Picture of truth
Truth is like a tree. It’s rooted and it’s grounded, but it’s dynamic—not static. It’s always growing. Always changing. In the cold and cruel reality of suffering, truth loses the delicate parts of itself, becoming skeletal. But in the unhurried seasons of life, truth is proud to show you its new colors.
Truth is like a mountain. In a fertile time, it is clothed with new life. But in the winter of our pain, truth is stripped bare and bald-faced. Looking at the craggy rock, we start to concern ourselves with rockslides and avalanches, with fragile truths. Some truths “don’t hold up,” they say. The mountain remains.
Truth is like the sky. What we see of it is new each moment, but what we know of it never changes. Galileo had his mathematical formulas and theories about what’s going on up there, but we didn’t really know until we started sending things up. For millions of years we were her audience, now we are participants.
Truth is like our universe, ever expanding outward in complexity and depth from a single point. We are contained in it, and we are surrendered to it, but we barely understand it, and we will never know its end. Truth is on the march and cannot be stopped.
Truth is like the very big thing which is like the very little thing. I’m talking Theory of the Small. Quantum mechanics. You know, like how a particle becomes a wave at the moment of observation? I can’t explain why or how that happens, but neither can anyone else really. There are truths that require a second look. All is not as it seems, so look with fresh eyes.
Reality is not a computer and truth is not a coding language. It isn’t binary. Not ones and zeros. Black and white. Yes or no. Good or evil. Right or wrong. Right or left. Up or down. East or west. Male or female. Jew or Gentile. Slave or free. Most ‘belief’ is the act of making either/or decisions about a profoundly both/and reality. Belief alone can’t help us in gray areas, but truth can.
Truth is like a loving Father. I don’t know about your dad, but mine let me make my mistakes and then helped me learn from them. That’s truth. It isn’t so concerned about the little half-truths we all come to believe in response to suffering. But it won’t let us labor long under a lie. Lovingly, correction is always provided—truth even disciplines at times. And it gives good gifts.
Truth isn’t everything. Goodness and beauty have a say too. Truth, goodness, and beauty. Can anyone think of higher ideals than these?
Let’s pretend for a second that we believe these words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” I have questions.
By which virtue did he create it all? Truth, goodness, or beauty? In other words, what were God’s guiding principles in creation? In a moment of indecision, to which did he submit?—truth, goodness, or beauty? In other words, what’s God’s highest ideal? To whom does God yield? I’ll worship that!
Some say God is a sovereign ruler, a governor or King. The Law-giver. Others say God is love. Still others say God is a watchmaker—he wound this all up and stepped back to enjoy the show. Which is it?
If I endeavored to please God, believing that he is my creator, which of these would I make my ultimate ideal? Truth, goodness, or beauty? And to which does God appeal?
If God submitted himself to truth, sacrificing goodness and beauty, then I too should abandon the two, for they aren’t God’s greatest pleasure. If God chose goodness over beauty and truth then so should I. If God chose beauty to govern all things, I’ll submit myself to beauty at once.
Yet I see all three as equals in my world. Truth is at work everywhere, it’s like Law. Like the logical law of non-contradiction. The statement ‘A’ isn’t both ‘A’ and ‘non-A’ at once. We wouldn’t book a flight if we didn’t trust the truth of the logical law of non-contradiction, lest our plane end up inhabiting the same runway space as another. Chaos.
Goodness is at work everywhere too. Particles pair with particles. Atoms with atoms. Cells with cells. At every stage, there is unity. At every stage, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Families are greater than individuals. Communities are greater than families. Nations and states are greater than communities. The kingdom of God transcends borders. And good returns good one-hundred times over. A small act of kindness saves someone’s life every day. Compound interest is raising the world’s wealth; we’ve woven the bread basket that could feed everyone and soon.
Is there anything at all that can be written about beauty? Words fall short. Co-equal with her sisters truth and goodness, but she got all the looks. She’s the goddess and we’re her initiates, taken in by her glow. She walks in gentle breezes, picking up and setting right as she goes. She twirls her dress—we play audience to her impromptu ballet. Is she the one who governs us all? She certainly has our attention. We delight in her splashes of color. Her melodic birdsongs are the soundtrack to our joy. Her simultaneous symmetry and spontaneity... at these we marvel.
