100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain (20 page)

What Is the Truth?

The Hebrew word for truth,
emeth
, is used for many other notions which, if practiced, bring the truth with them.
Emeth
also means “perseverance,” “reliability,” or “faithfulness.” It is impossible to attain the truth without possessing these qualities as well. Persevere in forgiveness and humility, enable God to rely on your self-denial, and you will not have to seek truth. It will seek you.

A girl had an illegitimate child. Wishing to shield her lover from the anger of her father, she accused the pastor of being the guilty one. The girl’s father came to church one Sunday morning with the baby, thrust it into the arms of the pastor and shouted, “Here, villain, take your bastard. You are a whoremonger.” Astonished, the congregation waited for the pastor to defend himself. Instead he caressed the child and said, “So be it! What a beautiful boy. I will give him all my love.” From then on the congregation shunned him. Earning his living by manual labor, he cared for the child. After many years, the girl felt remorse and confessed the truth to her father. The following Sunday the father publicly apologized to the former pastor who now sat on a bench in the rear of the church. “I apologize. I have been misguided; you are completely innocent,” the father said. The pastor replied, “So be it. A handsome boy. I really like him. He is mine.” Still not a word in his own defense; no explanation!

Faithfulness to the One who, when reviled, did not revile in return, who was silent before Pilate, though accused of the worst crimes. Men like this have the privilege of truth in religious matters.

But how much truth do they have?

What did Jesus mean when He said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6)?

We have the truth in matters that can be repeated experimentally or about facts that can be documented unchallengeably. We have certain truths in mathematics, physics, etc. In most matters, objective truth is still beyond our reach.

A person must be very daring to assert that he has the final objective truth in religion. Northern Europe is Lutheran; the Southwest is Catholic; the East, Orthodox; India, Hindu; and the Middle East, Moslem. Can truth be geographically conditioned?

The most murderous influence in religious history has been the assumption of objective truth in religion. We have to live with relative truth, accepted by our minds as the result of long heritage, education, circumstances of life, and the interplay of historical events. As in other domains, we must rely largely on probability in some religious matters, too.

Some have broken with their heritage and have converted from other religions to Christianity. But how many religions did one examine before becoming a Christian? Converts are also limited in their choices. Biblical religion was inherited, not a matter of personal choice. Such expressions as “personal acceptance of Christ” or “a personal Savior” do not occur in the Scriptures. One cannot even find the word “personal.” This may seem strange for modern believers who scoff when a man is Catholic or Protestant simply because it is the religion of his parents, without a personal search for the truth.

Biblical religion was also collective. One belonged first to a nation into which one was born, the Jewish nation. Later one belonged to a collectivity, the church, which was advised to “bring [children] up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), not leaving them to make the impossible choice among hundreds of religions when they became mature. Jude sets as our aim not a personal but a “common salvation” (Jude 3). At maturity you consciously adhere to what has been infused into you since birth.

Abraham’s son Ishmael was circumcised at the age of thirteen by his own consent. Another son, Isaac, received circumcision at the age of eight days, according to God’s commandment. He decided nothing. His parents chose to enter him into the covenant with the Creator.

Reason made Ishmael practice a rite. Reason later caused him to mock his brother, the bearer of God’s promises. Isaac received his religion not by personal choice, but through God’s grace as bestowed upon a family called to become a great nation. He was God’s choice. He possessed the truth.

Jesus is the truth in the sense that He always embodied the truth He taught. Jesus was
identical
with the road He walked, completely satisfied with the life He led. Therefore He is the life.

We, on the other hand, are often in conflict with the truth we recognize; we hate the ways we have chosen for ourselves, or to which existence has led us, and we are dissatisfied with our lives. In contrast with this sinful attitude of ours, Jesus embodies complete acceptance of what God allotted to Him as human knowledge and a way of life. He had no inner conflict about the problems of existence. Let us follow Him in this.

If we can be faithful and persevere in following the small truths we know, the greater truth will gladly come to abide in us.

The Legitimacy of Questioning

The Bible is full of questions to ask God. Jeremiah asks, “Why do You forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?” (Lamentations 5:20). The book concludes without answer, with the discouraging words, “…unless You have utterly rejected us, and are very angry with us!” (verse 21).

