The Truths We Cling To

 "You'll find that a great many of the truths we cling to are dependent on our own points of view." -Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi
     I was reflecting on this quote earlier today on how true it actually is. Truth is communicated by language, but language is not a one way street. With a recipient of that language, it is just noise being made. The person receiving the language spoken or written cannot understand it in any other way than his or her own, that is, with what the audial or visual symbols mean to them. That is, a message spoken will always be filtered through the point of view of the recipient: through their own experiences, culture, and yes, language and the many differences in word meanings and personal understandings of those word meanings.
     For this reason, the things we cling to as true are true from our own points of view, from the way we understand them, but may not be true from the point of view of another person, who has a different filter through which things are understood. Does this mean there is no such thing as an "absolute truth?" No, I don't think so. Absolute truth is like the old illustration of the blind men trying to describe the elephant. It exists, but we're all describing it from our own filters and points of view. Absolute truth exists outside of our sensory perceptions and what can be fully comprehended by the human brain, which was designed to function within three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.
     It is an absolute truth that God exists, but it is almost most certainly an absolute truth that our individual conceptions of Him do not. That is, that how we "picture" God within our minds is a construct of our human brains meant to enable us to work with the idea of God, but that construct is invariably wrong in the absolute sense because we simply can't comprehend God in the absolute. Thus our conceptions of Him amount to little more than images which we create, some of them perhaps closer to the reality than others, but none 100% on the mark. And God knows this and works with our limitations regardless. The truth about God which each of us clings to is highly dependent on our own filters, our own points of view.
     The same is true about how we understand the Scriptures, and what we understand them to say. When any one person reads the Scriptures, he or she is filtering what they read through their own understanding of language, their own experiences, their own culture, and this doesn't even take into account that what they are reading is a translation which itself was filtered through these same things by the translator's own point of view of the text. I personally have spent a great deal of time trying to remove this communication "noise" to understand what the text is saying, but even then I still run into the noise of my own point of view. I attempt to let the text shape that point of view, but it is a cyclical thing, because that point of view also shapes how I understand what the text is saying in order to allow the text to shape my point of view.
     And the same is true of being taught by the Spirit of Christ, who is far more capable of getting across truth clearly, but it must still be understood through my own point of view. And so what truth is given to me through the Spirit of Christ may sound very different from the very same truth given to another because of how each of us must process and understand that truth.
     I think that, in order for us to move forward as our Teacher intended, we must learn to recognize that He may choose to reach and teach each one of us differently. That I must let go of the notion that the truth I personally cling to is truth in the absolute. That I personally know exactly what the elephant looks like, a great tree trunk, and that the person who describes it as a rope or a snake is just plain wrong. We are both right, and we are both wrong, and God expects nothing more and nothing less.
     This kind of thinking tends to be anathema among Christian churches and denominations, and yet it is because it is anathema that there are so many churches and denominations squabbling and fighting, breaking into factions, and bringing shame to the name of Jesus Christ because of it.
     I know that there are many things which I am right about, but like the blind man and the elephant, I am only right about that small portion I have felt around, but have not "seen" or experienced the whole. I cannot fully see it or comprehend it through the point of view of another, only my own. I can try and approximate the other's point of view, but I cannot really understand it as they do. There are explanations which seem incredibly wrong to me, but to another, they are the only way that person will come closer to the truth of what the elephant is. And I must learn to let go of the notion that "my truth" is true in the absolute.
      If I am to manifest the God who is love to the other person, I must let go of the fear of the other's person's truth, and respect it even while my mind is screaming at me for how wrong it seems. I cannot see it as a threat to the truths I cling to which form my self-identity, and it is this self-identity, this ego, which really is the one raging at the other person's truths. There was a time when the truths I clung to were very different from the truths I cling to now. I was and remain in a state of growth and flux. The other person also remains in a state of growth and flux. Who I am now is not who I was. Who the other person is now is not who they will be. Those truths I clung to were the stepping stones to the truths I cling to now. The truths the other person clings to are the stepping stones to the truths they will cling to in the future. And it is the same Spirit who directs our paths towards those stepping stones if we are both genuinely seeking Him.