Many of us remember from our school days that if you hold a glass of water in one hand, and with the other hand dunk a pencil halfway into it, the pencil will appear to be broken at the water’s surface.
Now, if someone held the glass and the pencil in front of you and asked whether you thought the pencil was truly broken, I am very confident no reader of this distinguished publication would be naïve enough to say yes.
But let’s say that a space alien landed here on earth this morning. Now, if this alien knew nothing about earthly science, he might very well say that the pencil was broken.
Here is the million dollar question: Would the alien’s saying that the pencil was broken make it so? I presume you would answer “no” to this question as well. And for that you would deserve at least a master’s degree in philosophy from most American or European universities, because you would have grasped a piece of wisdom that seems to escape scores of professors, politicians and other professional people — even some professional Church people!
The words of St. Paul in Romans 12:2 ought to strike us to the heart: “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
Here, St. Paul makes clear what he says elsewhere in different ways: that there is a wisdom of the world, and the wisdom of God. We are called to pursue wholeheartedly and to embrace the wisdom of God, to allow the Holy Spirit to renew our minds so that we know the Truth.
Now, for those of us who want to take the challenge of St. Paul seriously, and to help others to do so, there is a pretty big obstacle in our way. A core component of the “wisdom of the world,” which Pope Emeritus Benedict has called the “dictatorship of relativism,” stands between many people and the wisdom of God.
The denial of truth is a problem not only of ancient times, but of our own day, too. Consider some of the great questions of the age: Who or what is God? What does it mean to be human? What is the meaning and purpose of our lives? When does human life begin? What is marriage? What does it mean to be male or female? The world more or less shrugs its shoulders at these questions, while the loudest and most powerful impose their opinions on others through law and media pressure.
The expression “dictatorship of relativism” is a pretty loaded one, and so I would like to unpack a little bit. We know that a “dictatorship” is the rule of a dictator, a single person who is often harsh in his rule and uses force to impose that rule on others and to maintain it against any threats.
The word “relativism” might not be so familiar, but I think the idea is familiar. It is the idea contained in the example of the pencil in the glass of water. Relativism is the wrongheaded notion that there is no such thing as objective truth, something that is true simply because it’s true, whether or not any given person recognizes that it is true. A relativist might say that something is “true for me” or “true for you” but not that something is simply true for everybody, everywhere, such as we would say about the pencil’s being straight even though it appears to be broken.
To offer an example from the Bible: Pontius Pilate might have been listening with the ears of a relativist to the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, as Jesus says: “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (18:37). All Pilate could come up with to say in reply to this dramatic declaration by Jesus was, “What is truth?”
The denial of truth is a problem not only of ancient times, but of our own day, too. Consider some of the great questions of the age: Who or what is God? What does it mean to be human? What is the meaning and purpose of our lives? When does human life begin? What is marriage? What does it mean to be male or female? The world more or less shrugs its shoulders at these questions, while the loudest and most powerful impose their opinions on others through law and media pressure.
In other words, the message of relativism is that if the alien thinks the pencil in the glass is broken, who’s to say he is wrong? Only, we can see that the truth — or our failure to recognize the truth — has consequences far more serious than the pencil example would seem to tell us. The truth is a matter of life and death, and the “wisdom of the world” is not going to deliver you or me from death to life.
So, should we be tolerant of others? Yes. Does that mean that everyone’s opinion is true? No. Does it mean that we must always be silent about what we know to be true? Absolutely not.
Do we need to be respectful of those whose opinions we do not share? Yes. Do we need to love others, no matter what they think or say? Absolutely and always. Does that mean we cannot act on what we know to be true. Again, absolutely not. We must speak the truth and act according to the truth, or we would not be the people God is calling us to be.
In the second reading of the Mass for this Sunday (Sept. 22), St. Paul teaches that God desires two things for us: our salvation and that we know the truth: “This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4).
This pairing of salvation and knowledge of the truth is not accidental. To know the truth is to know God Himself, to know God is to love Him, and to love Him is to become united with Him in a bond that only begins here on earth but lasts for eternity in heaven. When it comes to knowing the truth, no less than our salvation and the salvation of the world is at stake!
All of us would do well to pray that the Holy Spirit renew our minds and the minds of all people, so that we might be delivered from the “wisdom of the world” and its deadly illogic to the truth — meaning, to the One Who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Fr. Charles Fox is a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit currently assigned to the theology faculty of Sacred Heart Major Seminary. He is also a weekend associate pastor at St. Therese of Lisieux Parish in Shelby Township and chaplain and a board member of St. Paul Evangelization Institute, headquartered in Warren.