When God made the tree, to whom did he submit? Truth, can you tell me how to make a tree step-by-step? Goodness, what do you know of deep roots? Beauty, my Beauty, are you more than a decorator?
We have a real problem if we assume God created the heavens and the earth.
A god who submits to any one guiding principle in creating is no God at all. Give me truth, I’ll worship that as God. Tell me the highest ethic is goodness, I’ll pursue that instead. Let me indulge in every beauty—she will be my Goddess.
We have truth-worshipers already. We call them religious zealots, fanatics, Pharisees, fundamentalists, bookworms, teacher’s pets, and helicopter moms. They mind the rules. And they’re miserable! The zealot is compassionless, the fundamentalist toils in his secret sins, the bookworm confuses the menu for the Meal, the teacher’s pet graduates to new masters, helicopter moms are full of shame—always on the verge of being found to be frauds. The Law only serves to show us we are condemned.
And we have goodness-worshipers. We call them do-gooders, try-hards, reformers, proselytizers, missionaries, SJWs, and martyrs. They pursue peace, but they’re miserable too! Do-gooders grow resentful when the good isn’t recognized, try-hards make clowns of themselves to be loved, a reformer is never accepted in his hometown, proselytizers get the door slammed in their faces, missionaries appear opportunistic in photos with all those little black kids, SJWs abandon all presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and martyrs are by definition killed for doing good. One thing I know: We can’t be justified in our good works if our motives don’t match. Surely the heart counts.
We have beauty-worshipers too, and before you ask, they’re everywhere, and yes, they’re also miserable. You’ll find them in bathroom mirrors, in front-facing cameras, at the television another hour, or out back doubled-over and covered in vomit. These are the users and the abusers, the entertainers, the entertained, the pacified, the colorless, the drained. We’re made zombies by all that we enjoy, because we never learned how to say enough. These are our drunks, our pigs, our deviants, our ascetics in rejection of the world, our dispossessed. It’s the girl who doesn’t like what she sees in the mirror and the boy who really likes what he sees walking by. You’ll find them drinking the world dry, believing that there’s not enough to go around and making that a self-fulfilling prophecy by virtue of their own insecurity. To worship the beautiful is to rape the world.
So, are truth, goodness, and beauty not God’s guiding principles, then? Or did he not create all of this? And which of these ideals should be my own? I’ll answer that question first.
If truth is my highest aim, I’ll use my books of the Law to brow-beat the ignorant. If goodness is my highest aim, I’ll abandon due process and execute my swift judgments. If beauty is my highest aim, have I any need for Law or compassion at all? The first makes me cruel, the second makes me undiscerning, and the third makes me slave to shifting baselines.
How can we say God created the world if we don’t first acknowledge, by what or by whom could God create at all?
What if truth, goodness, and beauty are co-equals in this world? Our highest aims, God’s guiding principles. How can we live in a perfect balance, never perverting any one of the three? Could God?
And what does this three-fold meta-ethic tell me about evil, about pain and suffering? Is evil still the absence of good, in a reality where truth and beauty have equal shares with goodness? Truth can be hard to hear; is truth the opposite of goodness? Truth is evil? That can’t be right. What do we do when truth and goodness are at odds? Do we choose the Law or love?
And where did these three virtues come from? Did they come from God? Is there a God? Who or what is God? Are there any higher virtues than truth, goodness, and beauty?
Goodness is like a tree. The good is rooted, but it’s dynamic, not static. It’s always growing. Always changing. In the cold and cruel reality of suffering, a bit of the good is lost. Leaves fall. But in the unhurried seasons of life, goodness is proud to show you new colors.
Beauty is like a tree. The beautiful is rooted. Dynamic, though, not static. It’s always growing. Always changing. In the cold and cruel reality of suffering, we lose sight of what is beautiful. But when I’m so inclined to look: New colors.
Goodness and beauty are like mountains. In the winter of our pain, these are stripped bare and bald-faced, too. Looking at those pieces jutting out, we start to concern ourselves with rockslides and avalanches, with the good that doesn’t last, with the beauty that fades. Some loves and some looks just “don’t hold up” with time. But the mountain remains.
