The Absolute Truth
by Daniel Rafla
One of the most sought-after objects in the world, the most desirable form of knowledge. Truth. Humanity itself revolves around what is true – in friendship, love, success, happiness, strength, etc. You could literally qualify the highest level of attaining any one concept or virtue by referring to it as true. Pontius Pilate himself upon questioning the Lord Christ
“Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” ” John 18:37-38
Winston Churchill comments, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” (Churchill, 1916) Yet no one has ever quite been capable of summing up the mere impact of the truth better than the words of Christ,
“ ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ ” (John 8:32)
This appears to be a fairly universally known quote, and it can be commonly found in film, music and books. We ourselves, in order to teach the importance of the truth to children, refer to this one verse constantly, that we can create a definitive link between the truth and peace. The irony is that the true impact of truth is itself difficult to measure, and difficult to quantify. That said, I wonder – if the impact of the true means of something is to an individual seeking it can be immeasurable, then what if we were to consider the absolute truth.
The word absolute is rooted from the Latin word Absolutus meaning freed and unrestricted, however the modern understanding of the word is that it is all encompassing, that something being absolute becomes the measure of the thing it contains. Consider for a moment the mathematical symbol of absolute |X|
I want you to now begin to visualise the way in which these two bars actually not only surround that “X” but they are the literal boundary that contains and transforms whatever is inside of it to a positive number.
Now into the rabbit hole we go, as I now begin to delve into an absolute truth that I’ve meditated over during the period of the Great Lent and even into the Holy week of Pascha, rather He who is the absolute truth, Jesus. There can be found no better summary, nor better wording than what He did speak on when He said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” When Pilate asked his question, he did not know that He was speaking to the answer, though I feel that there is many complications around why He said that, especially as He was responding to Thomas asking Him about the things to come, I will however choose to focus on why He referred to Himself as the truth. As I have said above, truth is something we all seek in various aspects of life – things which we can know that Christ has perfected in His life on Earth. Furthermore, we know that in Christ we have life, and that anyone who places themselves in Christ, and allows God to surround them, transformation to their positive form is attained. No matter the value within the absolute bars, it is transformed. Likewise, when Christ envelops any one person, you can be assured that this person, no matter how great or small, will certainly find themselves in the light, no matter how dark they previously were.
Brothers and sisters, the impact of absolute truth is that it is transformative, for the absolute truth is Christ Himself.