Truth is always Stranger

Tertullian once said “I believe because it is absurd”. It is the strangeness of an idea— it’s undeniable texture and inconsistent density— which is a hallmark of its truthfulness, and not the smoothness and consistency of an idea. The old quip that “truth is stranger than fiction” has much in common with Tertullian here. Fictions have smoothness and consistency, clear beginnings and symmetrical endings. But reality makes twists and turns which, while they do not contradict reason, neither can they be predicted by reason. Real things are irreducible, and defy being fully encapsulated in a conceptual system, to be rendered completely predictable, and hence controllable. 


Thus there is always a gap of difference and otherness between reality, and our explanation of it. So if a Truth claim makes the claim that it is a complete and coherent explanation of Reality, it most certainly is false, in part or in whole. Rather Truth claims are fingers pointing to Reality but not circumscribing or containing Reality. Thus in Christianity Truth is found not in a system of propositions, but embodied in the Person of Jesus. For Jesus does not say "These ideas of mine are Truth", or "Scripture is Truth", or even "My Teachings are Truth" (although, clearly, they are all true in the sense that they point to the Truth).

Rather, Jesus says "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (cf. John 14.6). He is Truth embodied. Jesus can be pointed to, embraced, exalted, and participated in. But He cannot be contained in words, for He is the embodiment of The Word from which all words pour forth. Our words and sacraments point to him and participate in him, but they can never contain him. It may be strange to think of Truth as a Person, rather than a set of Propositions. But the Truth is always strange and unpredictable.

For instance, think of the Truth we find in empirical sciences. We start with nice solid matter, such as trees and rocks and organisms. And then we ask what makes them what they are. After centuries of trial and error (because the Truth about the basic elements of matter is not at all simple) we stumble upon a strange yet rationally ordered set of basic elements which describe the atoms which make up the molecules which make up matter. But then we do something strange. We ask what makes up the atoms. Suddenly we are thrown into the strange and non-intuitive quantum world of sub-atomic particles. Which in turn leads us down the rabbit hole of quarks and multiple dimensions and probability functions. And suddenly you find yourself observing the strange Truth of Matter: Matter dissolves into something ethereal like mathematics and pattern and pure form, rather than the solidity we take for granted each day.

Truth is strange.

Or think about the Truth of how humans came onto the scene in the first place. Most ancient cultures embraced a fairly simple and common sense approach to this question: We were created by something or someone supernatural. But over centuries of stumbling and bumbling and testing and re-testing, we have come to a startling and surprising conclusion about the emergence of intelligent life. We evolved. Life follows a rational structure and process over time that leads, via natural selection, to an amazing number of forms of life. And at first glance this seems to do away with the simplistic answer of a Creative Power at the start of all things. But then biological evolution throws us back into cosmic evolution, and questions ranging from the origin of time and space, to the nature of matter and energy, to the incredibly fine tuned set of circumstances that allowed life to survive and thrive and flourish and evolve on this particular planet. Ultimately it leads us back to a Great Singularity which is beyond all time and space and matter and energy, yet which causes them all and regulates them with rational patterns. 

Truth is strange.

And then we come to philosophers and theologians and mystics who have pondered the deep meaning and value of our existence. They ask questions like "Why should there be something rather than nothing?" or "Who or what would a non-contingent Being be like which could cause all contingent beings?" And you suddenly get subtle and strange answers like the Christian Holy Trinity, or the Hindu Brahman manifest in countless forms, or the Buddhist Emptiness which fills all things, or the Muslim transcendence of Allah who is beyond all words, or the Jewish "I AM who I AM". And some people try to make this simple by refusing to listen to any nonsense which is not proven empirically (forgetting that most of the things which make life interesting and worth living are not empirical). Yet others try to make this simple by saying that only one of these answers are Truth, and all others are damnable lies. But none of these over-simplifications seems to satisfy the human soul.

Because, Truth is strange.

So, I will not advance some kind of broad sweeping theory of exactly how it all fits together, because I don't have that capacity. But I do have the capacity to follow some bread crumbs through the amazing maze we call history. And what I can see-- some days more clearly than others-- is that the bread crumbs converge in one person who somehow embodies the fullness of what is good and true and beautiful in life. And that person is Jesus of Nazareth. To say this does not diminish or deny the insights we gain from the scientists and philosophers and mystics. Rather it is to say that what is best in their insights is embodied and made complete in this unique-- and dare I say strange-- person who is said to be the fullness of God incarnate (cf. Colossians 1.15-20).

In his own incomplete way (and aren’t we all incomplete) the Buddha warned of the problem of Truth and language. He said to beware that when we point to the moon, we don’t confuse our fingers with the moon we point toward. Thus we may use words to point to Truth, so long as we do not confuse our words for the Truth, and thus build conceptual idols which masquerade as God. And the most tempting idols are the conceptual systems that claim to have it all explained away, predicted, and controlled for our pleasure and profit and power. These systems streamline Reality, making it simple and smooth. But as Tertullian shows, and C.S. Lewis reiterated, Reality is rarely smooth and never simple. 

So beware of simple explanations. Idols lurk just beneath simplistic veneers. Reality may be rational, but it is a strange and unpredictable rationality.