Going off to college can be an unsettling experience for Christian students. Somewhere, sometime, college students are going to encounter, and many for the first time, the notion that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Truth with a capital “T.”
We may wish that the situation could be otherwise. Parents may especially wish, after all they’ve invested in trying to instill positive values in their children, that the college experience would reinforce rather than undermine whatever they’ve been able to accomplish in this regard. But to keep this in a certain perspective, just think for a moment of what else college students could be doing, besides considering whether or not there is such a thing as absolute truth. Don’t the alternatives seem worse? My point is that to some extent I think it’s encouraging that this is what college students are talking about, given the alternatives.
It seems like a very important issue, and at least it doesn’t involve destructive behavior. Though I think it’s actually the wrong issue, when it comes to questions about the nature of truth. It may be difficult for us to accept — which is why I’ve titled this sermon “unacceptable” — but what I think this morning’s scripture has to say to us is that the more important, challenging question is not whether or not truth is absolute, but rather what is this truth like? To be more specific, is truth straightforward, or is truth paradoxical? Jesus is telling us that it’s the latter. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Now just exactly what is that supposed to mean? How can it be the truth that I will lose my life if I try to save it, but I will save it if I lose it?
Absolute truth. Don’t we as Christians believe that there is such a thing? I guess so, but doesn’t asserting the existence of absolute truth entail another belief, held equally strongly, that truth can be spelled out and stated, clearly, in a straightforward manner? Jesus keeps lobbing paradoxes our way, statements that whether they’re true or not seem anything but straightforward. To try to save my life means that I’ll lose it; whereas to lose it is to save it. Indeed!
If Jesus were with us now, and I could ask him if he could please clarify matters for us, I imagine he’d say, “Well sure, of course there is such a thing as absolute truth. Call it absolute if you like.... But the important part is to realize that the content of that truth is best expressed paradoxically, rather than in a straightforward manner. I’m sure this is difficult for you to accept, but the more straightforwardly and explicitly we describe the meaning of the gospel message, the further we’re moving away from the truth at its core.” This does go against the grain for us. In most settings, if not all, we tend to operate on the assumption that if we’re not crystal clear about the truth of the situation we’re facing, then we ought to be, and we should make every effort to get there. Jesus is fuzzing that up.
It’s Lent. A time to challenge ourselves, so I have a proposal, one that may seem modest on the surface, but I don’t mean for it to be. Let’s try, this season, to open ourselves up to the point where we can consider the possibility that truth may be paradoxical, inevitably so, if we are to do very well at grasping its import. And let’s try to imagine what the implications of an acknowledgment — which may need to be tentative — of the paradoxical nature of truth may be.
You may find these implications to be troubling, or even mistaken, but I think that these are some of the things we’re being asked to ponder by Jesus’ paradoxical statements like to lose life is to save it, and vice-versa; or that the first will be last, and the last will be first.
Can we really accept that?
If we do, this might mean that some of the things that we have come to conclude in this culture are most important may be quite otherwise. For example, what are the things that we do to try to save our lives, to protect them against threats? We do seemingly good things, like education and training ourselves so that we can get good jobs. Like providing for our families (food, clothing, and shelter and all the rest). Like saving money in case of emergency, or for college expenses, or for retirement.
These seem like good things, don’t they? Of course they do. But I notice one thing about them, which may have been what Jesus was getting at: all of these things are good to the extent we assume that it’s within our power to build for ourselves a rock-solid, unassailable fortress of security against the troubles and travails of life.
We can’t, and to some extent we know that, but I think what Jesus is challenging us to think about is that no matter how hard we try and no matter how capable we are we’ll never be able to protect ourselves against every cruel blow that may come our way.
A more true, and real, and reliable form of security may not be one that we can make — and think about what that may mean in terms of military policy, if true security can’t be made — but rather this: the truest, and most real, and most reliable form of security may be — what? If not what we have within our power to make, maybe instead what’s beyond our power to make, and which can only be received, when it’s offered to us, instead of made by us!
At the risk of giving in to the temptation of trying to straighten out a truth that by its very nature can best be expressed and grasped paradoxically, I hope that this Sunday, during this Lenten season, we can move toward a greater recognition of the reality that true security is not ours for the making. Rather, it’s ours for the taking, or more precisely for the accepting, as it’s offered to us freely, no strings attached, in Jesus Christ.