Truth and the Relational Dance of Knowledge

truth beyond facts

➡Check it Out: Past Video Conversations

➡Today’s Post:Truth and the Relational Dance of Knowledge

➡Two Upcoming Events: The Grief We Carry with

Dina Bell-Laroche

and

Wisdom of Grief

on Tuesday night May 27, and our annual Open and Relational Theology Conference, ORTCON ’25, June 30-July 4.

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➡Check it Out: Last week’s theology/author video conversation with Brian McLaren talking about authoritarinism, creativity, and writing and then our video with Liz Charlotte Grant talking about her book, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible.

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➡Today’s Post: Truth and the Relational Dance of Knowledge

Truth is both propositional and relational. To speak of truth is to speak of the movement between the two. “It’s not that we just discover truth, as

Matthew David Segall

says, “we are changed by it.”

I suspect his observation is true because of love. Love always seeks to express itself in the smallest and most tangible ways. In other words, love needs you to take a chance; to stand up amid the stagnant groupthink that inevitbly leads to marginalization, exclusion, and scapegoating.

Which reminds me of our conversation with Brian McLaren, who said “This is something you have to love about Native American and other indigenous cultures, that almost all of them have some idea of a vision quest where they say, ‘We don't want you to be part of groupthink. We actually want you to find your own voice and have your own vision and have your own connection to reality …’ I guess I'm thinking about this since I live in Florida. And, you know, we have a state, it's called the Sunshine State, but it's really the censorship state. I mean, what our state government is doing to keep children from learning history. They want the groupthink to be enforced without challenge.”

The family, community, or poltical party that wants you to believe in a truth that puts you in vulnerability-free environment, could very well be prompting you to believe in something less than truth. A church that teaches you to stand behind "biblical truth," the kind that only benefits its adherents, is teaching you to stand behind a lie.

You can't say "God is love" and "I love God" and then refuse to sit next to someone in the pew who is different than you. In such a case, you'd be proud of what you've given, partly because it hides what you withhold. What you've given is a propositional statement, and what you've withheld is relational vulnerability. Therefore, it's not truth. Or it is truth, and what it's communicating is that the system is living a lie.

The community of faith we call church can be a space where good, generative things can happen, and it can be a place of unhealthy indoctrination. Sometimes, all at the same time.

(Btw, though it wasn’t about theology, my Substack friend

Marni Battista

said something very similar to all of this in a note she posted last week.)

In my own experience

In my own experience, when I preached inclusivity of all people, I had some clap with joy and others who clapped back with anger. I remember Jim and Mary (their real names were Bob and Sue, but we'll call them Jim and Mary) staring at me, Clint Eastwood like, on their way out one Sunday morning and then following it up with messages: "Of course God is love," and "of course, they weren't going to be worshiping with murderers, idolaters, and the sexually immoral.” Yeah, a real Kumbaya moment, especially after I suggested that their sexuality might not have been as moral as they thought. 🤔

In similar kinds of conversations, others reminded me to "love the sinner and hate the sin.” It’s a phrase I believe is deeply suspect, for one reason, in keeping with the spirit of this post: A person cannot be loved unless they are known. They cannot be known unless someone is willing to be in relationship with them. 👈🏼

Ha, imagine saying that we love people as we close the door on them and their “impure” environment; to occasionally crack it open long enough to tell them they can squeeze out if they want, all the while, our condemning propositions making it impossible for them to do so. Ha, imagine calling that love?

That'd be like some churches creating "the closet" to shove all the immoral people into. Of course, the most widely known secret in the history of christianity is that Jesus not only went into the closet with them; even more, Jesus was already there. Where the "love the sinner, hate the sin"phrase leads is in the direction of emphasizing hate and deemphasizing love. In effect, what some well-intentioned church people do is spend all their time trying to build a closet for themselves. 👀

I gave Jim and Mary permission to remove the "love sinner, hate sin" phrase from their lexicon. Sigh, they chose not to step into the freedom of such a permissive if not, promiscuous invitation.

But lest you think I'm relegating Jim and Mary or Bob and Sue to closets of their own making, the reality is, I can be culpable in this "withholding risk" thing, too. The problem with risk is it's just so, so … risky. What's more, it feels like time is running out. I should probably be a little more cautious. I should be a little more careful. I've never battened a hatch down before, but in the face of the absurd and apocalyptic daily news, maybe I should try my hand at some battening!

And Yet I Know I’m Being Invited

And yet I know I’m being invited (along with Jim and Mary, and everyone else) to embody some risk. Yes, it might be late in the game, but "late chances and last chances," as Catherine Keller says, "remain nonetheless real chances." It might go poorly, but if we have faith, we may yet gain the upside of the risk. Either way, the risky kingdom, according to Jesus, is already disturbing us. It's already here. That could be a source of encouragement.

And how else does one explain …

• Mandela and Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation project.

• MLK Jr.'s gentle and fierce commitment to peace; the disciple's ever-expanding attitudes of forgiveness rather than revenge.

• the Anabaptist's refusal to go to war.

• Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as the "Frontier Gandhi," building a nonviolent resistance movement of 100,000 Muslims.

• the number of pastors and churches willing to lose the estimation and support of their Omnipotent-loving denomination over matters LGTBQ+.

• the quiet conviction of Franz Jägerstätter.

• the disorienting and gracious response by the members of Charleston's Emanuel AME Church.

• Julia Hill's commitment to saving one, solitary Redwood tree.

• St. Francis living joyously in poverty.

• Mother Teresa's selfless service (despite her plague of doubts).

• the demise of the Berlin Wall.

• Gandhi's Salt March.

• the Arab Spring.

• Ireland's Good Friday Agreement.

• the Suffrage Parade.

• the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

• Or that one time when I saw that guy forgiving that other guy at church?

These are all examples of truth existing as some kind of proposition that then becamde embodied within someone who then chose to follow love's lead, which led them to risk. This is the function transcending (and including) the form. And if you've read this far, guess what … you're being invited to sretch and align yourself with this movement.

The funny thing (and by funny I mean ironic or head-scratching), is that the people who need this news the most are the christians. Haha, don't think for a second that God is calling you to be a missionary to those in Africa; no, God is calling you to something much more unpredictable: share the good news of Jesus with the christians in your local church. 🫤

Truth, situated as it is in love, requires something of us. It’s more than cognitive; it’s existential risk. “It’s not static information waiting to be found,” as Segall says, “but something that changes us, and in turn, is co-created by us. Truth and trust share an etymological root, and I suggested that truth reveals itself only to those who are trustworthy—who have cultivated the virtues necessary for revelation. In this way, truth becomes more than a property of propositions; it becomes a relationship, a moral and spiritual practice, a path of transformation.”

Amen.

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Periodically, I remind people that they can upgrade to a paid Substack subscription. When they do, they’ll be helping me create time to write, to do some podcasts, and to generally do all I can to continue creating a healthy and sustainable theology. This isn’t one of those times, though, so don’t even worry about it right now.  

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➡Two Upcoming Events:

I’m looking forward to being with

Wisdom of Grief

and

Dina Bell-Laroche

next Tuesday night, May 27, 630pm Central. Here’s the link: The Grief We Carry. If you’ve experienced loss, I hope you’ll join us or if you know of someone who’s carrying grief, shoot them an invite. ♥️

ORTCON’25 June 30 - July 4 is my favorite, annual theology conference. It happens in the Grand Tetons of WY. There’s still time to register!