As narrated in the Gospel of John, Jesus, at the end of His life’s mission, walked with His disciples through a garden where they encountered Judas, some Pharisees, and a band of soldiers. When the soldiers approached, Jesus went up to them and asked,
[“Whom do you want?”]
“Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.
“I am he,” Jesus [declared]. [1]
Then the soldiers arrested and presented Jesus to the high priest who questioned Him about His teachings. Responding to the interrogation, Jesus answered,
“I have [always] spoken openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I [have] said.” [2]
Upon hearing Jesus’s answer, one of the officials slapped Him across the face, demanding,
“Is this the way you answer the high priest?”
Then Jesus replied,
“If I said something wrong, . . . testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?” [3]
Then Jesus was sent on to the Roman governor Pilate who asked Jesus,
“Are you [a] king of the Jews?” [4]
At this moment in the story, Jesus provides an unexpected insight into His life’s mission.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is [not to be a king but] to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” [5]
Made curious by Jesus’s declaration of his mission, Pilate asks the most important question:
“What is truth?” [6]
Reflecting on this exchange between Jesus and Pilate, John Jaques, who in the 1840s was a missionary for the Church in England, wrote a poem entitled “Truth.” In 1851, this poem was included in the first edition of The Pearl of Great Price, and later, it was set to music by Ellen Knowles Melling, whom Jaques had baptized in Scotland. This poem is now the hymn “Oh Say, What Is Truth?,” which we sang today at the opening of this devotional.
It is clear in the Gospel of John that although many thought that the mission of Jesus was to become a king and use divine power to right all the political, social, and religious wrongs of the time, in fact, Jesus was there for a humbler but far more influential purpose: to be a testifier of truth, or what I am calling today, to be a truth teller. Jesus indicates that it is not political power that ought to be sought—that in the end, it is not power that can right wrongs, but something more enduring than power. It is the truth. Jesus knew that telling the truth is the best remedy to the political, social, and religious wrongs of His day and, indeed, in any day. Divinity and the divine life are associated with truth more than with power. As Jesus declared, to be on His side is to be on the side of truth. “If you hold to my teaching,” Jesus says, “you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” [7]
The opposite of being a truth teller is to be a father of lies. Whereas truth works, lies frustrate. Whereas truth endures, lies falter. Whereas truth expands, lies diminish. Whereas truth welcomes discussion, lies become defensive. Whereas truth promotes reconciliation and healing, lies lead to betrayal and distrust.
Speaking of the usefulness of truth, Brigham Young comments, “How easy it is to live by the truth. Did you ever think of it, my friends? Did you ever think of it, my brethren and sisters? In every circumstance of life, no matter whether among the humble or lofty, truth is always the surest guide and the easiest to square our lives by.” [8] The marvel of truth is that it is self-sustaining; it needs no artificial support. As Brigham Young explains, “I delight in this, because truth is calculated to sustain itself; it is based upon eternal facts and will endure, while all else will, sooner or later, perish.” [9] I hope we can see the importance of truth and accept the invitation to become truth tellers. Today, I want to tell what I think are some truths about truth. I will examine the pursuit of truth, its characteristics, and its importance.
It is our fortune to be associated with a university, an institution, that, since the days of Plato’s academy, stands for the discovery, preservation, and the dissemination of truth. The answer to Pilate’s question “what is truth?” [10] is long, for the list of truths are endless. To be associated with a university is to care about truth, although the discovery of truth extends far beyond the few years spent enrolled here; it is a lifelong search. I hope we enter our classes each day with the desire to learn, discover, and tell truths. We may learn these truths through certain methods: the philosophical method, the historical method, and the scientific method.
One world-renowned LDS scientist who used the scientific method for great discoveries was Dr. Henry Eyring (father of President Henry B. Eyring and grandfather of our own university president, Henry J. Eyring). Dr. Eyring said about truth in science, “If a thing is wrong, nothing can save it, and if it is right, it cannot help succeeding.” Speaking of possible conflicts between scientific discoveries and religious views, Dr. Eyring added, “In this Church, you only have to believe the truth. Find out what the truth is!” [11] I want to spend a few minutes talking about finding truth.
John Jaques’s hymn “Oh Say, What Is Truth?” calls truth
The fairest gem
That the riches of worlds can produce, . . .
Yes, say, what is truth? ‘Tis the brightest prize
To which mortals or Gods can aspire.
Go search in the depths where it glittering lies,
Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies:
‘Tis an aim for the noblest desire. [12]
As this hymn indicates, finding truth often requires searching the lowest depths and ascending to the loftiest skies. This search is a worthwhile and noble aim.
