OH SAY WHAT IS TRUTH?

With just a minute or two spent in consulting your dictionary you can easily fathom what this 19^th Century British author was saying in his insightful poem Oh Say What is Truth?  It is especially relevant for our times (John Jaques, 1827-1900):

Oh say, what is truth? ‘Tis the fairest gem That the riches of worlds can produce,   And priceless the value of truth will be when The proud monarch’s costliest diadem Is counted but dross and refuse.

Yes, say, what is truth? ‘Tis the brightest prize To which mortals or Gods can aspire.  Go searching in the depths where it glittering lies, Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies: ‘Tis an aim for the noblest desire.

The scepter may fall from the despot’s grasp When with winds of stern justice he copes.  But the pillar of truth will endure to the last, And its firm-rooted bulwarks outstand the rude blast And the wreck of the fell tyrant’s hopes.

Then say, what is truth?  ‘Tis the last and the first, For the limits of time it steps o’er.  Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst, Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst, Eternal, unchanged, evermore. 

Interestingly, two millennia ago Pontius Pilate asked the same question, "what is truth," of Jesus but didn’t recognize that he was in the very presence of  the embodiment of The Truth or stay for the answer to his question (see John 18: 37-38; 14:6).  As Christ and His message was rejected by His people, and God’s prophets have been largely rejected (and thereby much of Truth rejected though it remains “Eternal, unchanged, evermore”), needful governance has been vested in what was left: to highly fallible men. 

  

Never in my lifetime (even in the schoolyard!) have I ever heard in the media such back-and-forth vitriol regarding truth and lies as it relates to the crises in our social and political life. The heart of this crises, though, is the corruption and failure of personal integrity of men in power, but not men in truth.  And it is the failure of those who put them in power or who allowed(s) them to stay.

In the 19^th Century, America was politically saved by a man of integrity, a great man, Abraham Lincoln, who didn’t purge God out of the equation or solution to America’s divisiveness. Likewise were the great men among our 18^th Century’s Founding Fathers who did not displace deity from their deliberations.  And likewise in the mid-20^th Century the Western world was saved by a great man, Winston Churchill, though not a stout Christian, but a stout believer that truth was the consummate weapon.  He used the power of truth and persuasion in his powerful radio messages to fortify his people and to move America to come in the nick of time to the rescue of  western Europe.  

Winston Churchill was able to save the West because he had truth on his side.  Truth—which includes the divine principles of honesty, of decency, of respect for life and for sovereignty and freedom.  And he had the guts and willingness to give his all--to stand against evil which was swallowing up the free world.  Churchill recognized eternal principles of truth which guided him and which transcended politics—and which enabled him with magisterial force to see when others could not, to speak when others would not, and to persuade a reluctant America with God’s imprimatur to do her duty.

Oh that the world had men today of that caliber today in Washington, in Moscow, in Pyongyang, in Damascus . . . .   

It cannot be said too often:  Come back to the foundational principles!  In the hurricane of words and lies today remains the eye of the hurricane, which is calm, which is The Truth—“an aim for the noblest desire.”