Chapter 14
Trying to Get to the Bottom of Truth

“Would you like some tea?” asked Harriet as the room fell silent for a few moments.

“Yes, thank you,” I replied, looking up again.

“What I meant to say a while ago,” said Rev. Rutledge as his wife went to the stove, “is that we’ve been through a great deal together, and it’s always a pleasure to talk and share with you about anything that is on your mind.”

“I appreciate it,” I replied.

“So . . . what is troubling you?”

I drew in a long breath of air, then let it out slowly. “It’s hard to put into words exactly,” I said finally. “We had a family talk yesterday—you knew that Aunt Katie’s sister was here for a visit?”

“Yes, I met her yesterday. They were in church.”

“She and Katie are from Virginia.”

“Right. That’s what I understand.”

“Well, we all got to talking about slavery and the dispute over it between the North and the South, and I came away confused.”

“About whether slavery is right or wrong?”

“Not exactly that. What I found bothering me as I went to bed last night was that all—on both sides—think they’re right, and they’ve got passages out of the Bible and seemingly religious reasons for thinking what they do. How can people look at the very same thing and then think completely opposite ways about it?”

“That’s been going on for centuries, Corrie. People look at things differently.”

“You’d think at least Christian people would be of one mind.”

“That’s never been the case. Christians have had some of the world’s most bitter arguments.”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“No doubt it isn’t. But it still happens.”

“Why?”

“I suppose besides looking at things differently, people also have motives of self that get mixed in with what they believe. So the stands they take on things have as much to do with what they want as what they believe.”

“Christians ought to be able to separate the two, and take their own wants out of it.”

“Perhaps they ought to be able to, but not many people can do that—even Christians.”

“What about truth? Can there be something that’s true down underneath everything? It seems like people ought to be trying to find it if there is.”

“It always comes back to truth for you, doesn’t it, Corrie?” Rev. Rutledge smiled.

“I think about it a lot. If a writer doesn’t have a grasp of the truth, it doesn’t seem like there’s much to write about. At least that’s how I’ve come to see it.”

“Ever since that sermon I preached years ago about Jesus and Pilate.”

“You sure got me started thinking with that one!”

“Yes, and apparently you haven’t stopped since.”

“That’s another thing a writer’s got to do—keep thinking.”

“I’ll take your word for it, not being a writer myself.”

“It shouldn’t be any different for a preacher.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Harriet came in with a tray of tea and cups. She served us, then sat down herself.

“Well, I don’t care if people have always differed and argued, it seems to me that if there’s such a thing as truth and right and wrong, Christians especially ought to feel the same about it. I don’t understand how two people can both be Christians and believe the exact opposite. One thing can’t be right and wrong at the same time. There’s no sense to it!”

“Something like slavery?” asked the minister.

“Not just slavery, but that’s as good an example as there is. Edie said that Abraham had slaves, and slavery is mentioned in the Ten Commandments, and then she said that according to the Bible, slavery is right. Almeda quoted the verse about being made free and then said that slavery went against the truths of the Bible. There they are—both Christians and yet saying the very opposite thing. Doesn’t one of them have to be wrong? Is there a right and wrong about it?”

“Is it just slavery you’re trying to understand, Corrie?” asked Harriet.

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” I answered. “I do have to decide if I’m going to write any articles about this election between Mr. Douglas and Mr. Lincoln. I suppose that comes down to the North-South dispute and the question of slavery in the end. But right now I’m trying to understand how two Christians can look at the same thing and see it so differently.”

A silence filled the small room, and we all took a sip of our tea. I could tell Rev. Rutledge was thinking hard. That was one of the reasons I liked to talk to him, because he didn’t give an answer until he had thought about it first.

“You’re right about one thing, Corrie,” he said at last. “There has to be such a thing as right and wrong. Otherwise the Bible and its whole message is meaningless. There has to be such a thing as truth, which is the opposite of falsehood.”

“That’s what I believe, too. Then why isn’t it more clear?”

“Because people get in the way. They don’t always see as clearly as they should. Their vision gets foggy and blurred, and then truth and right and wrong get muddled up in the process.”

“Mixing in, like you said before, what they want to believe?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Then if people are going by what they want to think instead of trying to get at what truth is, how do you ever get to the bottom of it? It seems like all you’d do is end up debating your different viewpoints.”

“That’s all most people do end up doing. To answer your question, if you’re talking to a person who views things only through his own blurry vision of what he himself wants to be true, then you probably can’t get to the bottom of a question like slavery. You just each tell the other what you think and leave it at that.”

“But there we are back at the question I asked to begin with—how do you get at what the truth is if you don’t know yourself and you want to talk to other Christians about it?”

“The first thing you have to do, I suppose, is talk and pray things over with people who also want to get down to the underneath layer, down to where truth is, even below what they themselves might want or not want. You can’t get too far in a discussion unless you share that much at least.”

“That’s why I like to talk to the two of you,” I said. “I know you want to get to things down at that level just like I do.”

“I hope I do,” sighed Rev. Rutledge. “But it’s difficult, Corrie. Every one of us has personal biases and preferences and wants and tendencies that we can’t ever escape. Laying those down, even for the sake of trying to find truth, is not an easy thing to do. I constantly try to put myself in the background so I can be on the lookout for something deeper.”

He paused, but then went on after a moment.

“There is another way of looking at it too, Corrie,” he said. “There are two different kinds of truth you can be looking for. Or perhaps I should say two different kinds of right and wrong.”

“I don’t quite understand that, but I’ll keep listening,” I said.

