Last night at the IBC20|30s group, our pastor asked a question about this common phrase "my truth" and "your truth", asking us what we thought of these statements and if there was "truth" in those statements. Put another way, can you have your truth and I have mine and they both be true?
I am a recovering fundamentalist and so I still slightly wince at the phrases my truth and your truth. If truth is true, how can each hold to something different and both be true? I want to jump up and drop the mic of absolute truth and walk off. What I have found is I have held to an overly simplified view of truth and of people, out of fear and laziness of not wanting to actually engage real people in real situations struggling with real issues.
I think much of my--and perhaps your--approach to religion at times can be one in which we adopt a certain set of propositions and truth statements, which gives us comfort in having the "right answer" as we navigate through the complexities of life. It's like the reason young children watch the same movie over and over again--knowing the outcome is comforting in a world that is ever changing. And yet, just as children grow and mature, accepting more complexity and newness and learning to leave the old behind, so too we must leave the simple and move toward the real. And part of embracing this reality is to recognize that people are complex and their reasons for acting and feeling the way they do cannot be squeezed into a simple mold of "black/white", "right/wrong", "good/bad".
We know this about ourselves intrinsically. If I choose to work out, I am doing it 1) so that I might feel better, 2) because it is healthy, 3) so that I might eat more, 4) to look better physically, 5) to burn off that extra cookie I had last night, 6) because I feel guilty for skipping these last few days, and there are at least several other reasons on top of these that I am not even aware of! And all of these are true! And this is the simplest of examples. Imagine the complexity of intention regarding things so much bigger!
I do want to affirm that there is absolute truth and that there is an unchanging, ever solid center of reality that is always true--God Himself, revealed to us in Jesus Christ, spoken through the Spirit in the Scriptures, and acknowledged in the regula fidei. None of this "my truth" and "your truth" is intended to supplant or cast this aside. But we would be wise to exercise caution in what we hold in that solid center and what might actually be outside of it. I know my tendency is and has been to drag as much into that rigid center because it asks so little of me. After all, it's much easier to walk around like the priest or Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan than it is to enter into the messiness of another's life--a messiness that requires me to acknowledge their truth and to love with Christ's love.
