"You can't handle the truth!" The colonel in A Few Good Men yells this line as though the truth could absolutely squash this pesky prosecuting attorney. But the truth he unveils - about his compliance in the wrongful death of two young men - squashes him instead. I wonder what he was thinking. Did he confuse his own high ranking with that of the judge? Did he think that higher rank and more experience make us more qualified to handle condemning truth? Either way, for all he claimed to know about truth, it proved to be way more than even he could handle. Poor Jack.
Poor us too. The bad news for him is hardly any better for us. Truth is one of those imposing words. It will show me what I'm made of, but not in a way that will make me better. R.R. Reno is a rock-climber and a theology professor. In an essay about rock climbing, he shares about climbing down a steep rock face. The great terror facing him and his friend is described as the bergschrund, a yawning crevasse at the base of a mountain. "The glacier below moaned like a despairing prisoner kept in the deepest dungeon of a distant fortress. A quite real chunk of ice broke free a couple hundred feet to our right and dropped with a roar into the gaping moat below...as I leaned out and went over the edge I could see into the dark depths of the bergschrund. It was filled with the debris of ice blocks that had avalanched from above." (75) Truth seems to me like bergschrund. Merciless. You fall into its arms and it will not catch you. In fact, the faster you fall into it, the more messed up you'll be. Shattered on the rocks of the truth.
Who can handle truth? Who is good enough to deal it out to the rest of us? In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, a list was made of prominent political men for whom the pursuit of truth and right and wrong in politics did not protect them from failures of truth within their own marriages. It was a long list. Various reports surrounding abuse scandals in general and specifically with the Scottish cardinal's resignation this week remind us that people are good at keeping one another's secrets. It is no wonder that Pilate in bewilderment asked Jesus, "what is truth?" What else is it, indeed, than a yawning pit we try our best to avoid?
Of course, this is no secret to the Scriptures. "If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?" (Psalm 130:3) But there is a humility here that is not terrified of being broken by the truth. What if we didn't hate the truth and try our best to avoid it, but delighted to make it known? Jesus says, "Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." I'll be the first to admit that I'm scared to face the truth. OK, actually that's a lie. Maybe I'd be the third or fourth person to admit that. I'd much prefer a few people to admit that before I step forward to admit it. But if Christians pretend they are anything other than wretched sinners saved only by the mercy and grace of God, the true love of God is not being shown. What is being communicated is still a works-based, "try and pull it together" confidence in ourselves, and not in God. Instead, we can pray, "Tell me the truth, God. Tell me the truth about my sin, how deep and wide it is. Don't hide any of it from me. But show me how enormous the gospel is, how it swallows up evil and death and makes all things new. Tell me the truth about both."
Frankly, it isn't an easy prayer to pray, is it? Truth hurts. But the good news is that Christ knows it hurts. He was in the garden the night before he died, praying that there might be some other way humanity could be redeemed other than the cross. And he gladly went and finished it all, claiming God's victory over all sin and evil. He handled the truth that we couldn't. He fell into the yawning crevasse - the bergschrund - that would have broken us instead. And if we love Jesus for doing this for us, he will lead us beyond whatever hard truths we have to face in this world - whether it is about our health, relationships, manners, habits, or anything else. They don't have to cripple us anymore. The truth has been handled. The judge himself has taken our sentence for us. Nothing remains but to pledge our love and devotion to Christ - and in doing so we leap high over every dark bergschrund that remains beneath us.
1) When was a time that the truth made you so happy you could rejoice? When was a time when you wished the truth wasn't really true?
2) Blaise Pascal once said, "unless we love the truth, we cannot know it." How do you think loving the truth helps us to actually know it?
3) What is something 'true' you could tell somebody that would absolutely make their day?
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