About ten years
ago, the press “exposed” a Cape Town club which had allegedly been running a
brothel. Some of us might remember, right back in the Eighties, the horrid and
embarrassing incident of the “Squidgy” telephone call between Princess Diana
and a supposed extramarital lover, to which it was possible to listen on what
was called a “hot line”? How often do we approach our media, be it newspaper,
news magazine or broadcast, only to find the real news displaced by yet another
exposé of “the truth,” as such publications like to call it?
If one were to ask an editor about the heartache and
humiliation, the destruction of homes, happiness and lives which these
exposures entail, we might receive answers on these lines: “The public have a
right to know…we are here to serve the truth, we can’t help it if others behave
like this…The consequences are no concern of ours, our task is just to publish things as they are…” and so on. And, of
course, scandal increases circulation, and increased circulation increases
profit, not that anyone, God forbid, should publish “the truth” merely for these reasons.
Tellers of Truth in the modern media are today largely
distinguishable by two characteristics: a high level of moral indignation and
self-righteousness, and a refusal to be held accountable for their views,
though they hold others accountable
for their actions in no uncertain
terms. In fact, moral indignation is the principal means by which they thwart anyone trying to bring them to
account.
It is a sad fact that many Christians take the same easy
option which the modern media have embraced, and exercise the same ruthless and
unforgiving moral indignation against their neighbour. This idea of truth as a
harsh exposure of wrongdoing is in fact the antithesis of what God and the
Scriptures have to say on the subject.
The Old Testament teaching on truth is to be found it
the shortest of all the Psalms, Psalm 117. In the Authorised Version it reads
as follows:
O
Praise the Lord, all ye nations,
Praise
him, all ye peoples.
For
his merciful kindness is evermore towards us,
And
the truth of the Lord endureth forever.
The significance of this passage, is that it joins together two of the
closest-linked ideas in the Old Testament: ideas represented by the Hebrew
words hesed and emet.
Emet is the Jews’ word for truth. Truth for the Jews is not
to be confused with the passing facts of everyday existence. “Squidgy” is
not truth for them, since who even today really remembers the facts of that
story? Truth, for the Jews, was that
which is revealed by God, things of eternal significance and endurance.
“The truth of the Lord endures for ever.”
One somehow does not think, thank God, that “Squidgy” will endure for ever. God
in three persons; the Word made Flesh; the death of the Saviour of the cross;
The coming of the Holy Spirit; the Consummation of all things at the end of
time; “God is Love’; these are emet,
and for a Christian, there can be no
other kind of truth. For a Christian, in fact, all truth is summed up in
the person of Jesus: “I am the Way,
the Truth and the Life.”
But the idea of emet,
or truth, is bound together with that of hesed.
There is no single English equivalent, but the Authorised version comes very
close to it with its “merciful kindness.” Compassion
would be the single word which most closely captures its meaning. It is an idea
which stretches through the Old Testament, particularly in passages such as:
The
Lord is kind and full of compassion,
Slow
to anger, abounding in love.
How
good is the Lord to all,
Compassionate
to all his creatures.
Here is the heart of divine Truth; that God, who is truth, is kind and compassionate. God’s moral law is absolute, but God
applies that law with love and compassion, raising up, forgiving…yes,
forgetting. “I will turn my face from their iniquities, and never call their sins to mind.” The sins
of man are in the first place offences against
God, yet it is God who is “slow
to anger.” The picture which emerges here is quite the opposite of the
newspaper idea of truth as an exposure of others’ sins. For God, human sins are
offences against the truth. But they
are offences which God wants to forgive precisely
because they are an affront to the truth. “It is not the death of the
sinner that I require, but his repentance.”
God’s reaction to human sin is not to seek the
humiliation and destruction of the sinner, but his redemption. It is a singular fact of Christianity, and one which we
take into too little account in the day-by-day practice of our faith, that it
is God, who is affronted by sin, who humiliates himself on our account in
order to achieve our salvation. “on Him
lies a punishment that brings us peace,
and by his stripes we are healed.” In this union of truth
and loving compassion are echoed the powerful words of the Gospel of John: “The
truth will set you free…when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men to myself…I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
Has the editor who exposes the sins of others (who very
likely have never offended him) in
the name of “printing the truth,” any idea of the exalted meaning of that word
in the mouth of God? For that matter, have Christians who wax indignant over
the sins of others, and spread gossip all round, albeit in hushed, self-righteous
tones of “How shocking!” any better an understanding of the God who has called
them, loved them, and died in humiliation on the cross for them in order to
redeem them from their sins?
On many occasions people, both Catholics and others,
have spoken with me about the confessional. Not a few have articulated the idea
that a priest “knows the truth” about the members of his congregation. In that
fact they are right; but they are generally most wrong as to what exactly “the
truth” is. For, as any priest will tell you, it has nothing to do with whether
Mr. X and Mrs. Y are having an extramarital affair, or what sort of dirty
thoughts Miss Z enjoys, or even whether Mrs. Q is a secret tippler, who
finances her beverage out of the petty cash.
The truth that comes out of the confessional is “the
truth (which) endures for ever”; that human beings are created in the image of
God; that we have fallen short of the glory of God; that we are in desperate
need of redemption; that God in his loving compassion has given us a Saviour
who died that we might be forgiven; and that in those words “I absolve you from
your sins…” we have the absolute
certainty that our sins have been forgiven in His name. That is the astonishing
and miraculous truth of the confessional; all the rest is just passing detail.
Sin, after all, is marked down for total destruction; it is the truth of the
Lord that endures for ever.
Truth, in God’s mind, consists of unchanging, eternal
reality, and there can be no truth without the hesed, the loving compassion of God. If we wish to serve that truth, our task is not to humiliate and expose in
self-righteousness. It is rather to come in humble
service to our brother or sister, and self-effacingly to help them to find
their way back to God, keeping all the time
before our eyes the fact that we ourselves are sinners in need of his mercy.
“There is more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant
sinner than over ninety-nine righteous men.” May God bring each one of us to a
self-knowledge of our own sinfulness, and may he use us, through loving
compassion for one another, in service of his eternal truth, so that many might
find their way to him, and learn to know his love and forgiveness, and so in
turn be brought to knowledge of the Truth that endures for ever.
