SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 67, Issue 243, 26 July 1947, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN

DEVOTIONAL READING (Conducted by the Ashburton Ministers’ Association.) " A PERSONAL QUESTION “Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?” Pilate, before whom Jesus was arraigned, has an unenviable reputation. We are reminded of it every time we repeat the opening sentences of the Apostles Creed ... ‘I believe in Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffered'under Pontius Pilate . . .’ His name, in other words, is and forever will be associated with the crucifixion of Jesus. There is little doubt, of course, that he felt himself in a very awkward situation ... a fact which, I think, this question which he addressed to Jesus bears out. It was framed as the result of an utterance in which, declaring that He had come into the world to hear witness to the truth and that every one who was of the truth must hear His voice, He plainly indicated to Pilate that, that being so, there was only one honourable course open to him and that was to declare Him innocent and set Him free. “What is truth?” asked Pilate, suggesting that the issue was not nearly so clear to him as it appeared to he to Jesus. How was he to know when a thing was true? Wasn’t a decision difficult to reach in the presence of such conflicting opinions? And supposing it possible to reach a decision, what was truth anyway . . . was it something that a man must follow regardless of the consequences? r There have been many since Pilate’s day who have felt themselves precisely in Pilate’s position. Faced by \vhat others declared unequivocally to be the truth, they have asked Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” and, perhaps like Pilate, they have not stayed for an answer and have been led into actions whose memory is very difficult to live down.

Some ask the question us perhaps Pilate asked it, because they profess to find it difficult to determine truth from falsehood. There are some who profess to he in this very difficulty every time they hear the Gospel proclaimed by a minister of Jesus Christ. They agree that the statements he makes are oftimes very impressive, that the fulfilment of the promises he makes in religion’s name, would be very desirable . . . but how do they know, whether the whole thing is true or whether it is compounded of falsehood and deception.

A leading thinker of our day and generation, with perhaps shell people in mind, recently set himself to answer that question. You kjiow that a thing is true, he.says, because when you hear it expressed you instinctively feel it to he true; secondly because you verify it in your own experience, and thirdly, because, on reflection, it fits into and makes sense of the rest of your experience. If some declare that they find it difficult to believe whether what Jesus said, or what is said in His name, is true or false, have never really listened carefully to wbat is said, have never tried to put it to the proof in their own experience,, have never properly considered whether it fits into and .makes sense of the rest of their experience, little wonder they are in a difficulty and, being in a difficulty, proceed as Pilate proceeded, to perform actions whose memory they cannot live down.

But others ask Pilate’s a, question not simply because they find the general , question of truth and falsehood difficult to answer, but because they find so many people saying, so many different tilings and all of them claiming at the same time to speak the truth. Who, among nil the speakers, is to be believed?

People, for example, profess to find it difficult to decide upon religion because of the number and the variety of the denominations. Each of them, seems to be saying something different from the- others and many are claiming that the- truth is to be found within the boundaries of their own fellowship and nowhere else. Who is to be believed? »

, While admitting the confusion which sometimes results from so many different denominations, one feels that the apparent disunity is sometimes allowed to obscure the- real underlying unity which characterises all who acknowledge allegiance to Jesus Christ, Protestants and Roman Catholics, for example, may worship God in very -different ways, they may emphasise different aspects of Jesus Christ, but such things should not obscure from us the fact that Protestants and Roman Catholics alike lieve that God lias spoken to the world'' in Jesus Christ and, believing that, try to order ’their lives in the light of His teaching. The real underlying unity and agreement which characterise Christians was never better demonstrated than during, and even prior to, the recent war, in some of the Continental countries where a philosophy of life inimical to everything Christian was being propagated. With one voice Protestant and Roman Catholic alike protested, and alike shared the suffering and humiliation of prison and of concentration camp because of their stand.

. Such an illustration should remind those of us who profess to find it difficult to decide upon religion because of the number and variety of denominations that there is truth which is primary and truth which is secondary, and that the secondary, the insistence which some place upon the manner and method of worship, for example, should not obscure; the truth which is primary, what all Christians, however they may worship, believe about Jesus.

A. F. Whitham, in one of his books has a chapter on this very point. “There are” he says, “important truths which are true for the East but. not for the West, for the West though not for the East. There are secondary matters of real value that appeal to one temperament but not to another, attitudes and ideas that, appea} to different ages and stages of life. But primary truth, truth of the very heart and inmost nature of God, must be for Jew, Gentile, barbarian, Scythian bond and free : . . and hold within its very nature the promise of universal acceptance.”--By the Rev. R. Bothune, M.A., in the “Expository Times.”