11.04.09
Truth – a parable
Once there was a town where everyone worshipped Truth. Then one day a man came to town and did amazing miracles. Afterwards he sat with the townspeople and revealed his true name: “I am the Truth,” he said. And everyone was happy and worshipped him, except those who did not love the truth. They drove the man out of the town and killed him.
For many years there were those who followed the Truth, until a time came when even those who claimed to follow Truth began to live in lies. Many good things were lost or destroyed. It became more and more difficult to talk about truth.
But in another town nearby a small group of people still practiced the truth. They didn’t use the word, however, but claimed to follow the Son. In everything they did there was goodness and honesty and light. Because of this many of the poor and even a few prominent teachers also followed the Son. And they ate and talked together about the way of love…
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My little parable is meant to demonstrate that this is the place where we have arrived. With some crowds, particularly established church folk, we can still talk about truth, although even in these groups we may be merely reinforcing a certain ideology and not provoking to love and good deeds. We live too much as dualists, separating being and act, public and private life. But with many of those under 35, especially if they are outside the church which has preserved rational apologetics into this post-modern space, talking from a foundationalist frame is going to be water off a duck’s back. We need to talk about Jesus, Spirit, love, justice and God’s good reign. And most of all we need to demonstrate in our life together that these things have arrived in Jesus.
In the postmodern world, faith is participation in the truth embodied in the community.
“Reclaiming Christianity as culture enables us to move from decontextualized propositions to traditioned, storied, inhabitable truths; from absolute certainty to humble confidence; from austere mathematical purity to the rich if less predictable world of relational trust; from control of the data to respect of the other in all its created variety; from individualist knowing to communal knowing and being known; and from once-for-all rational justification to the ongoing pilgrimage of testimony.â€
Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People, 186.
See also this post.
