Love and Truth
Yet more musings… generated from Mark Lickona
The question before me is: does love transcend truth? My gut tells me to say no.
In loving us, God asserted a Truth. Which came first? I don’t think the question is binary. They proceeded from the Father together. He spoke in Truth and Love and so here we are.
But, in the hearts of men, truth and love have been clouded such that we do not love each other in truth and we do not speak the truth in love. And so there grows a tendency to believe that truth is relative and love is shallow. But they are not. They are the causal foundations that flow from God. But without each other, they are poor images of the real thing and destined for ruin.
Now… there is perhaps one thing that undoes my argument, and that is Jesus: He who loved us greater than the truth - the truth of His innocence, the truth of His being, the truth of Justice. In the truth of His righteousness, He could have been the ruin of us all then and there - but He suffered without personal need for our sake, for our needs. Truth took the back seat for Love, and a new Truth was born out of that holy sacrificial Love by which we can now be redeemed.
It would do us well then to remember that it is by that Love we are redeemed, in that Love that we are to live and speak the new Truth, and for that Love that we are to live among all men. In all things, first we are to love.
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In both love and truth, we’re doomed for failure in terms of seeking to reach the heights of our Father, because we neither have the perfect Self that loves selflessly or the perfect Knowledge from which truth is inarguable…
Comment by Geof F. Morris — 4/16/2005 @ 9:55 pm
The way I see it, Adam did not have the whole of God’s love or knowledge, but it wasn’t for that reason that he fell. He fell because he loved himself in the absence of the truth God had revealed to him: he deceived himself into thinking he should be like God in knowing good and evil.
So, I do very much think we will find salvation in love and truth - the love and truth that Jesus ushered in at His crucifixion and resurrection and our undertaking of that life of love and truth that He set before us. It doesn’t ask us to be perfect - it asks us to try to be perfect by following our Lord’s example. And there is room for error and failure here because our Lord is accepting of repentance and forgiving.
Comment by AnotherCoward — 4/17/2005 @ 1:34 pm
Oh, I undoubtedly agree.
Comment by Geof F. Morris — 4/17/2005 @ 5:31 pm
Did Jesus love us more than Truth? Wasn’t the Truth that he had to sacrifice himself in order for us to attain salvation?
I think you were more on the mark when you started to suggest they were inseparable (or derned close to).
Comment by Roger — 4/18/2005 @ 11:11 am
It is true that, for our salvation, He would have to sacrifice Himself… but it is also the Truth that He did not have to sacrifice Himself and could have just left us to our ruin. If it is possible for God to do so, He made something akin to a moral choice in creating us. A choice against a decision that would have left Him Truthful either way. Except that in His choice, His Love was made preeminent in His relationship with us.
God created us from His Love and Truth. But He graciously chose to Love us even while we were sinners and deserving of wrath and ruin, and that Love brought to us the Truth of salvation that otherwise would not be.
Comment by AnotherCoward — 4/18/2005 @ 4:11 pm
FTR, this has been awesomely edifying for me… thanks for participating.
Comment by AnotherCoward — 4/18/2005 @ 9:18 pm
Sure thing.
Comment by Geof F. Morris — 4/19/2005 @ 6:37 am
Real love is truth. Truth emanates from the heart.
Comment by Lamar Cole — 1/17/2006 @ 3:58 pm