Truth and Its Yield

By Dennis E. Coates

God made us for himself, to be in eternal communion with him. This one single claim makes sense of mankind, why he was created, and what it is that gives man his deepest meaning and fulfills his deepest yearnings.

But are these things true? How do we know theyre true? How important is truth itself? What flows from truth? Human experience has taught us how important truth is--truth frees and falsehood enslaves.

There is something within man that needs God, created by God himself, and something given by God to meet that need. At its base, the need is for happiness, and happiness, once understood, has its source in one place alone, God himself. This truth is pivotal to mans well-being as a full human being. It is Gods revelation about this core nature of man that is essential to mans own self-understanding. St. Augustine expressed this in one simple line: Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

Gods own revelation of eternal life provides the very meaning for our existence. It reveals the eternal mind of the Father, what he had in mind for mankind even before creation--a being that would have life through, with, and in him. Truth has its yield. Our own happiness is linked to knowing what it is. But the truth about God is subject also to our reason. We have discovered that religious truth must stand the test of human reason, experience, and time.

Truth and Its Yield deals with the very importance of truth itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490859712

Dennis E. Coates

DENNIS COATES, a Canadian, educated in Catholic schools, was a senior corporate manager and is a longtime leader in the Catholic Cursillo Movement. After retirement, he began writing spiritual books, fulfilling a lifelong desire. Dennis is married with two daughters and five grandsons.

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Copyright © 2014 Dennis E. Coates.

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The Jerusalem Bible, Readers’ Edition, Doubleday & Company Inc., Garden City, New York, 1968

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-5970-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5971-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920141

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/17/2014

Contents

1:   Imagine If We Were All Liars

2:   Imagine If We Couldn’t Know Truth

3:   Trust without Truth?

4:   Love without Truth?

5:   Giving without Truth?

6:   Truth and Fullness of Life

7:   Truth and Consequences

8:   Truth and Its Yield

9:   Truth and Light

10: Truth is Forever

11: Truth Yields Meaning

12: The Way, the Truth, and the Life

About the Author

To

the Church, the Body of Christ,

where Truth resides

Chapter 1

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IMAGINE IF WE WERE ALL LIARS

I magine if we could trust no one to tell us the truth. Imagine if we deliberately tried to deceive others in our advice to them. Imagine if we couldn’t rely on our parents to guide us in growing as human beings. Imagine if our teachers were known for their ability to distort the truth or provide outright lies to us. Imagine if doctors could not rely on anyone to pass on the accumulated knowledge of medicine and the treatment of our illnesses. Imagine if we could believe nothing from those we meet who might be a possible spouse in life.

It’s a nightmare scenario isn’t it, even an image of hell? That is the great name for Satan—the deceiver, the liar, the trickster. Even what is clearly true, Satan will try to find a way to distort. The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh had made. It asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’¹

That’s his way—create a doubt, distort, and confuse.

Truth seeks to do none of these. Truth gives assurance, accuracy, and clarity. Truth leads and untruth leads astray. Truth is essential to human life, growth, and peace of heart.

But is that true? How would we know? If it were a lie, could we know why with certainty?

Truth is a deep thing, rich and worthy of understanding. That’s what this book is about—it’s an inquiry into truth. What is truth? What is important about truth? Why should we know how to distinguish truth from deception? How can we know the difference?

Let’s begin with this: imagine if we were all liars. Here is a story that imagines we are incapable of truth—knowing truth or telling truth.

Wanda met Bill at a party. Hi, Bill said to Wanda when they first met, I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. It was a lie—he really thought she was the ugliest girl he’d ever seen.

Hi to you, she answered. That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me. All the while she was thinking what a lie he had just told her and that she really didn’t want to get to know this guy.

But my imagination won’t take me much beyond this in terms of carrying on a conversation between liars who can’t tell the truth. It’s because I really can’t imagine life where lying is the norm. It’s unnatural. It runs against the normal use of conscience, the do unto others as you would have them do unto you. People don’t want to be deceived, lied to, or manipulated.

There’s no question that underhanded people wanting something from us sometimes dupe us. But generally, they know what the truth is; they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And when we find out what has happened, usually there is some price they, and those deceived, pay for the deception.

Why is truth so necessary to us? Why do we rely on it to live normal, healthy lives?

Let us begin with the nature of God, for truth is related to God’s nature. My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.² Any understanding of truth has to have its origin in this key understanding of God.

There is a second understanding that we need to know as well. What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.³

Jesus says, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth, and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.⁴ I am the way, the truth and the life.⁵

To put these things together: God is love; God created us out of love to participate in his life. By his very nature and purpose, God can neither deceive nor be deceived. Jesus is the truth who has come to reveal God to us in truth.

Life without ultimate truth is incoherent. Imagine a God who is a liar. Where would we be? How could we function? On whom could we rely? We need a God who is truth itself and who cannot deceive us. We need this assurance. We need, as human beings, who have intelligence and the ability to choose what to believe, to know that there is truth, and it is truth uncorrupted by human imagination, machination, or ignorance.

Let us look more closely at the truth Jesus reveals to us and see what believing it means to us and what it would mean if it were a lie.

Jesus says, To have seen me is to have seen the Father. You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; believe it on the evidence of this work if for no other reason.⁶ Jesus is one with the Father, one in being, one in love, and one in truth. That which makes God God is in the Father and the Son. That nature that is God is the nature of both the Father and the Son.

The church specifically speaks of his divine nature: I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.⁷

This is the core teaching of the Church, truth itself, not made up from human wisdom, but based on the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is the core of our statement of belief. And so is the rest of this central proclamation of the Church, true for all time, unchangeable for all time, subject to the test for all time. It is forever subject to denial, distortion, misunderstanding, and even contempt. Nonetheless, it is the statement of truth for all time. Here is the rest of it.

"Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Imagine if any part of this were untrue. The whole proclamation of the Church would collapse, so dependent on truth is the Church. The Church relies on the truth of Christ, on the truth of the apostles, on the work of the Holy Spirit to keep it free of error. The Nicene Creed relied on all these to profess the truth.

What if it weren’t true? Imagine if the Church itself, the bride of Christ, were a liar. What is the test to know if the Church is truthful? What is the test that can show us we can rely on the Church for its proclamation?

Everything depends on the truth of Jesus Christ: who he is, what he says, what he does, what he handed on to others in authority, word, and action. The veracity of any other person or persons is irrelevant if Jesus Christ and all that is proclaimed about him by the Church, in its sole authority to do so, is not true.

Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of truth, and so we must look to him for truth, for he himself is truth. If any