Truth, goodness, and beauty are a loving Father. He sets the rules, he sets a Table, he makes our home.
Truth is Law. The Hebrews believed we are created and sustained by a word from God’s mouth, so God’s Word is their Law. Truth is normative. The Greeks believed that aletheia (real reality, prime reality, the truest truths) emerged from logos (discourse, words). Could it be that both are right? Could all of reality have emerged by God’s decree?
Goodness is love and charity and compassion. It’s situational. The Father lays down his Law, the Son comes to fulfill it, reforming our understanding of it, and abolishing it when mercy triumphs over judgment. To the rule-followers, he said, “Let he who is perfect among you be the one to cast the first stone.” What the Law could not do, serving only to show us our mistakes, God did by sending his Son. Regardless of whether or not you believe God exists, it cannot be denied that the first-century Hebrew rabbi named Jesus made his ministry about goodness. He gave us the Golden Rule. We killed him. Most well-documented event in human history.
If the Father lays down the Law and the Son picks it back up, then what of the Spirit? Is God three-in-one like the Christians believe?
The Spirit is first introduced to us in Holy Scripture in the verse following, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It goes on to say, “and the earth was all wild and waste, chaotic nothing, and the Ruach Elohim hovered over the surface of the deep.” The Breath of God, Ruach Elohim. And what’s she doing?
She’s almost adrift in the uncreated, hovering between the inky blackness above and below. Chaos above, wasteland below. The Hebrews taught that she keeps one foot in chaos and the other in order. She floats and flutters and spins as she experiences the newness of God’s creation. She is the animating Spirit bringing life, the Breath. Wherever life is found, there she is. Jesus calls her our Comfort. She is what connects me to my brothers and sisters. She delivers my messages to God in a language all our own. She is the beauty behind all beauties, perfectly painting a world of symmetry and spontaneity all at once.
In the triune nature of God, called the Holy Trinity, one essence with three persons who are each God in their own right, the Bible gives us a worthy meta-ethic. It isn’t the impersonal, immutable, impassable, or imperceptible god of philosophy. That god has no personality. It’s an unguided force. How could an unguided force perfectly balance and never once pervert the virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty in creating? A being must have Being. The Being of God is truth, goodness, and beauty. Father, Son, and Spirit. Normative, situational, experiential. Law, love, life-force. Head, hands, heart.
Quickly, I’ll give you four alternatives:
Believe in the yin and yang of cosmic dualism, and there’s no reason to do good (evil will naturally undo all your acts). The idea of karma only works if you transcend, and to reach transcendence you have to die, so you’ll never see the result of the good you did and you’ll never see evil met with justice.
Believe in western philosophy and you have a real conundrum. Because what’s rationalism, empiricism, and transcendentalism except just a rebranding of the Trinity? Rationalism: Logic tells me everything I need to know (normative). Empiricism: My senses tell me everything I need to know (situational). Transcendentalism: I go with my gut (experiential). Rationalism taken to its logical end found Descartes locked in an oven. Empiricism taken to its logical ends caused Darwin’s marriage to fall apart and Nietzche to wait out the rest of his days in the corner of his room, afraid to walk through doors for fear that all reality would collapse in on him. Transcendentalism has the highest body count by suicide among philosophers. They found themselves raping the world.
In the Trinity, we have a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit working together to co-equally promote the virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty. In his Being, these virtues can co-exist in harmony. In historical Christianity, we find the spiritual practices that lead to an experience with the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.
My practice of Christianity is very different from most. But that doesn’t matter. The reasons I practice are:
Everyone worships something
The worship of any one of our highest ideals in Western philosophy leads to further suffering
To conclude, God is like a tree. He’s rooted and he’s grounded in what is true, but he’s dynamic—not static—always working good into our world. Spreading seeds and growing up “like a tender sapling, like a root out of parched ground.” In the cold and cruel reality of suffering, he shades me, shelters me, and provides me warmth. She‘s with me in the garden of life, she shows me new colors every day. She and I have our own language, my initials are forever carved in the tree of life.