Why Is Truth So Important to Us?

EVADING truth appears to have become a way of life in the late twentieth century.At some point, don't we just give up and accept the contention that it's an imperfect world, that truth is relative, that this really is the way things get done? The answer is, No, never. Lies and half-truths multiply unless we consciously do something about them. It isn't always easy to take the side of truth, because truth isn't always favored by the majority. But to choose truth is to do what will ultimately help everyone the most. Every choice made for simple truth is a choice that will enable everyone to breathe, to be free, to have the opportunity to find and fulfill more of their own real dimension. Man is not a sad, small mortal having to make his way in the world in any way he can. Man is actually the expression of divine Mind, God, and so integrity and truth are basic to man's real nature. Truth must be very important to us if it was basic to Christ Jesus' explanation "If ye continue in my word, . . . ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "The truth is the centre of all religion. Genuine religion really is a matter of truth. Instead of feeling that we are being asked to believe something which is moral and good but which has little relation to what is true in this world, we can see increasingly that we are being required only to believe and understand what is true, now and forever. We can expect that the more we pr ogress spiritually, the more we are going to understand what is true. In the Bible (in the book of Deuteronomy) we read, "A God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. The healing practice of Christian Science has its foundation in absolute, divine Truth. If it were not based on what is true and substantial, it could appear a forlorn effort to change the sickness and sin that are so self-evidently real to the material senses. But prayer for healing in Christian Science, which is also termed "treatment, is effective because God is real, He is wholly good, and He is omnipresent. This divine Truth, which is God, certainly could not include an unjust and self-destroying process of sickness or a self-obliterating process of following out the impulses of sin. What prayer, and the increased spiritual sense that results from it, are doing is to make evident the nature of sickness as error or mistake, rather than as the substantial condition and irresistible process it has been assumed to be. The presence of goodness, wholeness, harmonyGod with us and man as actually His expression, or image and likeness-- comes to seem a great deal more real and practical as one makes a serious effort to think and live from this spiritual basis. For anyone who is making discoveries of this kind--anyone who is getting even a glimpse of the nature of religion as sheer, practical, demonstrable truth--the importance of valuing truth in every aspect of human experience seems self-evident. We love truth because it's the way we're created by God. It's built in, so to speak. And every step we take in the direction of valuing truth and resisting falsity moves us closer to understanding that God is Truth and to fulfilling Jesus' promise that this all-important truth will heal us and make us free.

This is a condensed version of an editorial that appeared in the July 29 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.