For those of you just joining us this is the second in a series of posts regarding truth. The first can be found here and comments on the notion that truth is intolerant, is the basis for rational discussion and is worth seeking. This whole topic of truth and the nature of what is true is still causing an itch on the underside of my skull.
A number of years ago I was employed as an EKG technician working with heart transplant patients at Stanford University Hospital. As a part of my job function I obviously had access to the medical records system. Realize that this was lonnnng before we all had to start signing confidentiality agreements just to put on bandaids. Nothing too unusual is all this except that the cool part for me was that I had been born at Stanford Hospital. This meant that I could actually look up my OWN medical records. Which I obviously did…and got quite a surprise.
You see, I had believed for twenty some odd years that my birthday was July 13. I had been told that by my parents, seen it on a printed birth certificate, established it on my drivers license and celebrated numerous yearly passing’s annually on that day. The trouble was my medical records said I was born on an entirely different day!
Clearly the first thing to do was the be certain these records were really mine. Yup, if there were another Curtis Owen Fletcher born in July of that year to a mother named Phyllis and a father named Lee with a middle name Burdette that would have been WAYYY too big a coincidence. I confess I was really puzzled, almost stunned, for several minutes. What was the deal? Why had I been given false info about my birth date?
To make a long story short, in digging through the rest of my file it was eventually easy to determine that someone had fat fingered the date on one entry. I don’t remember now if it was the 23rd or the 14th but it became apparent it was a clerical error which I was able to soon remedy. The experience did, however, cause me to take pause for a moment.
So before we jump to the three questions let me ask YOU this:
What do you believe is absolutely true?
This doesn’t count as one of the three questions, this just sets you up. I believed it was absolutely true that I had been born on July 13. Once you have in mind the thing or those things you hold to be absolutely true I believe there are three question we need to ask ourselves about those things we hold to be absolutely true.
1. Why do I believe this to be true?
I believed primarily because my parents, whom I loved and trusted, had told me it was true. Interestingly they had also told me at one point that Santa Clause existed but that is another story.
We need to know WHY we believe something is true is we are going to be able to have sincere dialogue in searching after deeper truths with other human beings.
2. What are the implications of me believing this to be true?
The implications for me were pretty extensive. Every piece of ID I had ever had confirmed a July 13 birth date. I made a difference in when I could start playing baseball in the summer because you played little league based on birth date. It in part determined what grade I was in based on when I had started school.
If there are no implications to those things you hold to be absolutely true go back to the preamble question and pick something a little more significant. If the thing you picked WAS significant and there are no implications to that truth than you either don’t actually believe it is true OR you don’t believe that its been true really matters. Which leads to the third question…
3. What are the implications if this turns out to be false?
If the implications of my birthday being July 13 were big the implications of that turning out to be false were HUGE. It meant my parents were either pathological liars or really dim when it came to remembering dates.
The fact that the implications of my July 13 belief being false were so staggering drove me to discover the truth of the matter. If there were no implications then I probably would have laughed and closed the file.
Examples of the types of things that we might hold to be true that are worth this investigation are statements like:
- I’m a decent person
- I’m performing well at work
- I treat my spouse with respect
- I believe the Bible to be true
- I believe there is no God
Many times we make these statements without really examining why we believe them or whether that belief really holds any ramifications for how we live. To often people claim to believe something is true when their lives don’t reflect that truth. Hopefully, with the application of a few simple questions, we can all avoid becoming a person of that ilk.
What do you hold to be true? Given that how do you answer the three questions?