Truth = Charity

 WE need to make adjustments in our common understanding of truth. For many of us, truth is a matter of what we see or witness, how we feel, what we know and understand. Truth in this sense is some cold data perceived by the senses and processed by our intellect and will.

            So, we come out with a variety of man-made truths—scientific truth, legal truth, social, economic or political truth, etc.—with varying degrees of precision depending on whether the truth is empirically observed and gathered, and can be measured, etc.

            The problem with this conception of truth is that it mainly focuses on the material aspects of world, or at best, on the natural and human phenomena of our life. It ignores the spiritual aspects, let alone, the need to refer everything to God who is, after all, the Author of all reality.

            It’s a truth that depends mainly on our perceptions, discernments, judgments and reasoning. In short, in the way we are. It tends to be self-established and developed. It’s a truth that is often held captive by one’s subjective ways, and averse to anything pertaining to the truth that can go against how we are.

            It cannot be denied that truth sometimes, and in fact also many times, hurts. That’s simply because it can go against our own liking. It can also go beyond our own capabilities as when we talk about mysteries which are truths that surpass our power to understand. Before mysteries, we simply believe, though we can always try to understand them.

            And so, with this subjective kind of understanding of truth, we tend to have at best only a partial grasp of reality, or a tentative one, if not a distorted one, that is most vulnerable to be used by the many ulterior motives we can have.

            The reality, however, is that truth cannot be other than what God, our creator and father, has willed and designed for us and the world. There should therefore be a deliberate effort to refer our perceptions, discernments, judgments and reasoning to him before we dare to make any declaration.

            The problem sometimes is that some people invoke their freedom and independence to make their own judgments without referring them to God. To them, their conscience is not where they hear the voice of God, but rather where they hear their own voice in its clearest form.

            Lost to the them is the truth that our freedom and independence are God-given qualities and properties that need to be lived and used according to God’s will, which for us is summarized and perfected in charity, charity being the essence of God of whom we are the image and likeness.

            Our freedom and independence are not of our own making. They come from God. They are precisely what make us the image and likeness of God. They can only be lived and exercised with him and in him.

            No wonder that when Christ was asked what the greatest commandment was, he simply said, to love God with all your might, etc., and the second greatest, to love your neighbour as yourself. Later on, he perfected these two commandments by giving us a new commandment: to love one another as he has loved us.

            We are meant for loving. And the whole truth of our existence is contained in this loving. In other words, for truth to be truth, it has to go all the way to knowing and living it in love.

            Truth therefore just cannot be reduced to a cold data, or to mere personal perceptions and understanding, no matter how scientific it is, or politically and socially popular its consensus is achieved. We really cannot have the truth unless that truth is held also in charity.

            This is where we have to make some drastic adjustments in our understanding of truth. It’s when truth equates with charity that we can achieve true justice and equality among us. That’s when we can truly be brothers and sisters to one another, without anyone higher or lower than the rest of us.

            It’s when truth equates with charity that we can live genuine prudence and discretion, avoiding the stupidities of gossips and mindless chatter. We would know what and when to think, speak and act, and when not.

            It’s when truth equals charity when we, all of us, can achieve our authentic and ultimate dignity as persons who are image and likeness of God and children of his, meant to participate in the very life of God.