Truth

For the last two weeks I've been thinking about what I'd like to share with you today. I thought about it especially as I met last week with some of your friends in Mozambique in class discussion, over lunch and coffee at an outdoor café, and even walking the warm Indian Ocean beach. By the way, they send their greetings, and expect to be back home this week! I thought about what I'd like to share with you as Ellen and I shared breakfast with good friends in our favorite café in Harare Zimbabwe just Saturday morning. And I had a LOT of time to think about it during 40 hours of non-stop travel this weekend, including in the middle of the night, squeezed between Ellen and a South African nuclear engineer on the 17 hour flight from Johannesburg yesterday. I remember landing at that island in the mid-Atlantic Saturday night, but don't remember taking off from it again. And my body has no idea what time it is right now!

A number of thoughts have been pushing and pulling about in my mind. First, as you know, I like to talk about paradox; because I believe intellectual, moral, and spiritual life is generally more complex than it seems so I want Greenville graduates to know how to embrace both passionate commitment and careful self-criticism. That's what the liberating arts are about. But second, for the past year, I've also felt it's not enough just to talk about paradox in general. Instead I believe from time to time we must think carefully about the specific and often paradoxical virtues of character we are all working to develop. So over the past months I have spoken to you about Discipline, about Courage, and even about Grace. In fact in speaking to you a year ago this week my topic of Grace arose from a life-changing experience. Ellen and I had narrowly escaped death in an automobile accident a year ago tonight. Grace was also appropriate last year because of a third factor that has pushed and pulled about in my mind this week again. It was the Christmas season, even as it is now, and Christmas is surely about Grace….God's gift of grace in the amazing birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. So this week I've asked myself, “What paradoxical virtue might be appropriate for our reflection together this Christmas season? Love is an obvious candidate. It is certainly a virtue, certainly at the heart of Christmas, and is certainly often paradoxical. But my experiences of the past few weeks suggest another Christmas virtue instead. Christmas is about the arrival of God's grace and love; for Christ is grace and love in the flesh. But Christmas is also about the arrival of Truth, for Christ is the Way the Truth, and the Life. So I'd like to share with you a few thoughts about truth.

My conversations with South African, Mozambican, and Zimbabwean friends these past days have reminded me of that familiar saying that in, “In war, the first casualty is always truth.” The 20-year physical civil war in Mozambique is over and it's deeply satisfying to me to see the country for which I have prayed daily for ten years regaining stability and developing rapidly. Likewise the long South African struggle for majority rule has been won, and despite high crime rates and the huge task to reduce the gaps between rich and poor, the trends seem positive. But in Zimbabwe , where 15 years ago, Ellen and I took our children to live for 2 years, the picture is not so good. It is a jewel of a country, full of warm-hearted people, amazing animals, and mind-clearing landscapes to which we have become deeply attached. Yet for the past few years, beneath an external surface of “normalcy” there is a kind of war underway, growing more threatening each month. And it seems that truth has been the first among the victims that in one way or another sadly also include just about everyone; from long-term white residents to the poorest blacks.

In my conversations I found myself asking the same two or three questions over and over to everyone I met. “How do people survive with 600-800% inflation!?”, “How many Zimbabweans live outside the country; in self-imposed exile?”, “What is the HIV infection rate?”, “Is there food in the country to eat?”, “Are people being denied their legal and human rights to property and even safety?”, “How long before the 80-year old president of 20 years will step down?” I asked my white friends, my black friends, my Christian friends, and even some who were neither Christians nor especially my friends. While the picture that emerged is bleak regardless of what numbers you believe, the most discouraging thing to see was that no one seemed to be able to agree; even about what would seem to be fairly factual matters.

•  On inflation, the rate is at least 560% if you believe the outside press...or 800% if you believe my friend who is shadow minister of economics in the opposition party. While it's the worst in the world government officials point out it's only gotten bad since July and say things will change.

•  How do people survive when costs can double in a week, it can take a backpack to carry the bills needed to buy simple personal things, my friends do business with pickup trucks full of money, and salaries cannot possibly keep pace? Life-long retirement plans are worthless paying the equivalent of USD$10 per month, about the cost of a single shirt or blouse. One theory is that they survive on money earned by family and friends who work outside Zimbabwe and pass these earnings back in inflation-proof foreign currency like US dollars, British pounds, or South African Rands. This in turn raises the question of how many do this. I heard as few as 20% and as many as 35% of all Zimbabweans are in such “exile.” Another theory on how they survive says it's not foreign currency that keeps people going, but they are just “cutting back.” People cannot afford bus fares to come to work or walk for hours each day. Two former colleagues of mine, both with Ph.D.s and a life-time of experience cannot afford eggs or cheese and eat potatoes only once a month.

•  What about HIV? I have heard as few as 20% and as many as 40% of the population is infected. With life expectancy down dramatically to only 42 years and population growth the lowest in Africa and dropping fast, the number of AIDS orphans is said to be skyrocketing; yet I didn't see the crowds of street kids I was told I'd see.

