It was enough to make me stop in my tracks as it caught my eye walking through the office yesterday — the Time magazine cover – “Is Truth Dead?” That is, of course, what a good magazine cover is supposed to do. It worked. I stopped and read the article, and thought about it long enough to look into some commentary on it after I got home. This is perhaps my favorite commentary from Jacquelynn Floyd:
“Truth isn’t dead. You can’t kill gravity, you can’t kill science. Objective reality exists, whether you choose to believe it or not. The cold universe of facts doesn’t care.
But truth is taking an awful beating. It’s staggering and gasping for breath; its brow is furrowed with dismay that it has turned out to be so easily ignored.”
Floyd is correct. Truth remains, and it always will be. Yes, we will, always will, have lively debate about what is and is not true regarding some issues, but that doesn’t diminish the reality that there are truths. Even if “easily ignored” they remain truths. I am reminded of something we regularly used to (and still do occasionally) tell our kids – Pretending something is not true doesn’t make it not true.
It occurs to me that the nuns of my youth, though wrong on some things, were correct on this front. There is value to truth. There always will be value in truth, even if and when it is ignored. No, truth is not dead. But Floyd is correct, it “is taking an awful beating.” Lord, please help me from becoming one of the perpetrators, the co-conspirators in the death of truth. And if I may be so bold, help me step in, where appropriate, as appropriate, and give truth some protection.
It occurs to me... 