A Little Thing Called Truth
- Connie Kimble
- Jun 28, 2025
- 4 min read
I grew up in a pretty binary world. Up was up, down was down, black was black, white was white. Good was good - to be aspired to in one's life, and wrong was.... well... wrong and to be avoided in as much as possible. Educated in the 70's, I began to understand there were gradations of colors and truths, gray, ivory, charcoal, ecru. Enter the concept of "relative truth".... which I understood, sort of. I remember visiting my dad after my first year of college in Boulder Colorado. We got into a great argument about Christianity and salvation, which for my dear pops meant the First Baptist Church and no other way save maybe a Methodist here and there and once in a while a Lutheran. I asked dad what he thought GOD was going to do with the millions of Chinese souls that had come and gone never knowing about Jesus. It was a problem for me, thinking that the loving GOD I knew would condemn all those people to hell when HE had birthed them to a place in time where they never had a chance to know the gospel. My dad looked shocked that I could, would even ask such a question. "I just let GOD worry about things like that." was his trite (I thought at the time) response. Too simple. He had escaped the question deftly. Now these many years later... I see deep wisdom in his answer, because now that I am old... I've come to realize that indeed there are questions to deep for me and it is best to allow the Creator of all things hash such issues out in eternity. Such questions do NOT for the record, shake my faith. Nor do they alter my understanding of truth.
Recently on a road trip with my granddaughter, she enlightened me about a conflict in the art world as to who had sole artistic access to the "blackest black". Apparently that would be installation artist Anish Kapoor who purchased exclusive rights to Vantablack which absorbs 99.965% of light, while his closest competitor created Black 3.0 which only absorbs 98% of light. Subtle, but significant to some. Not to mention how odd it seems that one can purport to own a color. But that is evidently our new world. I am guessing that GOD has exclusive rights to the additional .035%. Would that be a black hole? Interestingly enough, Kapoor's art explores dualities and he has stated "In the end, I'm talking about myself. And thinking about making nothing, which I see as a void. But then that's something, even though it really is nothing." My dad would have a hard time with that statement.
When Pilate was tasked with interrogating and eventually crucifying the Christ, Jesus told him HE had come into the world to to testify to the truth. "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." One can almost hear Pilate snort his response to Jesus..."Truth! [snort] What is truth?". That is the world's response to the idea of truth today even. Can it even be known now? Are there absolute truths? Can we divide the falsehoods, the vague but deadly deceptions, the greyish lies from anything so solid and knowable as a TRUTH? We will need a Seleucian blade to do so, the sharpest thinnest obsidian tool for dividing hide from flesh, flesh from sinew, sinew from bone. Though these blades were used by ancient civilizations such as the Seleucids during the Hellenistic period... the same obsidian technology is utilized today in surgical instruments requiring precise division.
So then how do we discern truth when there is SO MUCH LYING ? When falsehoods come from the mouths of those wearing crosses, or yarmulkes, or those bowing toward Mecca five times a day for that matter? When a technology such as AI is so sophisticated in creating what appears to be reality is then implemented for social engineering, greed, and power acquisition, how are we to know? These are cloudy times shrouded in the distorting fog of that which would deny the Truth Jesus came to teach.
It's pretty tricksy out there these days. The human heart is easily deceived. Many humans are willing to deceive, History bears evidence to this. My post retirement career is all about seeking the truth of matters. I must suspend bias and emotion and instead wade through testimony, data and evidential materials to discern truths. I cannot cherry pick which information I choose to pay attention to, which I will discard, arranging a pile of answers just so to please my own desire for comfort. Instead, my reputation and my income depend on simply organizing and reflecting upon what I perceive to be the complete truth based on all the evidence presented. Not just evidence from one side or the other, but ALL the bits of evidence. I have been surprised by humans who have told themselves stories that enable self preservation. I have been shocked by institutions that stand for ethics and integrity, covering up errors and wrongdoing to save both reputation and money. I don't know that most humans intentionally wade into the territory of bearing false witness, but I do know that we can be trapped there if we are not careful, vigilant and brutally honest with ourselves. And THAT can be terribly ugly and often quite painful. I know. I've been there.
"and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32
Love GOD. Love your neighbor. Do good.
Tell the truth
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