An example of searching for truth in the lowest depths can be found in the book Walden written by Henry David Thoreau. In this book, Thoreau details his two-year experiment (from 1845 to 1847) living out in the woods by a pond outside of Concord, Massachusetts. Using the example of Walden Pond, Thoreau tells—with a humorous pun on the word “foundation”—about how “there have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond which certainly had no foundation for themselves.” Thoreau then makes an observation about humans and our relationship with truth: “It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.” Thoreau observes that many of us are not very curious; however, he was not one of those people who is uninterested in getting to the bottom of things, so “as [he] was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, [he] surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in [1846], with compass and chain and sounding line.” Thoreau found that Walden did, indeed, have a bottom—a very deep bottom at 102 feet.
Thoreau admonishes us to search thoroughly for the truth, to “settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance . . . through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality.” Thoreau points out how rare it is for humans to search for the truth and how much more willing we are just to accept that which we are told. Yet truth takes great searching and surveying, requiring that we examine our assumptions, our biases, our prejudices, and our customs as we get to the bottom of things and “find rocks in place, which we can call reality.” [13]
An example of searching for truth in the loftiest skies can be found in an allegory told by Socrates and reported by Plato of some prisoners in a cave. In this story, Socrates describes a group of prisoners who have been chained for their entire life in a dark cave. All the prisoners can do to pass the time is to watch and speculate about shadows on the wall. Then one of the prisoners is released and able to look behind her and see fire for the first time in her entire life. Afterwards, the recently released prisoner is dragged up through a narrow and difficult passageway out of the cave into a brilliant, sunlit day. The prisoner is dazed, bewildered, and even discomforted by the sharp, strange change in the environment. Socrates then interprets this allegory by saying that the cave is the “world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world.” Socrates then observes that in our search for truth, “the idea of the good appears last of all, and is seen only with great effort.” [14]
As Socrates recounts, the search for truth is usually difficult, requires great effort, and can be discomforting. Truth has multiple levels, and when we escape one cave, we may have just entered into another that we need to work through as well. However, the journey is rewarding as one’s worldview is expanded; the bright sunlight of the outside world is far more enlightening than the dark cave walls that limit and narrow one’s view. In last week’s devotional, Jeremiah Cochran described Moses’s search for truth that followed this pattern as he ascended onto a mountain top to experience the divine in a holy place and to be taught the truth of his endless potential.
As is described in these examples, discovering and discerning truth requires a difficult journey; it takes patience and it requires a looking beyond our narrow interests. The twentieth-century American poet Robert Frost details the difficulty of discerning truth in a short poem entitled “For Once, Then, Something.” The speaker of the poem describes how often he looks deep down into wells of water.
As he looks over the stone curbing into a well, he notes,
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Usually, when looking down into a well of water to see into the bottom of things, the speaker is often frustrated in his search, for often he sees only his own reflection in the water. But then the speaker continues,
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something. [15]
We need to be careful that our search for truth does not just reflect back to us what we want to be true—what just benefits us or confirms our biases. We need to look down deeper into the well, beyond our mere reflection. Truth is often at the bottom of our search, and it can be hard to discern. The speaker in this poem realizes that discerning the truth can be so difficult that he is glad that at least for once he may have seen it.
Speaking of the dangers of seeing only what we want to be true rather than what is actually true, Hugh Nibley, a BYU professor in the 1970s, cautioned the BYU community in an article entitled “Zeal Without Knowledge.” He reminds us that “True knowledge never shuts the door on more knowledge, but zeal often does.” Nibley worries about students who might think “we are not seeking for truth at the BYU; we have the truth!” Nibley reminds us that though we know many great truths that have been passed on down to us from previous prophets, scientists, philosophers, historians, and others, there are endless truths yet to be discovered, encountered, and learned from. We should embark “on the continuous, conscientious, honest acquisition of knowledge.” [16] This knowledge we seek after should include historical, scientific, social, and moral truths.
We need to look constantly for more truth. In 1615, most people believed, based on previous scientific and religious views, that the solar system was geocentric—that the sun revolved around the earth. Using a newly invented instrument, the telescope, Galileo Galilei demonstrated instead that the solar system was heliocentric—sun centered; however, Galileo had a difficult time convincing others of this discovery. In a letter that he wrote to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany to convince her and others to accept a heliocentric view of the solar system, Galileo laments that many would not look through the telescope themselves. Galileo remarks, speaking of those who were resistant to new truths because it might require them to change their minds, “Showing a greater fondness for their own opinion than for truth they sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them.” [17] We need to look for the truth ourselves, for there is a self-reliant aspect to truth seeking. In your responses this week on the discussion board, many of you talked about being self-reliant in your truth seeking, and a few of you referenced Doctrine and Covenants section 9, which emphasizes the importance of studying difficult issues out in our own minds and of being willing to change our minds.
