Speaking of Truth… – by Owen Gray
I’m sure you, like me, remember proudly the political dialogue we as a nation underwent in 2016.
It played out in Richmond much like it did elsewhere. My wife and I attended the nearest Gathering weekly, joining well over 200 neighbors. Ours was at the coffee shop down the street, but I know others were in school cafeterias and YMCAs and city halls. The moderator for the night picked the topic—foreign policy, the economy, local government, social issues, etc.– and all of us had the chance to voice our opinions. Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and Communists, men and women, young and old, gay and straight, and every variation of race and ethnicity: each had their rightful seat at the table and could rise to speak their mind. Our goal was, of course, to come together in deciding the best path forward for our nation, our state, and our city, regardless of our own personal interests. Sometimes things got heated, of course, but through honest testimony, useful fact-finding, systematic policy analysis, and open minds, the best ideas usually won out. We used the products of those conversations to inform our vote and guide our political affiliation. It played out this way across Virginia just as it did across the whole United States.
Okay, you can stop laughing now.
It is barely worth the bandwidth to say that this never happened. Of course it didn’t. But what does it say that meaningful community dialogue is such a laughable idea? For well over 18 months during the last election cycle we as a nation sought to discern our best way forward and, to say the least, we struggled to do so.
Discerning truth as a large group of diverse people is…wait for it…really difficult. So if we are going to talk about what Truth is, talking about how we come to discover Truth at all matters. Fortunately, people much smarter than I have written about how to address the problem. I’ll touch on a few examples, quickly.
Jürgen Habermas offered one take in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. He famously cited the salons of post-revolutionary France as a positive example of dialogue in which the private realm of individual concern was transcended in favor of the public good. Class and status were intentionally checked at the door leading to uniquely altruistic results. In short, individuals entered a different sphere—the public sphere—to make collective decisions, and they changed their behavior and beliefs in accordance to the sphere they were in. But since its publication in 1962, Habermas has been rightly critiqued (most notably, and most appropriately, from the feminist academy) for selectively glossing over inequalities present in those historical settings, even if his theoretical framework still warrants merit. In short, his idealism renders his suggestion of public sphere conversations hard to implement.
John Rawls offered his own system of societal conversation. In A Theory of Justice, he proposes a mental exercise he labels the “original position.” He instructs us to design society from scratch but, importantly, place ourselves behind the “veil of ignorance.” That is, suppose that we do not know our lot in terms of class, race, economic well-being, mental health, geographic region…anything about our identity. How would we design tax rates, social safety nets, etc., if it was just as likely we would be in the top or bottom 1%? We could extend the experiment to other Truth-seeking as well: would our Truth still be True if we were in another context? But like Habermas, his experiment holds little hope for practical implementation.
Reinhold Niebuhr speaks to why theory often fails to live up to its promise. In the opening chapter of Moral Man, Immoral Society, he writes:
“If political issues were really abstract questions of social policy upon which unbiased citizens were asked to commit themselves, the business of voting and the debate which precedes the election might actually be regarded as an educational programme in which a social group discovers its common mind. But the fact is that political opinions are inevitably rooted in economic interest of some kind or another, and only comparatively few citizens can view a problem of social policy without regard to their interest.” (5).
Habermas, Rawls, and Niebuhr speak to what so many of us really, deep down, want in society—a way of engaging in conversation and Truth-seeking that includes and benefits everyone. But all three also recognize the impossibility of the task. Self-interest will always rear its head and, in all likelihood, derail the project before it begins.
So if abstract systems can’t help us discern truth, what can?
Well, I take for granted that truth is mostly subjective. Up until the Renaissance, and really even up until the Romantic movement, Western society viewed Truth as objective and static. Born of Greek Platonism, we believed that through a combination of curiosity and reason we might discern what Truth is. Our institutions, be they religious or political or other, dictated the result, and to question the result was heresy.
Most people today don’t believe in objective truth, and for good reason. Now, some things are objectively true to be sure– the boiling point of water, the capital of Turkey, the winner of the 1985 World Series, the superiority of Kansas City BBQ (but that is for a different blog post). But in a great number of cases, Truth is not something than can be scientifically proven. Why did enrollment at our school decrease suddenly? Which musician should win the Oscar for “Best Original Score?” Interventionism vs. laissez-faire? Is God omniscient? No matter how passionately people might stand on one side of such questions, there really cannot be one right answer.
The purest element of Habermas and Rawls and experience, I believe, teaches a lesson. Truth is simply the answer we arrive at together, which means the way we discern it matters just as much as the result. Truth can be more or less true depending on how it is discerned. Who is at the table, who gets to speak, who is invited and who does the inviting…these details not only represent the process, but also dictate the outcome, of truth-seeking. There will always be temptation to make the process easier, of course. It is easier when we simply utilize people already in the room. Quite often, it is more comfortable to seek Truth with people who look, dress, act, and think like us. But theory and anecdote alike affirm that we are better when we embrace all of God’s diversity in our Truth-seeking.
Christians are familiar with that theme. Selfishness being replaced with selflessness; exclusion with inclusion…isn’t that the battle over sin itself? If we understand justice to be right relationship with God and neighbor, and sin as the obstacle to achieving it, then a radically inclusive love is the Christ-given answer to the problem. It just so happens that adopting Christ’s imperative of radical inclusivity also achieves the best results in seeking what is True. Funny how that happens.
Presbyterians can take pride (humble pride, if you will) in doing this better than many. Our polity is specifically designed to ensure that voices not in the majority are present in places of discernment. Our polity dictates that God is best discerned as one whole body, not as individuals. And more and more the PC(USA) is living up to its calling in ensuring that non-white, non-male voices are co-equal participants and leaders in all corners of the church.
What is True is what we discern together. We’re called to follow the example of God-made-flesh in doing that as faithfully as we can in all corners of our life.
Owen Gray is a cradle Presbyterian born and raised in the heart of the heartland, Kansas City. Through an undergraduate Religious Studies/Political Science double-major and service at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, one of his passions has become exploring the intersection of civic engagement and congregational mission. Owen is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and, as of June 2017, Union Presbytery Seminary in Richmond. His wife, Grace, is a pediatric ER nurse and soon-to-be nurse practitioner. His daughter, Ruth, is eight months old and a soon-to-be crawler. Beginning in August 2017, Owen will serve as a Lake Fellow Resident at Second Presbyterian in Indianapolis.