Love of Truth

A meditation for September 2003

The fourth of the Great Ends of the Church is “The Preservation of the truth.”

I recently heard a sermon on the preservation of the truth which left me shaking my head! How can one speak of truth, especially taking thirty minutes to expound on the subject, without a single reference to love or to the Holy Spirit?

We are promised the gift of the Holy Spirit and we are told this Spirit will lead us into all truth. Faithful disciples will discover, I believe, that truth is much more than a doctrine or certain principles which we feel compelled to defend. And when it comes to preservation of the truth, we are called to go beyond treating truth as some kind of historic landmark or relic. Truth is alive as God is alive, moving among us and within us, and always before us, inviting us to follow and to find.

Truth is less something we possess and more something that possesses us. Believers through the centuries have discovered too that the deepest and most compelling truth is the truth we meet in person and in persons. When love binds us in heart and mind to another, we are on the way to receiving the Word that God would speak to us.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Isn’t being his disciple the surest route to where we may walk the walk, talk the talk, and live the life that God has prepared for every truth-seeker?

Love of Truth

Look with me at the gifts of the Spirit and I will show you one of the great ends of the Church:
“The preservation of the truth.”

If I speak of truth as frozen in creeds or as inspired from on high, but I define truth without a love for truth, I am heard singing a noisy song, off key. I discern with a dull mind and divide with a dull tool.

And if I have the power to describe the future’s face, to explain new theology, and to probe the mysteries of old confessions; and even if my orthodoxy shines, but I do not seek truth’s preservation with love, I serve no great end.

If I set my heart on truth-seeking, without acknowledging truth’s call to me to speak and act in love, my truth will prove to be a dead body of beliefs, without soul.

To love the truth is to love the Spirit who leads us into all truth.

Love, in devotion to truth, patiently leads us to the truth of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

Love, trusting the Holy Spirit, equips us to confront the truth about ourselves. Love helps us see our envy of half-truths and our arrogance about our limitations. Love invites us to be hospitable to new truth.

Speaking the truth in love, love tells us that how we teach is as vital as what we teach. Love seeks and celebrates every truth-sharing opportunity.

Love, persevering in truth, never ends.

But as for our doctrine, it will short circuit; as for new revelations, they will cease; as for having the last word, it will not be heard.

For the truth we presume to possess, or to preserve, slips between our fingers like sunlight; but when the Spirit of truth possesses us, we will be in the company of the saints. We will be saints preserved, kept in the unconditional love and acceptance of God. And that’s the truth!

When I was still searching, like a novice, for the way of truth, I spoke dogmatically; I thought of truth logically; I reasoned by the letter of the law; but when I finally allowed the truth to come to me, I found myself responding to the One who is the living truth.

For now we seek the face of God, seeking to know the truth as fully as we are known. Now we ask, “What is the truth?” In time we shall come to find the truth in the living Word, spoken to us. And, face to face, we will decide that He is God’s truth and our truth.

Now abide faith, hope, and love. Faith affirms, “Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied,” while hope awaits truth’s advent here. And love, with a heart to believe, hears, “You have seen me . . . I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Let every truth-seeker find the Way.

From Love’s Letters: A Poetic Book of Confessions by George Gunn
(Library Lane Press / Copyright 2001)