Facts or Truth?

I am finally getting some of my books out of storage and into my apartment. It’s like a reunion with old friends. On the shelves are Tennyson, Carlyle, and Malory, Lewis, Kreeft and Kierkegaard … novels, biographies, economics, philosophy, business, psychology, Letters/Diaries/Journals, art and history.

I have given away well over a thousand books over the last few years, thinning out my library so that the only books that remain are those that have meaning to me and touched me in some way, and a few reference books.

For me, reading is part of my Quest, and the quest has never been solely about facts.

I want to meet people, encountering them in their words.

I am looking for a window to open into a wider world or even another world.

I am looking for truth and Truth: for personal insight and insight into the Eternal.

Sometimes a book has only one sentence that speaks to me with a living voice, but that one sentence is worth more than the cost of the book. Other times, the book opens up a new world of thought, feeling and vision that is so life-altering that from then on, when I see it on the shelf, I am instantly immersed in that world. But sometimes the book is filled to overflowing with facts, details and minutia about God or Life or Relationships or Business or whatever, and, for the life of me, I could not find truth or Truth.

No doubt that, at times anyway, I didn’t find the truth because my heart wasn’t ready or willing to grasp it. However, just as often, all the author had was facts, so that was all he could offer his readers.

George MacDonald (1824-1925) makes this point about facts v truth when he draws a distinction between facts about a flower or a painting and the truth of the flower or painting. (CS Lewis’ George MacDonald: An Anthology.)

The truth of the flower is, not the facts about it, be they correct as ideal science itself, but the shining, glowing, gladdening, patient thing throned on its stalk.

It is easy to confuse having the facts with possessing the truth. A Botanist, for example, may have all the facts about a particular orchid. However, this doesn’t mean she possesses the truth of that orchid. And what is the truth of an orchid? The idea of that orchid in God’s mind.

Botany is the process whereby the orchid becomes the flower that it is. The process is the facts. The flower is the truth. And what do you think the Creator thinks when we allow the beauty of the orchid to be obscured by facts about the orchid?

Think of a favorite painting. Brush strokes, paint and canvas are the facts. The truth of the painting is the idea in the painters mind.

If the facts of a thing are helping you develop a greater appreciation for the truth of a thing, then, by all means, keep after the facts. But if the facts are distracting you from the thing itself, get back to the truth of it, for a while. In other words, if you are dying of thirst while digging into the facts of how oxygen combined with hydrogen creates water, then stop studying and start drinking.

Your Assignment:
How may this distinction between facts and truth apply to your perspective on the people you know, including yourself?

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009