•  On whether there is food, some despair that once a net exporter of food to Africa only 10 years ago, Zimbabwe now cannot feed itself and 800-1000 people are dying every day of starvation. Yet the streets of Harare are busy, filled with BMWs and Mercedes and SUVs, people are well-dressed, the stores are full, and unlike previous experience, Ellen and I had no beggars approach us…except two homeless white men…an amazing turnabout from older colonial days.

•  On the question of legal and human rights, some of my own friends share stories of illegal occupations of farms, groundless harassment or imprisonment, and physical beatings…even by police… Yet other friends serve in high places, wrestle with the moral dilemmas of helping their people while avoiding the taint of corruption themselves, and discount the horror stories. They point out that the picture is not that simple, and help me engage city officials who offer gracious hospitality and assistance to me as I explore Greenville study programs in Zimbabwe.

•  When will the president step down? He is under fire from the US for “stealing the election” in 2001 and Zimbabwe has been suspended by his own Commonwealth partners for disregard of the laws and unacceptable restraints on free press. Some say he could step down as early as this December when his ZANU party meets, or even on his birthday in February. Other friends who are politically active and very knowledgeable about Zimbabwe differed widely. Some told me 18 months without doubt, and others are preparing to join the exodus of multi-generational whites from that country in the belief it will be another 10 years before change comes.

It was amazing to me to see the variety of perspectives on what was happening; without any obvious way for me or for anyone to determine the truth! The government has mandated what most westerners view as unconscionable restraints on the press and public gatherings. Yet others reply they were laws enacted through the legal process of the country. Still others respond that the processes themselves are deeply corrupted and even the government disregards its own legal branch. As I told my friends as I neared the end of my visit, the only thing for certain was the deep and troubling uncertainty. Truth is the casualty of this economic, political, and cultural war.

If you permit a digression, when I tried to find the source of the statement that truth is the first casualty of war, I found not one, but EIGHT different “answers.” These included the Greek poet Aeschylus, Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, Arthur Ponsby, several unknown individuals, and most likely, either US Senator Hiram Johnson in a 1918 speech or Samuel Johnson in a 1758 magazine article. How ironic that even the truth about who first said truth is a casuality is itself a casuality!

So last week it was very appropriate that I should find myself meeting at 6am with Mandy, one of our GC students, to talk about “post-modernism” in Africa. Appropriate because post-modernism is all about this dilemma of truth. It's all about the tension, or call it the paradox, between believing there IS truth to be known and actually knowing WHAT that truth may be. Like the old story about several people holding different parts of an elephant and proclaiming only their perspective was the truth, the temptation is to hear the endless perspectives of my friends and throw up my hands and say there is no truth about Zimbabwe today.

Some would say that is precisely what the leadership of Zimbabwe wants to achieve. Because when truth is a casualty, only force remains. Fredrick Nietzsche described this situation by saying that when truth is lost, all that remains is the will to power. For those who wish to control others, especially for their own personal gain, the first step of war is deliberately to make truth the first casualty. Laws which prohibit open inquiry, prohibit open communication, prohibit dissent, leave everyone blind, destroy truth, and end in a battle for power. Some have said the deepest issue in Zimbabwe is not the economic turmoil…that could easily end with renewed investment. Nor is it political affiliations as there are good and bad in every people. But it is the loss of the rule of law when the ability to know the truth of what is really going on means law is replaced by power alone. Truth is the casualty.

But what is the paradox? And where is the Christmas story here?

The paradox comes in learning to know the truth without controlling it. As followers of Jesus Christ, and unlike many post-modernists, we do not abandon the idea that there is Truth, that in fact He IS the Truth, merely because we understand that in this life our understandings of this truth will vary. But as His followers we ARE post-modern because we recognize that there are perspectives and differing points of view; not only about Zimbabwean politics but about important issues even related to our faith. We accept this because the Bible tells us that “Now we see through a glass darkly,” and only then “face to face.” What this means is that we must be very careful not to substitute power or force for Truth. We risk doing this when we try to control the truth by insisting that our version of it is the only acceptable version. We are tempted to “package” the marvelous Truth of Christ; to control it, capture it, confine it, for fear we will lose it. But paradoxically, when we try to control the truth, confine it, restrict it; we lose it. In this life we cannot “own” the Truth. As with the political and economic wars of Zimbabwe , or Nietzsche's “will to power,” when in our petty daily human and often even religious wars for control we allow power to dominate, Truth is the first casualty.

The secret for handling this paradox is found in the Christmas story. That Christmas story is of course that Jesus Christ is the Truth. All of us have sinned and fall short of what God designed us to be. But God sent His only son to this world as an infant child, to live among us, full of grace and truth. By the sacrifice of His life, and His resurrection we can be put back into right relation with our Creator, with others, with the world, and even with our own selves. When this Truth comes into our lives, we are set free from the oppression that always arises when truth has been made a casualty of the “war” around us and within us.

Because the Christmas story tells us that Truth is not about a person but is a Person, our relationship to the truth should be different. It is easier to understand how to know truth without controlling it and killing it if Truth is a person. For most of us we can understand why we should not package, control, or even own another person, while nevertheless still knowing them well, even intimately. This faith in a person we call trust. So in this Christmas season, let us seek the virtue of Truth in our lives. In the cultural and community and personal wars we fight, let us know Him who is Truth. Let us trust Him. Let us work to avoid replacing Truth with power.