He laughed. “Let me see if I can explain it. I’ve only been thinking this through recently myself. First, there’s the kind of right and wrong that’s absolute, that’s clear in the Bible. It’s always the same, it’s the same for everybody in every situation. There’s no variation to it. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Lying is like that—it’s always wrong. Murder, stealing, hatred—those things are always wrong. And of course, in the same way there are right things too that are always right, true things that are always true. It is true that God made the world. It is true that Jesus Christ lived and died for our sins. It is true that man cannot live meaningfully apart from God. It is true that people are supposed to treat one another with kindness and love. All those things are true no matter what anyone says. If somebody says differently—that God didn’t make the world or that it’s all right to be cruel—then he would be wrong. These are the kinds of things I call ‘absolute’ truth or ‘absolute’ right and wrong. There’s no question about them.”

“I understand all that. Then, what’s the second kind?”

“Well, that’s the one I’ve been wrestling through in my own mind lately. I haven’t come up with a good name for it yet. It has to do with things that aren’t absolute, where the Bible doesn’t necessarily give a clear view on it, or maybe doesn’t say anything at all about it. For example, is it right for your father to be mayor of Miracle Springs?”

“I hope so!” I said.

“So do I. And I think it is. But do you remember how the whole thing came about? It was Almeda who got involved first, and yet in the end she decided it was the wrong thing for her to do. You see, running for mayor isn’t something you can say is right or wrong. It might be either.”

“Almeda didn’t think it was what God wanted for her.”

“Exactly. Because of that it would have been wrong for her to do it, yet at the same time it could be right for your father.”

“The same thing being right and wrong all at the same time. That could get a mite confusing.”

“Once I started looking around, I found so many examples of this I’d never noticed before. Is rain a good or a bad thing? Both. It depends on the situation. Too much and you have a flood, too little and there’s a drought. Is it right or wrong for a young lady to be a journalist? It might be either, depending on whether God wanted her to be or not.”

I smiled.

“Harriet and I, of course, think that God has led you all along the way you’ve come, and we are very proud of you. That was just an example.”

“I see.”

“Personal decisions, like writing or being a mayor, are easy enough to see. But there are all kinds of things in the Bible that aren’t black and white either. Does everybody come to God in the same way? Is there a right form of salvation? Those kinds of questions are very perplexing to a man in my occupation, as you can imagine. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and the Lord told him about being born again. Paul was blinded by a great light. God spoke to Moses in a bush. Timothy and St. Mark grew up under believing parents. So many differences! There may not be any question about murder, stealing, and lying. But what about all the deep things St. Paul wrote about in his letters? There are so many interpretations about what he meant. Does hell last forever? Will we know each other in heaven as we do now? Is the devil a real being? What does it mean to be dead to sin? Oh, Corrie, you can’t imagine all the questions and issues ministers get involved talking and thinking about where there are no clear biblical answers!”

“What do you do to keep from getting confused?” I asked.

Rev. Rutledge laughed loudly. “I don’t keep from getting confused!” he said. “I talk to my wife, and we both get more confused than ever!”

They both laughed.

“You see, Corrie,” Rev. Rutledge went on in a minute, “as long as you keep a balanced perspective on such things, you can’t go too far wrong. I am aware that I don’t know too much about heaven and hell. But I am perfectly content not to know, because I realize we’re not supposed to know such things perfectly. God didn’t make them clear in the same way he made lying and stealing and murder clear. Some things are supposed to be absolute, others aren’t. Where people go wrong is in adopting some personal view on one of the non-absolute things, and then saying that people who disagree with them are wrong.”

“So if we were talking about heaven,” I said, “I might say, ‘I think we’ll know each other there,’ and you might say, ‘I don’t think we’ll know each other there,’ but neither of us could say the other one was wrong.”

“We could say that we disagreed, but we couldn’t know absolute right or wrong about it because the Bible doesn’t make it clear.”

“Hmm . . . that is interesting,” I said. “Then it comes down to whether a certain question is absolute, like lying and stealing; or not absolute, like being mayor or what heaven will be like.”

“That’s what it comes down to, all right—what things fit into which category. That’s where most people go wrong and start arguing with other people—they assume their views are more absolute than someone else’s.”

“But there are absolutes where someone is right and someone is wrong?”

“Yes. And on such issues Christians must not waver from the truth. But on all the other wide range of things, we have to give each other freedom to think without criticizing.”

A long pause followed. Finally I spoke up again.

“Which kind of question do you think slavery is?” I asked. “Is it right or wrong in an absolute way, and everybody ought to feel the same about it? Or is it right for the South but maybe wrong for the North, and each side ought to respect the other’s view?”

“Ah, Corrie, you’ve landed right in the middle of the hornet’s nest with that question!”

“The whole future of the country may depend on the answer,” I insisted.

“That may well be, which is why slavery is such a divisive issue. Of course, I personally find the very notion of slavery abhorrent, contrary to everything I see mirrored in the life of Jesus. Yet . . . I know there are Christians, and ministers, in the South who do not see it so. The Baptists, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians have already split over the question, their southern factions believing just as strongly in the validity of slavery as their northern counterparts believing it is wrong.”

“How can that be?” I said in frustration, back again to the original quandary that had brought me to the Rutledges in the first place.

“People on both sides heatedly and righteously consider it an absolute issue with an absolute right and truth at the bottom of it—their own! Neither side will admit to anything except that the other side is absolutely in the wrong.”

“What do you think? Is slavery one of the absolute issues, where there is a positive right and a positive wrong?”

A long silence followed. At last Rev. Rutledge exhaled a long sigh. I could tell he had already thought long and hard on the very question I had posed but without coming any nearer a conclusion than I had.

“I wish I knew, Corrie,” he said almost wearily. “I truly wish I knew.” Again he paused, then added, “And I fear for our country unless God somehow reveals his mind on the matter to large groups of people on both sides . . . and soon.”