama of the Crucifixion, sneaks into the middle of his few lines a really profound question. Not that I’m setting Pilate up to be some sort of prophet—clearly, he was blind. Either blinded by God, or ignorant of his own accord, this guy’s verbal parlay with the The-Way-The-Truth-and-The-Life ends with a rhetorical “What is Truth?” It’s hard to say if anyone who had a hand in killing the Son of God is lucky, but I feel like certain other Biblical characters would not have gotten away with that. Job, for instance.

But letting Jesus go after the Jewish officials play their trump (“we have no king but Caesar”) would be political suicide, so even though he wants to free Jesus, he hands him over to be killed. I imagine he’s frustrated with everyone, and maybe even hates himself, for not having any clear answer; only the echoing question. He had no outside standard to which he could appeal—no rock jutting tall out of the tossing seas for him to cling to and say: “Aha! Here at last is TRUTH, and this one thing I know.” Pilate was missing that fixed point of reference—in his case, the answer to the question “which rope shall I hang myself with?”

That’s really what truth is (aside from the rope part, most of the time): that fixed point of reference, through which everything else makes sense. And be honest—who of us at one crisis or another hasn’t desperately wished for a little perspective on life? We need to look at things from outside our own shoes and see that very few of our mountains are anything quite like mountains, and the storms of emotion flooding our lives will dissipate soon enough if we can only ride it out a bit longer.

That element of truth, however, is really only attractive during those moments of crisis. Thomas Merton said in No Man Is an Island, “We are too much like Pilate. We are always asking “What is Truth?” and then crucifying the truth that stands before our eyes.” The problem arises when someone inevitably realizes that the “fixed point of reference”, in order to remain fixed, must be the same for everyone. The rock, seconds before, was a shelter and an anchor and other wonderful things we say we need in the middle of a storm. Now we curse it for its immovable ways. We stumble over it, push against it, and bleed out on it, and the very fact that it does not give way before us makes it hateful. Truth is unfeeling—cold and hard, plain and ugly, and any amount of adjectives you care to add.

And yet I think the sheer poetry of the immovable ought to count for something. I know I’ve used the rock metaphor a few too many times already, but I have a 10,000+ foot mountain in my backyard, and it follows me wherever I drive in two counties. There are plenty of other constants in the world. The stars have acted as compass points for sea farers and desert travelers alike. The words “everlasting to everlasting” give me shivers.

Some time ago I was talking on the phone with a very good friend who was dealing with some hard issues. I can’t remember now what it was, but I still remember her quiet voice on the phone asking, “Tell me something true.” She told me it’s a question she and her family ask each other when they need to be reminded of Jesus, “Especially when life sucks.”

She went on to say that since Jesus is Truth, every true answer will point her back to Christ, and “If Christ is interceding for me, then whatever happens I can trust is for my good and his glory. If my little Violet dies, or Joey leaves me then according to the Scriptures, I ought to be able to trust and still say “it is well with my soul,” knowing that whereas I would not pick those things for myself, Jesus has.”

So I’ve come to the conclusion that the wonder of truth, and consequently Jesus Christ is that quality of being so big and unchanging. And the wonder of something so big and so unchanging is that we can allow ourselves to be changed by it.