When I was growing up, I was introduced to a wide range of culture and believes, it may have been because like London, Dubai too was and is a pluralistic society although the core religion of Dubai was Islam. Although having been raised in a Christian family, I was given some freedom to choose and find my own believes. Like most people raised in a pluralistic society, I believed in communal harmony and unity of religions. Now, being an Indian also exposed me to the vibrant culture I have at home and this was fueled by my interest in Ahimsa and Gandhian views in life. I too at that age wanted to write “my experiments with truth”. One of the many stories and moral lessons I had learned then, is as follows.
<em>Once upon a time, there were five blind men, and they during their usual walk, came across a large elephant in their path. The first person touched the trunk of the elephant and said that it was a huge pipe, the second the stomach and said it was a huge wall, the third the tusks and said that it was a piece of sharp wood, the fourth touched the ears and said that it was a huge leaf, the fifth one touched the tail and said it was nothing but some rotten wood, they all did in fact agree that the surface was a bit rough and felt hard. The author continues, you see, this is what many religions perceive of God, some may see it parts and we all try to make exclusive claims of God. Why do not we all live and understand that it is all but one God and each person has only experienced a portion of God and has to understand that God is bigger than his portion? </em>Werner Heisenberg, a pioneer in quantum physics quoted
<blockquote>We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning [1]
</blockquote>
As an young boy, I was firm that this was what happened to the world, we just failed to get along well and so I too began my experiments with religion, but in reality, i was experimenting like Ghandi with truth. But, here is my question to you, how did the author know that it was an elephant ? Could it not have been five barks of wood or clay? Now going back to Heisenberg’s quote, we have to look at the question again, the question is: What have we come across and is it one substance ? We have just asked ourselves an age old question, What is truth ? . Ravi Zacharias, one of my favorite author quotes Truth is something that affirms proportionally the nature of reality as it is [sic] . As in the example of the elephant, the person authoritative to say that all the parts that the men touched were of an elephant, he must have some sort of authority or experience that could ascertain that it was an elephant indeed. Now, who has such authority? During my chase of pluralistic worldview and religious truth claims, I have come to understand that every religion has exclusive truth claim, even a religion like Baha'i faith which tries to incorporate all religions and moral values is also exclusive, saying that Baha'i faith is true. This is the trouble with relativism meaning all truth are relative. You see, the moment you say that all truth are relative, the very statement tends to be relative, until you say all truth excluding the truth about relativism is relative; and what have you done here; in order to make an exclusive claim relative, you have added one more exclusive claim. So, lets use the Occam's razor, cut it to the simplest part, and ask ourselves what is true? I obviously cannot speak for other religion, but from my personal experience with truth, and trying to find out a reason for my life, I find Christianity the most appealing in its truth claims and not only logical but also reasonable.
Here are my reasons; it is historically by most scholars accepted that there was a man named Jesus, and the recordings of the four writers from eyewitness reports are genuine and have been preserved without corruption to a great extend. This then have been judged for the authenticity and has been proved right. I would love to talk about some of these, but moving on due to lack of time, I have to by the above said reasons believe that a man called Jesus walked on this planet something around 2000 years ago. Now, this is accepted by many, and quoting another favorite author CS. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity says this about Jesus “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Jesus, made exclusive claims, whether people believe it or not, and one of the claims was he was the Truth, the answer that we all look to. He said that he was God, and both claims are correlated, because if God is not true and lies or deceives then God is not God, but if God is God, then he must be absolute, and Jesus is.
Let me take a moment and persuade you here, on searching for truth we often end up turning rocks and breaking walls, and all of it is good, but we may get carried away in many times wondering if truth is more newer or more interesting, but the thing about a claim being true is not that it stands in time, but also changes lives. For instance if 1 + 1 is no longer 2 tomorrow, would not our lives be changed?
Jesus was asked the same question by Pilate before Jesus was crucified, What is Truth ? or in latin Quid est veritas? but he walked away from Jesus. Ravi Zacharias puts it in this way Pilate walked away from the greatest authority who only could answer the greatest question and committed the greatest crime.
The quest for truth will not end till we realise why Jesus had to die, Jesus died to give us the a life with him, in the presence of God, not because you earned it, because no matter how good we are, we would never find it in ourselves to excel the moral standard of God, and even if you work out your Karma, it in some hindu philosophies say would take many rebirths to wash the bad things we do in just one life. But what if there is only one life, would we want to waste it searching for truth that is as plain as the skies in June, and stumble over truth a number of times or like Lewis said fall at his feet and worship him?
[1] Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958).
This was originally written for a talk at the Christian Union at St George University Hospital on 22 of October 2013 and is also blogged at Missio Dei
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