"What is Truth?"

Some further reflections on recent vocal ministry

I started this Substack a year ago, primarily to generate some interest in a book I was trying to get published. In March 2025, I signed a contract with Wipf and Stock publishers, and the book (Turning Toward the Victim: The Bible, Sacred Violence, and the End of Scapegoating in Quaker Perspective) was published in June. Most of my subsequent posts have been excerpts or summaries from the book. There continues to be a steady stream of new subscribers, so if you are new, I encourage you to go back to some of the old posts to get a sense of the book, especially those from February and March. And perhaps buy the book!

At this point, it seems time to venture off strict adherence to the subject of the book, and post on related subjects (which I have done with a couple recent posts). This month’s post is an elaboration of vocal ministry I gave at my local Quaker meeting last month, and it seems important enough to develop and disseminate more widely.

For those of you who are not familiar with the tradition of so-called unprogrammed Quaker worship, we meet in silence, or what we prefer to think of as “expectant waiting,” in the expectation that words appropriate to our condition will be given to us. In a typical hour of worship at my meeting, there might be anywhere from two to eight or ten “messages” given: generally short, spontaneous, and unprepared, though usually on a subject to which the speaker has given some previous thought.

At the meeting that day, the first message was from one of our members, who observed that early Friends (i.e., 17th century) often spoke about truth, but to her frustration they never said what the truth was. She observed that in science, truth changes according to the evidence. She added that the evidence she saw was that love is truth.

After an interval of several more minutes of silence, I offered the following contribution, again here somewhat expanded and with some elaboration, in the interest of coherence. [Note that chapter 26 in the book deals at some length with the issue of truth and “the lie.”]

“What is Truth?”

The question of “what is truth” is a very old one. In the Gospel of John (chapter 18), Jesus, on trial before Pilate, says that “for this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” And Pilate’s reply, dripping with cynicism: “What is truth?”

It is true that early Friends spoke frequently of truth, sometimes referring to themselves as “Friends of Truth” or “Publishers of Truth.” But the truth they spoke of was not the truth of a philosophical proposition, or a religious creed, or a scientific theory. It was the truth of their own lives, what the Psalmist calls “truth in the inward parts” (Ps 51:6, KJV). In this understanding, the opposite of this truth is not falsehood, but deceit, and specifically self-deceit, what we might call denial. When early Friends looked around, they saw everywhere (including in the established church) a society based on systematic greed, exploitation, and violence . They were “convicted” of their own complicity in these institutions—and as they faced this truth, they also experienced the power to rise above what they saw. When they exhorted one another to “be valiant for the truth,” they were saying, in modern parlance, “Get real; look at the reality of your lives—and find a surer foundation on which to base your life: the Truth. [1]

A few months ago, I had reason to revisit an essay from 1978, “The Power of the Powerless,” by Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and political dissident. In it, he argued that even in the most authoritarian societies, the powerless always have the power to choose to “live in the truth” rather than “live within a lie.”

He gives the example of a small-scale greengrocer who, like everyone else, was expected to post in his shop window whatever inane slogan the party was currently parroting (“workers of the world, unite. . .”). No one reads the slogan; no one pretends to believe the slogan. It is just what is expected.

But one day, the greengrocer “snaps.” He quietly takes down the sign; he begins to say what he really thinks in political meetings; he stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He “breaks the rules of the game. . . and steps out of living within the lie. . . his revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.” His neighbors notice; some might quietly sympathize with him. But in short order, “the system” also notices. The greengrocer loses his job, his status, and whatever small privileges he had, and begins to be ostracized. His life spirals downward. Havel comments:

If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth.

—Vaclav Havel

Havel himself spent a couple of years in prison for writing this essay. But it circulated underground, and eventually enough people chose to “live in the truth” that, with the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the communist regime collapsed in the face of massive nonviolent protests, and Havel, by popular acclamation, became president of Czechoslovakia. That is “the power of the powerless,” the power to choose to live in the truth.

We live in a time when we are surrounded by lies. There is “the big lie” about the election of 2020 being stolen (still a bedrock belief for a large majority of self-identified Republicans, despite the total lack of evidence).

But increasingly, there are the little lies fed to us every day. That Venezuela is about democracy or drugs (as the President himself as made abundantly clear, it’s about oil). That the immigration crackdown targets only “heinous criminals” and “the worst of the worst” (the large majority of those detained and deported have no criminal record, other than crossing the border without permission, which is a civil and not a criminal offense). That anyone who is willing to confront ICE on behalf of their neighbors is a “domestic terrorist.” That anyone opposing current administration policy is a “radical left lunatic” or a “communist.” That there are now ten separate “national emergencies” that justify unprecedented expansion of presidential power. That tariffs are not paid for by American consumers. That there is a genocide against Christians in Nigeria, justifying American cruise missiles (most of which apparently either didn’t explode or fell harmlessly in empty fields). That all expenditures lawfully appropriated by Congress, but which Russell Vought doesn’t like, are characterized by “waste, fraud, and abuse.” That dead people and undocumented immigrants are voting in vast numbers. That white men are “the real victims of discrimination” in this country. That the economy, which is marginally but demonstrably worse now than a year ago, was then “a disaster” and is now the strongest in history. That veterans who remind the military that they should not obey unlawful orders are committing “sedition” and even “treason.”

It is not given to any of us as mere mortals to know the final, ultimate, eternal and unchanging truth. But despite our human limitations, we can choose to live toward the truth, and to refuse to live within the lie. That is the “power of the powerless.” We can choose, as was once said of Dorothy Day, “to live as though the truth is actually true.” We can choose to say: “For this I was born, and this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”

May it be so.

Take truth for authority—not authority for truth.

—Lucretia Mott, 19th century Quaker abolitionist and reformer

Be valiant for the truth upon the earth. . .

—George Fox, co-founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

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[1] See Rex Ambler, The Light Within: Then and Now, Pendle Hill Pamphlet # 425, and Ambler, Truth of the Heart.