James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). The Vine Dresser and the Fig Tree (Source)
There is something very strange in today’s fashion for denying the concept of truth, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. The idea is that since all truth is subjective, there can be no objective truth, by definition. Any view expressed has to be personal and limited by personal experience and perspective, especially that of race and social background but extending to considerations of sexual direction or any other defining quality deemed to be relevant.
But then try devising a bus or railway timetable – and then claiming that it is not to be relied upon because it was compiled by a person of certain kinds of personal identity factors – as if this was to justify a breakdown in the bus or railway service. Or would we be content to be treated by a doctor or dentist whose exams results and qualifications were massaged by social or political considerations? Who wants to be on a bus, never mind an aircraft, controlled by one lacking the objectively assessed skills to do so?
There may be aspects of morality and philosophy where people of different outlooks and experiences may have different values, and yes this could affect public policy – but this is part of the process of developing a consensus and not the basis for exercising political or cultural control.
Yet it still begs the question of what is true and how do we know it? For a scientist, there can never be an absolute truth, for any theory of science is developed from empirical evidence and the formulation of theories to match the data. If there is a more reliable data set to be had and/or a better explanation of existing data, then the pre-existing theories can be amended or replaced altogether. Failure to do so makes them religious and not scientific doctrines.
In a godless or valueless society then values will be those imposed and enforced by the most powerful and are more political than community-based. These also will only be as stable as the political structures supporting them.
Yet in the church we have a different perspective, for we follow One who says ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Nobody comes to the Father except through Me.’(John 14: 6) All paths will lead to God but those taken apart from Jesus will find Him as the Eternal Judge, and not as Father. This sense of the Truth abides in Jesus and so to abide in Jesus is also to abide in the Truth. It does not mean that our every thought, word or deed is necessarily perfect as our own natures are still sinful and growing into the fruitfulness of Jesus is a lifetime’s work, in which our Father as vinedresser comes into our lives to prune them of dead works, dead attitudes, dead priorities and dead relationships. That pruning can indeed be painful and costly to us. See John 15.
What we cannot do is to pass our values through a filter of prior claims based on race, sex, education or sense of grievance. Our values have to be able to stand for themselves in the public arena, and in the face of public examination. Perhaps this is why the most effective values are also the simplest. Those of the 10 Commandments are clear enough, especially the last six which refer to inter-personal relationships. The values of the gospels apply to the followers of Jesus rather than to the non-believing worldwide community, and hence their sense of love is based on self-giving and on the service of others, as opposed to the competitive business of getting and keeping, holding off opposition, and the survival of the fittest in the human jungle. It is the life of Jesus becoming visible in the lives of those who follow Him.
One thing that we can do is to contrast the almost unlimited vengefulness of Lamech who demanded the right to kill for a petty injury and to extract a seventy-seven fold vengeance in general (Genesis 4: 23-24), with the love of Jesus, on the other hand, is shown as ‘He who knew no sin became sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God’, (2 Corinthians 5: 21).
So: a society without values can scarcely be called a society. A society with values based on imposition and not received in general is equally bereft of any genuine sense of community. Yet a community with values centred on One who gave all of Himself and yet rose even from the clutches of death must be one with a currency that extends not only through the life of the community but which transcends death as well. And that is the Body of Christ.
Every blessing, Sydney Maitland