Woe to a faith that does not question. Reason questions everything it sees and hears. Only a reason undedicated to God does not question who He is and what He does and what His intentions are. The answers we receive are as inconclusive as those of science. If matter and its constituent particles, the atoms, are mysterious, the more so is God, their Creator. He has given us a revelation that would not be worthy of Him if it were not also enigmatic.

The whole of reality can be comprehended only with the whole of our being. When we try to understand it with so small a part of ourselves as the intellect, it is unavoidable that we fail.

What is our relationship to God? Has He predestined everything? If so, what is our responsibility?

Jesus tells the parable of the sower. “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside,…some fell on a rock,…some fell among thorns,…others fell on good ground” (Luke 8:5–8). The harvests were brought in accordingly. In succeeding verses of the same chapter, it is revealed that the different types of ground symbolize different types of men.

We have been made to live in different circumstances with different innate characteristics, more or less favorable to spiritual development. Before ever sinning ourselves, we have been sinned against through the genes transmitted to us, through erroneous upbringing, or through others’ mistakes. Other people, through no seeming merit of their own, have been privileged in heredity, education, and experiences of the world.

God said, “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated” (Romans 9:13)—when the children were not yet even born, “nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election may stand (verse 11). This means that the essential character (the seed) and the conditions (the soil) are determined.

But if we are destined to fall by the wayside where the fowls of the air can devour the seed, since we have been created with intelligence, could we not erect a scarecrow and save ourselves? If arid soil has been our allotment, could we not irrigate and fertilize?

It is natural that human reason questions whether everything is predestined or if there exists a bit of space for free will.

It is normal to ask questions and normal to shrink back from the depths these questions open. We will never fathom them completely. Therefore, although we continue to ask, we seek no answers in this life to all the questions, but just trust in a God of love.

If we can also rejoice in the fact that we have no answers, this shows we have reached the great truth known, alas, by few: the whole universe and all of life are great question marks. There can be no replies in this world, but only in the next.

A child in elementary school sometimes asks amazingly profound questions, the answers to which cannot begin to be understood until the child reaches the university.

Let us wait patiently for life eternal and in the meantime let us act vigorously in love. All the whys and ifs will not help. Ask instead, “What can I do?” and “How can I improve on what I am?”

One of the answers you will receive at once is: “Rejoice about the existence of ever-to-be-asked and never-to-be-answered questions, about the whys and whethers. They are proof that we are not made only for earthly life but for eternity. For the time being, let it be with us as it is in the life of trees. To their questions, branches respond with flowers and fruits, not with words. Make roses blossom even on your crosses.”

Is the First Chapter of the Bible Wrong?

God said, “Let there be light” on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:3). Critics disparage the Bible on this account, asserting that there cannot be light without the sun, which did not appear until the fourth day. But God, who could make the glowworm, phosphorescent matter, and the aurora borealis, could surely cause light before making the sun.

Upon close examination, the words about the creation of light on the first day have a deeper sense, as does the whole first chapter of the Bible. I reproduce below the opening passage in Hebrew with the word-for-word translation in English:

This is the word-for-word translation except for et, a word that has no English equivalent. This was originally written in Hebrew with the mute sound
aleph
and the
tav
, which is like our “t.” The vocalizations were added in the Hebrew Bible only after many centuries.
Aleph-tav
could also stand for ot, in which case the sentence would read, “In the beginning God created; a sign of this creation would be the heavens, and another sign, the earth.” Such a translation would rightly convey the sense of the text, but would be open to question because, although
ot
can be written as “v,” it is usually written
aleph-vav-tav
.

If we do not accept this explanation of the word
et
, the problem of its meaning remains. The renowned Jewish medieval commentator Ibn Ezra says, “The particle et signifies the substance of the thing.” Another Jewish scholar, Kimchi, agrees, adding that
aleph
and
tav
are the first and last letters of the alphabet.
Et
therefore indicates the beginning and end of all things (like the alpha and omega in Greek).

The meaning of the Bible’s first sentence is then, “In the beginning God created the substance of heaven and earth.” The Syriac version conveys this idea. St. Ephrtem the Syrian’s interpretation is along these lines, too. Perhaps God did not create a finished universe, but its essence, open to development. Such an interpretation would elucidate the problem of the creation of light on the first day.

