Last week in this space I began looking at the miracle
of the Virgin Birth. I would like to continue laying some ground work so that
we can (hopefully) come to a deeper appreciation of this miracle. It is more
than just a marvel, but a deep mystery that reveals something to us about God
and about ourselves.
We need to distinguish between truths and facts. Facts
are about what is. It is a description of reality. 1 + 1 = 2, and e = mc2.
That is just the way it is. While 2 and 1 and e are numerical values, they are
not human values in any sense. No matter how holy or wicked you are, 1 + 1
still is going to come out to 2. It is just the facts. The distance from Austin
to San Antonio is the same for all people, regardless of their politics,
immigration status, or their virtue. It is just what it is, with no moral or
ethical component to it.
Truths, on the other hand, are deeper, richer, and
fuller of meaning. Truths can operate simultaneously at several levels of
meaning. They are “multi-valent.” Really big or rich truths can even be
inexhaustible. Some events or realities have aspects of both fact and truth,
such as the Crucifixion of Jesus. It is a historical fact (“crucified under
Pontius Pilate….”) and also a religious truth (the cause of our salvation). It sometimes
is difficult to pick these apart.
One way I think about the difference between truths
and facts occurred to me when I was working at the Washington University
library as an undergraduate. I came across a book listing the absolute number
and percentage change of each county of Oklahoma for each year of the Dust Bowl
of the 1930’s. There, in rows of numbers, were the facts. But the facts
explained very little. On the other hand, John Steinbeck’s famous novel The Grapes of Wrath gives a much fuller
and truer picture of what the Dust Bowl was really all about. The work of
fiction is much truer than the mere statement of the facts. If you want to
understand the Dust Bowl as a human phenomenon, read the novel, not the book of
statistics. The facts are correct but not in any deep sense “true.”
As modern Americans we are used to looking for the
facts. We tend to be pragmatic and want to get things done. We don’t spend much
time with poetry or other ways of perceiving reality other than just the bare
facts. We pretty much want to know just what is. And we are very successful at
that and have learned to control and manipulate our surroundings far beyond any
generation before us.
The trouble is that the Scriptures are not modern
textbooks. They are ancient writings composed between 2,000 and 3,000 years
ago. They don’t share our assumptions about the facts of reality or even what
is most important. We approach them like they are a newspaper report, when they
are actually more like poetry. So next week I hope to look at what kind of
writings the Scripture are and what kind of questions we can ask.
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