Loose Truth

There was a girl in college with whom I was stupidly in love. I mean skipping class, ignoring friends, staying up all night in love. She named her cat Buechner after Fredrick Buechner, the theologian.

I read some of Buechner’s stuff in college because of her, and it threatened my religion. I knew that was a dance with heresy, and I was neither sure-footed enough in my orthodoxy nor carefree or desperate enough in my rebellion to step on that floor.

The girl was a deeper, more troubled person than I was, and she meant to use her dance card. She read Buechner and wondered and wandered and eventually became a missionary in Russia. The Baptists didn't think she was ready to be one of their missionaries, so she raised money and went her own damn self.

I remained safe, which has its own rewards, but I've learned that precariousness in the name of Christ is so much more worthwhile. Now I'm digging like fuck, trying to remember where I buried that talent.

So maybe I'm deep and troubled enough now. This all comes up because I read Buechner recently, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale, and that guy blew through the back of my head. I would be a slightly better man if I had read more of him earlier.

He points to John 18:38. Right after Jesus says, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” And Pilate says, “What is truth?”

I don’t know why I keep being surprised that the Bible keeps surprising me. I had Bible drilled into my marrow as a kid. But bits of that thing keep surprising me, things I did not know were there.

Jesus says something sublime, which those of my religious ilk have taken down and stuffed into our own mouths and repeat with the comprehension of parrots.

This is not a boast, what Jesus says. This is a metaphysical fact. If you align with truth, then you’re listening to Jesus. Jesus followers tend to invert this, and think that because they listen to Jesus they are on the side of truth... which is true, but not how Jesus puts it. You don’t choose Jesus and get truth as a side order. When you choose to side with truth, you are inescapably listening to Jesus.

Whether you know Jesus, whether you like Jesus, you are listening to him. This association makes truth and Jesus nearly indistinguishable. When I think about him that way, I slough layers of dead religious tradition. In addition to being the Way and the Life, he is, notably the Truth.

And then Pilate comes back with existentialism modern as toasters, yet apparently, old as carnivores. “What is truth?”

Cynicism or questing? Can’t it be both? I guess that Pilate wasn’t seriously asking the question, because if he had, maybe he would have had a shot at seeing Truth damn near incarnate.

The Bible doesn’t say that Jesus answered that question. But he stood there, being the answer.

This is all stuff Buechner brings up. And there’s more.