Nothing has a greater velocity than light. Thus God started the essence of the universe by creating the entity with the greatest speed.

God said, “Let there be light,” that is, “Let us hurry with great speed toward the perfect kingdom!”

Later God said, “Let there be a firmament” (Genesis 1:6). The word “firmament” suggests some kind of fixed vault dividing the skies from earth. The Hebrew text here uses the word
rakiah
, best translated “expanse,” because it has as its root a verb that means “to stretch out.” This rendering of the word
rakiah
also ties in with the notion of a universe created in its essence. Far from suggesting a firm vault, the idea of
rakiah
is a splendid presentiment of the modern theory according to which the universe is continually expanding, stretching out.

If a source of light is becoming nearer to you, then the whole spectrum of the light is shifted toward the violet; if the source is becoming more distant, then the whole spectrum is shifted toward the red, like the pitch of a train whistle that changes according to whether the train is approaching or receding.

The nearest cluster of stars, which is about 43 million light-years away, and which contains about 2,500 galaxies, has a shift corresponding to a speed of recession from us of 750 miles per second. The most distant cluster so far investigated has a red shift over one hundred times as great, corresponding to a speed of recession that is almost half the speed of light.

Thus does science report exactly what the Bible says, “[God] created the heavens and stretched them out” (Isaiah 42:5).

The first chapter of the Bible is right. God created the
rakiah
. Moreover, the fact that the story of creation starts with the making of light before the sun proves the divine authorship of the Bible, for no human author would want to create such difficulties for himself.

About Prayer

Jesus taught us to “cry out day and night to God” (Luke 18:7). However, God should not be likened to some unrighteous judge from whom justice can be obtained only by wearing him out with insistent pleas.

Why is it written, “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:38)? If He is full of love, why does He not simply provide the laborers without waiting for our prayer?

We pray in order to obtain clarity. Only a life of prayer will teach you that neither questioning God nor theology have any part in prayer. Prayer will teach you to pass your life in silence, at the bosom of a God whom we cannot fully understand.

When extreme need or threat arises, it is good to cry out. Nobody whispers when threatened by a dragon. God says to Samuel, “Their cry has come to me” (1 Samuel 9:16). If the cry is missing, the realization of our great danger in this valley is missing. But after the cry the silence returns.

It was a biblical custom to ask for signs from God. Jonathan tells his armor bearer, “If [the Philistines] say thus to us, ‘Wait until we come to you,’ then we will stand still in our place…But if they say thus, ‘Come up to us,’ then we will go up. For the Lord has delivered them into our hand” (1 Samuel 14:9,10). Ask for certain concrete things, as Jonathan asked for guidance in initiating a battle against his enemy. Make it clear what sign you wish and consider receiving the sign as guidance. You can even ask for answers to concrete questions as David does in 1 Samuel 23:10–12.

Let prayer for others, even for great sinners, be one of defense. Rabbi Nehemiah said, “When the Israelites constructed and worshiped the golden calf, Moses sought to appease God’s anger, saying, “Lord of the universe, they have made an assistant for You. Why should You be angry with them? This calf will assist You: You will cause the sun to shine and the calf will cause the moon to shine; You will take care of the stars and the calf will take care of the planets; You will cause the dew to fall and the calf will make the winds to blow; You will cause the rain to fall and the calf will cause vegetation to sprout.” The Holy One, praised be He, said to Moses, “You are making the same mistake that the people are making! This calf is not real!” Moses then replied, “If that is so, why should You be angry with Your children?” (Exodus Rabbah).

Let your words with God also be wise and convincing.

A man can pray in any decent bodily position. For instance, Elijah put his face between his knees, which is possible only after much physical exercise (1 Kings 18:42).

Use your eyes in prayer. I do not know how the custom of closing your eyes in prayer arose. Jesus’ habit was to lift them. The bridegroom in Solomon’s song says to his bride, “You have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes” (4:9). (“Having ravished the heart” is expressed by the single Hebrew word levavtini, which is the strongest word for uniting two hearts.)

Jesus is attentive to our eyes while we pray. He observed that a tax collector “would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven,” knowing his own sinfulness, and says, “This man went down to his house justified” (Luke 18:13,14).

At other times, believers show God great love through the expression in their eyes. Learn to use your eyes correctly in your communion with God and with men.