What is Truth?

Part two of the previous thought -- remember, that reference to having that epiphany right before the epistle. As a quick aside, am I the only person that takes out the iPhone to make notes when they think of things in church? I'm reasonably convinced the parishioners think I'm an addled internet text addict. Well, it's that or using the little children's doodle pads and the tiny golf pencils (which I do regularly).

So I'm still tumbling the idea about how to prove that we didn't just start believing friends over media because of Al Gore, and Lowell Grisham goes into a sermon on what is truth based on John 18:33-37 (the passage where Jesus is questioned by Pilate).

Lowell's an interesting Episcopal priest -- from Oxford, Miss., (I think the last name is a coincidence with the author of same surname) and we usually aren't on the same side of things politically, but he's a thought-provoker (which, after all, is what you're looking for in a priest).

So he's working Yeats ("Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold") into his sermon, and goes into this dissection of what is truth. See how that plugs into the earlier idea?

He points out that in uncertain times, "people love objective truth -- the truth of prescriptive authority." Lowell comes up with a different trinity: "Three traditions of truth confront Jesus -- the objective truth of the book; the truth that power claims; the abstract truth of the rational."

Now, to be fair, you can jump over and read where Rev. Grisham is going in the rest of his sermon. I got stuck on this truth triple.

Certainly applies to the idea of when and where we began to doubt the "objective truth" of the written word in the newspaper. Often, that media truth is in variance with the "truth that power claims" as the politician, coach, player or subject of investigation wants to cast doubt or provide a different explanation for the same facts.

So what of the "abstract truth of the rational"? Can that be the validation of the masses, the opinion of your friends, the verification from Facebook? Answer, I have not. More questions, I certainly do.