Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32) But what did he mean by that? And, what does that saying mean to you and me today? On one hand, we in the modern era might take this to mean that the discovery of truth about the world, science, and technology will help us do problem-solving in ways that lead to progress. After all, modern science has led to the eradication of many illnesses, food and drinking water are more available now than ever before in human history, and our lives are healthier because of technology and scientific discovery. Truth indeed liberates and empowers. Or, we might think of liberation as freedom from bondage and entrapment. How many politicians, celebrities, or public figures wish they had not compromised the truth — either on small matters or on large ones — their reputations eventually destroyed by dishonesty or duplicity? Living in the truth would indeed have made things easier in the long run, although perhaps more difficult in the short run. And yet, coming clean, confessing the truth, also poses a new way forward, as owning up to the truth allows the extension and reception of grace. Another way to understand this saying is to see it as affirming emancipation from our false understandings of self and society. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (The Republic 8), men are bound in chains in a cave, seeing in front of them their shadows dancing on the wall, projected by the fire in back of them. When one man breaks loose of his shackles, goes outside, sees the sun, and comes back in to tell people the good news that what they see in front of them is not reality but only shadows on the wall, they kill him.

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Originally published in The Huffington Post.

See it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-n-anderson/truth-and-liberation-1_b_12157590.html

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