The Truth is More Important Than the Facts!
I'm a lover of words and a lover of facts. I like how words fit together and how they can be used to buttress an argument. I've been known to build a few of those quasi-logical buttresses myself -- drawing a few inferences here and teasing out an implication there -- all from seemingly disparate sources and piecing together (many times without even questioning my inferences!) in my head a version of "reality" that has very little bearing in the supposed "real" thing.
Recently, I've been watching the sort of "truth-telling" both Hauerwas and Shakespeare call into question so boldly. To be sure, this difficulty of telling the truth is being played out in real time, whether on television screens or Facebook News Feeds. Every information outlet has an agenda (and they can't help having one!) as they have reported on the scenes from Madison over the past two weeks. The battle of "who has the best data" (or at least who can make the most drama out of the data they have) has been raging. FOX News and MSNBC are each "hard at work" to earn "our trust" -- and yet, simply tying together a string of facts does not necessarily describe "the truth".
Developing the character(istics) of truthfulness and trustworthiness -- whether individual, institutional, corporate or governmental -- cannot be distilled to simply a more adept use of "the facts" for the purpose of buttressing one's own opinions (no matter how attached one may be to them!). Thanks, Lyndon!
"Truth and falsity don't belong to words (or 'things' for that matter). Truth belongs to 'understanding' (i.e. the mind -- Aquinas: truth is in the mind, goodness is in things) and therefore to the person with understanding. We learn what is true by being catechized into the truth of the world; a training that assumes a connection of truth to existence, and therefore, to God (who is existence without remainder)."
--The Rev. Lyndon C. Shakespeare, a comment on my post on February 26
I'm a lover of words and a lover of facts. I like how words fit together and how they can be used to buttress an argument. I've been known to build a few of those quasi-logical buttresses myself -- drawing a few inferences here and teasing out an implication there -- all from seemingly disparate sources and piecing together (many times without even questioning my inferences!) in my head a version of "reality" that has very little bearing in the supposed "real" thing.
Recently, I've been watching the sort of "truth-telling" both Hauerwas and Shakespeare call into question so boldly. To be sure, this difficulty of telling the truth is being played out in real time, whether on television screens or Facebook News Feeds. Every information outlet has an agenda (and they can't help having one!) as they have reported on the scenes from Madison over the past two weeks. The battle of "who has the best data" (or at least who can make the most drama out of the data they have) has been raging. FOX News and MSNBC are each "hard at work" to earn "our trust" -- and yet, simply tying together a string of facts does not necessarily describe "the truth".
Developing the character(istics) of truthfulness and trustworthiness -- whether individual, institutional, corporate or governmental -- cannot be distilled to simply a more adept use of "the facts" for the purpose of buttressing one's own opinions (no matter how attached one may be to them!). Thanks, Lyndon!
posted by FrGaryB | 10:09 PM
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