Truth

What do we mean when we say "truth"? I'm not talking about Pilate washing his hands and moving to the next project, but our understanding. Is truth about the facts in a case? At least some of the time it is. Is truth about attempting to be honest? At least some of the time it is. But honesty is not the same as being factual.

For example, I can state facts in an order that will lead to a false conclusion. Every fact is true, but because other facts are left out most will draw a false conclusion.
1. I am gay.
2. I share an apartment with another man.
3. I have a deeper bond with this man than with my parents.

There's an obvious conclusion that I'm sharing an apartment with a lover or sexual partner. I could add that I have a deeper bond with this man than with my brother John and reinforce that obvious conclusion. Yet when I say I share an apartment with my twin brother, then those three/four true statements while staying true lead to another conclusion.

A few years back I used this example with a man who pointed out, correctly, that if I was lying about any of those statements it completely changed the conclusion. he4 was correct, but wrong-headed. The problem is that all the statements are true and they are but one example of ways in which completely true statements can be sequenced to lead to a false conclusion.

I stopped the discussion when with a nasty turn of mind (in my opinion) he suggested that I might be having sex with my twin.

When reading scripture we are also sometimes left with incomplete information. Plain understanding of scripture is a guideline for interpretation but is subject to the realization that something obvious to the writer may not be as obvious to us today.

Inthe stories of Elisha one of the miracles is when Elisha causes an axe-head to float. This doesn't seem like much. If I borrowed an axe and the head flew off into a river, then I could just stop at the store and for a couple of hours wages replace it. During the time of Elijah and Elisha the axe-head was equivalent to a farm tractor. Not just a little one, but the ones that cost more than a couple of months salary.

There are other things that aren't obvious in the stories of Elijah and Elisha. The change from small family owned farms to large agricultural properties was part of what was happening as the Philistines moved into the small agrarian communities. The Philistines had moved into the Iron Age before the ancient Hebrews as is evidenced by the chariots they possessed and the loan of the axe head.

The question for us in reading scripture is what else do we miss because we just don't have the common knowledge of the time of the writing of the scriptural passage. It is good that everyone reads scripture. It is good that we read to find that obvious meaning. But we shouldn't be so focused on the plain meaning of scripture that we forget it is written in a different time, a different place, and a different culture.