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Because of some of my "truth" as I know it musings in a recent post, I thought I would post the following thoughts on the truth...what it is, if it can be believed and how the truth can sometimes actually harm us. Posted for your ponderments.....from the No Nonsense Guide to Enlightenment by Blair Warren
The Truth Shall Set You FreeFrom the No Nonsense Guide to Enlightenment A man with inoperable cancer decides to attend an event led by a wellknown faith healer as a last ditch hope to stay alive. Despite pleas from his family and his doctor to avoid the "charlatan," the man goes anyway. Though he is a little skeptical, he does feel a mysterious "something" go through his body when the preacher pronounces him cured.
The next day his doctor assures him the cancer is not only still there, but that it is, in fact, getting worse. But the man is confident he has been healed. He begins to exercise daily, take his medication faithfully and even thanks God every day for bringing him in contact with the healer who made this all possible. Though the doctor is correct, the cancer hasn't disappeared, the man's sudden zest for life and newfound hope is truly inspiring. The doctor had given him just three months to live, he has now made it over six months and there's no end in sight. But then one day the man sees a story on television that exposes the faith healer as a fraud. His doctor and family members call him to make sure he saw the story so that he could now know the truth. He assures them he did. He feels foolish and ashamed but within days the truth sets him free; he dies in his sleep.
Though I have doubts about faith healers myself, I told you this story to make an important point. While there are clearly times when we need to know the truth about what is going on in our lives, there are just as many times when the truth is the worst thing we can know. Was the faith healer "wrong" to give the man false hope? Well, since the man experienced a sudden and miraculous new zest for life and lived twice as long as had been expected, it is ard to say it was "wrong." But what about the others the faith healer treated who weren't so ucky? Now surely he was "wrong" to give them false hope. After all, they didn't receive any benefit.
Believing that something called “the truth" is the ultimate goal of enlightenment and that knowing it will set you free presents some interesting questions.
Who will decide what is ultimately true and how can we be sure they aren't lying to us? And once the "truth" is determined, how can we be certain there isn't another discovery just around the corner that will prove our current "truth" to be false? Can we ever know what is "really" true or can we only believe certain things to be true given our current understanding of reality?
And how do we address the issue of truth in art? If the goal of enlightenment is to discover “the truth,” that is, the model of thought that most accurately maps to physical reality, then wouldn’t a crystal clear photograph be more valuable than, say, a “sloppy” portrait by Van Gogh? Too bad Van Gogh didn't have a camera. He could have created a more valuable (i.e. more useful)work of art and saved himself a lot of time, and perhaps an ear, in the process. Of course this is ludicrous. There are times when a photograph is more “truthful” than a painting and vice versa. A police officer would probably find a suspect's photograph more "truthful" than an artist's rendition, whereas a patron of the arts would be the other way around. Who’s right? Whose “reality” is more true? Who knows. Who cares. Perhaps the better question is, whose “reality” is most useful at the moment?
So will the truth set you free? It can. But free from what? Just remember our hypothetical cancer patient and how well the truth served him. Perhaps there are times when a beautiful illusion beats reality hands down
2 comments:
"Who knows. Who cares. "
Well said!
"whose “reality” is most useful at the moment?"
Better said!
I liked the cancer victim story. Gives a different perspective about charlatans.
For me, the parable fails because had it not been for "the truth" to begin with, that the man had inoperable cancer, he would never have visited the charlatan to begin with. It fails because after hearing the man was a fraud, he somehow wasn't capable of understanding the real truth--that it was hope and optimism that kept him alive, not the fake "healing".
I always want to know "the truth". It isn't always easy to take; but I cannot know how to deal with something if I don't have the truth. Lies harm far more people than truth ever does.
I also find the example of a Van Gogh as compared to a photograph a bad analogy, because the Van Gogh is "the truth" of a man's heart and mind as to his perception of an object, person or scene--not the original object/person/scene itself. A painting of Van Gogh's irises isn't at all the truth in regard to irises, but very much reveals the truth of how the man Van Gogh, "saw" them.
There are times when the truth cannot be uttered; one pebble of truth can shatter the glass house someone has built around him/herself; and it could be that person's "house" is too fragile. Someone who suffers from dementia is sometimes better off humored, because the mind isn't capable of understanding or registering truth; and will leave the person even more confused. There is no "good thing" that comes from it, so there is no point in that case.
But there is nothing more cruel, in my opinion, than to withold the truth from someone who has the right to know it, and who can then make decisions based on it. What if the doctor had lied to the man to begin with? Never told him of his cancer? Would he have lived a long, normal life simply because he didn't know the truth? Most likely, the answer is no, and not one of us who is sane would want that. Just my ponderings on this. :) --rhonda
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