The Questions of Jesus by John Dear

Author:John Dear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307424075
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

TRUTH

If I am telling the truth, why do you not believe me?

(JOHN 8:46)

Perhaps more than any other public figure of the last century, Mahatma Gandhi spoke most frequently about truth as the goal of life. Like few others, he endeavored to live in the truth. “I am devoted to none but truth,” he writes, “and I owe no discipline to anybody but truth. I am but a seeker after truth. I claim to be making a ceaseless effort to find it. To find truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, to become perfect.”

Gandhi subtitled his autobiography “The Story of My Experiments with Truth.” He even coined a new word, satyagraha, meaning “truth force,” to describe “the relentless search for truth through steadfast active nonviolence” that lay at the root of his campaigns for justice, peace, and freedom. Gandhi’s pursuit of truth led him to practice creative nonviolence as the only means toward positive social and political change. His search for truth pushed him to seek justice and independence. He engaged in civil disobedience, was arrested repeatedly, spent over six years in prison, and in the end was assassinated by his opponents, who could not grasp the truth. Gandhi’s life became a shining revelation of truth.

But who cares about truth? When Jesus stood before the ruling authorities to be sentenced to death for opposing imperial injustice, he spoke about the importance of truth. “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. He had never heard of truth and had no interest in it. We are not that different. Truth is not our number one pursuit. We do not stake our lives on the truth. Instead, we seek power, domination, oil, money, control, military might, political rule, and fame—anything but truth.

Jesus was constantly attacked by the ruling authorities of his day because he insisted on the truth. The Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees denounced him, dismissed him, and threatened him because they hated the truth. But Jesus did not write them off. Rather, he tried to persuade them, to reason with them, to lead them to the truth of God. But ultimately they did not care about God or life or love or him; their only concerns were power, prestige, and domination. So they attacked and attacked until at last they succeeded in doing away with him.

“If I am telling the truth, why do you not believe me?” Jesus asks at one point. He is so pure and simple that he seems completely amazed at our resistance to the truth. He proceeds to answer his own question: “Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not listen, because you do not belong to God” (John 8:47).

“If I am telling the truth,” Jesus asks us, “why do you not believe me?” He presumes we are interested in the truth, that we want to know the truth, that the truth is important to us.

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