Willing to change his mind, the philosopher Socrates sought out others to prove him wrong. He was the kind of person that liked to be proven wrong, for in that case, he would have been disabused of a mistaken idea and learned something new. In contrast, to be proven right is not to learn anything new. Socrates engaged in dialogue after dialogue with religious leaders, politicians, artists, and philosophers, always trying to learn something new, always willing to change his mind.
Often, however, Socrates’s fellow dialogue participants were not as eager as he to learn new truths, for they were reluctant to acknowledge they had been wrong. Also, new truths required them to reassess and modify their worldview. Since accommodating new truths into our lives can be a difficult and even a discomforting process, the sharing of truths should be done respectfully and carefully. The nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson in her poem “Tell all the truth but tell it slant—“ gives wise advice about truth-telling. Since the speaker of the poem asserts that truth is “too bright for our infirm Delight / The Truth’s superb Surprise,” the speaker of the poem recommends “as Lightning to the Children eased / With explanation kind / The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind—.” [18] The insight from this poem that applies to truth-telling is that it is most effective when it is done gradually and with “explanation kind.”
Truth should not be used as a weapon to harm, but as a balm to heal. When not handled carefully, truth can damage and even destroy relationships. We must remember that everyone’s truth journey varies as to its speed and intensity. Truth journeys should be encouraged, but not unduly rushed. To facilitate successful truth journeys for others, we can provide credible sources and wise guidance and then be understanding as the journey progresses. In the end, the truth wins out, so we can afford to be patient. Truth tellers do not have to be defensive or aggressive. The evidence will eventually bear out the truth. As John Milton confidently asserts in his classic essay “Areopagitica,” “Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” [19]
Not only will truth win out, but truth is liberating and expansive, as is captured in our LDS hymn “If You Could Hie to Kolob,” with which we will conclude today’s devotional. The lyrics in this hymn express the endless search for truth and the excitement that accompanies this search:
If you could hie to Kolob
In the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward
With that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever,
Through all eternity,
Find out the generation
Where Gods began to be? . . .
Or see the grand beginning,
Where space did not extend?
Or view the last creation,
Where Gods and matter end?
The works of God continue,
And worlds and lives abound;
Improvement and progression
Have one eternal round. [20]
It is important to be on the side of truth, to search, to find, and to share, carefully and thoughtfully, the truth. This journey is long and difficult, but it is worth it. Truth endures; it is self-sustaining, and it works. Truth-telling promotes trust, reconciliation, and healing. As Dr. Eyring taught, “In this Church, you only have to believe the truth. [Therefore, find] out what the truth is!” In this statement, Dr. Eyring echoes Brigham Young, who said: “Our religion is simply the truth. It is all said in this one expression—it embraces all truth, wherever found, in all the works of God and man that are visible or invisible to mortal eye.” I testify that “ our religion is simply the truth.” [21] As Jesus told Pilate, Jesus’s mission on earth was not to wield political power, but to tell and testify of the truth. May we do likewise; may we spend our lives finding and telling the truth. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] John 18:4-6 (New International Version).
[2] John 18:20 (New International Version).
[3] John 18:22-23 (New International Version).
[4] John 18:33 (New International Version).
[5] John 18:37 (New International Version).
[6] John 18:38 (New International Version).
[7] John 8:31-32 (New International Version).
[8] John A. Widstoe, Discourses of Brigham Young, (Deseret Book Company, 1954), 11.
[9] John A. Widstoe, Discourses of Brigham Young, (Deseret Book Company, 1954), 11.
[10] John 18:38 (New International Version).
[11] Henry Eyring, The Faith of a Scientist, (Deseret Book Company, 1989), 43.
[12] “Oh, Say, What Is Truth?” Hymns, no. 272.
[13] Henry David Thoreau, Walden, (Ticknor and Fields, 1854), 184, 63, 64.
[14] Plato, The Republic: Book VII, (381 BC).
[15] Robert Frost, “For Once, Then, Something.”
[16] Hugh Nibley, “Zeal Without Knowledge,” Academic Awareness lecture, Jun. 26, 1975.
[17] Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany,” 1615.
[18] Emily Dickinson, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant—.”
[19] John Milton, “Aereopagitica,” (1644).
[20] “If You Could Hie to Kolob.” Hymns, no. 284.
[21] John A. Widstoe, Discourses of Brigham Young, (Deseret Book Company, 1954), 2, emphasis added.