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Why is truth so important to us?

A Christian Science perspective: We don’t have to compromise truth to get things done in the world.

  • By Allison W. Phinney

Politicians bend it in the process of getting elected. Advertising is “creative” about it in order to sell the product.

Don’t we just have to admit this really is the way things get done in an imperfect world?

The answer is “No, never!” Lies and half-truths are like smog. In order not to be smothered, society needs to strive for an atmosphere like that demanded by the swearing-in ceremony for court witnesses: “the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

In the Bible, we read: “A God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4). You could say we love truth because it’s the way we’re created by God. It’s built-in, so to speak.

The founder of The Christian Science Monitor wrote, “The truth is the centre of all religion” (Mary Baker Eddy, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 20).

Not surprisingly, the more people hold fast to their innate devotion to honesty and truth, the more society finds its way. The path of unity, cooperation, and progress gets clearer.

Adapted from “Why is truth so important to us?” in the Christian Science Sentinel, July 29, 1991.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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