Truth in History
By Fr. David Kendrick
The People of Israel’s Commitment to the Truth of their history with God
It’s hard to see how Moses writes and narrates a book (Deuteronomy) in which he dies at the end of it. But that’s not the only clue that Deuteronomy was written well after the time of Moses. At one point, he refers to Canaanite kings who were killed by the Israelites after they crossed the Jordan river, while Moses himself died before they crossed.
Likely written just before and during the Babylonian Exile, the author of Deuteronomy is updating the Law of Moses to make it relevant in much changed circumstances. By having Moses look forward to the life and death choice the Israelites will have to make (Dt 30:15-20), the author of Deuteronomy provides the opportunity for the people of Israel and Judah to reflect on the choices they did make, which led to the genocidal destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the exile of the southern kingdom of Judah. I could not help but be a very painful reflection.
But it was a truthful reflection. God’s chosen people did not mythologize their history, cherry-picking the heroic parts and not publishing their failures, as though not writing them down would somehow keep them out of mind. As chosen people of the one God in whom truth is one, the Israelites understood that they had a responsibility to tell the truth; and in their written history with God, they made a Commitment to the Truth.
Our commitment as People of God to Truth
Mythology isn’t “life,” but a living death because in our mythologizing, we avoid the reality, the truth. To choose life is to choose truth, a choice that we struggle with down to this day. Why? Because the half-lies we live with are more comfortable than the pain we experience in squarely facing the whole truth? Because if we face the while truth, we think that we literally cannot live with the consequences?
Jesus tries to shock us into facing the truth by catastraphizing it. Is there a mind-reader with a badge out there waiting to pounce when we feel anger toward our brother or sister? Jesus first implies that there might be. But having entertained that worst fear, and having dismissed it, can we in our relief examine the anger itself, in faith that God will help us bear that examination and remedy? What is the worst that could happen to you in your worst fear. Let Jesus look it over with you, and there is nothing that you and we cannot bear with Jesus bearing it with us.
In 1937, Pope Pius XI condemned the ”idolatrous cult” of National Socialism with its “myth of race and blood.” “Spiritually,” he wrote, “we are all Semites.” If we are Christian, it only because we have been adopted by the God of Israel whom Jesus reveals, a God of history, a God of truth. In our families, in our countries, in our churches, we are called to the same motto that seminarians at Virginia Theological Seminary are called to: “Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will.” The reward is infinitely more than the cost.
