I was in a great discussion the other night. There were nine of us, sitting around, talking about truth and some related small topics. 🙂 This was not my first rodeo on the subject. I can remember more than one bottle of Wild Turkey consumed with my college roommates Mike and Jack as we tackled life’s mysteries well into the night. Over thirty years ago, I challenged my students with the concept in an honors course in political philosophy. And, I was always on the search for it throughout adulthood. Full disclosure: I was probably more than a little smug on occasion as I sought my merit badge in going after the thing. It was, even understatedly, a most worthy quest.

Of course, I’ve written on this subject in one way or another many times. Which means, assuredly, that I’m still drawn to it. As we try to navigate the things of this life, I’m completely convinced that we need to stake our flag on something. Well, in fact, we all do, even if we don’t know it, but if that flag is staked on quicksand, it leads in an interesting direction.

For a time in our discussion, we talked about questions and answers. We were examining a dialogue between two characters, one who embraced a life of inquiry and another who had arrived at the terminus. The one foresaw an endless journey of questions, with no possibility of ultimate arrival. The other found that the ultimate questions had final answers.

Now, I’m a huge proponent of inquiry. In fact, it was probably the single greatest feature of my life as a teacher. To cultivate a desire to inquire in my students was my first objective and it underlay every aspect of my pedagogy. To this day, I receive thanks from students for that gift. I designed inquiry-based models of education even to the degree of restructuring whole areas of a school’s curriculum to ensure its implementation. The well-known “Socratic” method is to follow a question with another question, helping the learner to go deeper and deeper in the search for meaning. In this general framework, there is no end. There is no arrival. There is only the search which, ironically, is the actual answer. The technique has its selling points. Until it doesn’t. I apologize if that seems confusing.

As I mentioned, our group was discussing the dialogue between two characters, men who had gone to school together, entered the professions and matured into later life. One of the men could not understand how the other had become so “narrow minded” late in life as to believe that he had found “the answer.” As the former one made his challenge, he criticized anyone who stated they had found an absolute truth. Shouldn’t everything, in fact, be open to question? Hadn’t they established that very early on in their lives? I can relate.

Today, as I’ve written many times, we are immersed in a collective understanding that maintains truth is what each person believes it to be. In other words, the truth is that there is no truth. This should make us pause.

Time and again, I hear the dogma that truth is what we make it to be. It’s often no more than a response to feeling, as if feelings are the foundation of all things that matter. Good lord, does anyone really believe that? Of course, feelings are extremely important to living a life well-led. But as a matter of trying to understand whether there is actually something that can be conclusively known? Sorry, no.

Once again, I heard from someone the other day that the level of collective anxiety in our youth is sky-rocketing. They are wondering who they really are, which is a fine thing, don’t get me wrong. It’s actually a mighty fine thing. The problem is that they are not getting any answers that stick. It’s like they can grasp at this or that piece of advice (often from those brilliant people who make money entertaining us) but the thing disappears as a tantalizing mirage. It just does not hold up. Yet, we truly value the search. Curious.

Of course, the reason behind all of this is that we’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater. We become attracted to the promise that the hunger is much better than the feast. Now, I have nothing against being hungry, metaphorically. In a vastly complex world with so much to learn and explore, a hunger for the things unknown is a beautiful piece of being human. We naturally delight in learning. But, and this  should need no drum roll, learning actually results in knowing.

“Ah,” says the skeptic. But, we can never be convinced that the thing we now “know” will turn out to not be true. Or at least, we’ll find out it’s not the entire story. This is a fine argument and well supported by any minimal examination of history.

But, if nothing can be ultimately known and the only true thing is that we should just continue to search, doesn’t everything systematically just fall apart? In that case there would be nothing inherently wrong with things 99% of us would consider abhorrent to the extreme. Those would only be culturally-determined and biased conclusions. We should, of course, not call that person or thing evil. That only exposes our prejudice. And prejudice is a bad thing. Or, is it? Who is to know?

Another criticism by the skeptic is that it’s the height of arrogance for someone to say that they’ve found or discovered an ultimate truth. Since there can be no such thing, such a claim exposes one’s sense of superiority and that is a cardinal sin in a worldview that elevates equality of all things to primacy. Whoops! Such circular logic only exposes the fallacy of such an argument. But, I need to not stop there because arrogance is, indeed, a problem.

I’m much more of a mind to speak boldly of truth but to do so with a humility in knowing that the truth is that the meek shall inherit. Think about that. It is one of the many paradoxes of the Gospel.

As we move to conclude this, I’m led to think about a beautiful painting or piece of music. Hopefully, each of us has encountered such a thing. (If not, we might want to question, why not?) There is a print hanging on one of our walls. It is beautiful in more ways that I can simply describe. I hope someday to see the larger than life version hanging in The Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg. Or my mind goes to this exquisite violin concerto, which I’ve heard more times than I can remember. Neither the painting nor the concerto grow old. They were absolutely beautiful the first time I saw or heard each one. I knew their beauty intimately. It will never be possible for me to denounce their beauty. In doing so, I would have to renounce all that I believe to be true about me, my life, and my purpose for being here. However, I am refreshed and renewed when I engage them again. In fact, I learn more about them the more I am engaged with them. This is humbling. Just because I know something to be true does not mean I have arrived at the end. It’s just the opposite. In fact, I’ve arrived at the beginning. In a sense, I’ve walked through a door that cannot be shut behind me. And this is the difference.

A search or an inquiry which does not expect a destination, is just a grasping at straws. Oh, we can argue that we’re still growing and each piece of growth is just the arrival at a smaller truth before we move on. Here, the satisfaction or contentment is not in the knowing, it’s in the searching. Since we can never completely know, we are content to keep searching until our last breath.

Well, that’s a choice. If there is nothing to be definitively known, then go at it. However, if there is something that can be definitively known and that thing provides ultimate meaning to everything, then our choice is whether or not to seek that thing with the expectation that we will find it. That is wholly different. If we seek something with the expectation that we will find it, rather than with the expectation that we will never find a thing of ultimate meaning, then we have hope. And, we might just be surprised when that thing suddenly appears.

Some would rather stumble around in the dark either satisfied with that state or content with kicking the can down the road and wait and see what happens. A reasonable alternative is to ask what is really true, with the hope and even expectation that it can be found.

While ultimate truth (or answers) is falling out of favor, we might just want to rethink that. I for one, humbly kneel at the foot of the answer. Praise God.