What is True for You?

In his meditation manual, Noisy Stones, Unitarian Universalist minister Robbie Walsh writes, “A friend asked me to try my hand at rewriting the Ten Commandments. She wanted something to tape to the door of the fridge. I only came up with nine. But then I spent much less time on this than it took Moses to climb the mountain.” Following are his proposed commandments:

1. You shall not worship the finite and conditional as if it were the ultimate.
2. You shall keep to a rhythm of work and rest in the spirit of the Sabbath.
3. You shall keep your promises.
4. You shall tell the truth.
5. You shall try to make amends for the things you break.
6. You shall honor the people who give and sustain life.
7. You shall honor the earth.
8. You shall grant to others the same rights to life, liberty, and property that you claim for yourself.
9. You shall be kind.

Walsh’s commandments are a gentle reminder that we must seek our own sources of authority as we struggle both to know what is true and how to live our lives. These sources of authority include reason, intuition, personal experience, the natural world, science, our religious heritage, and revelation. We use them individually or in combination to discover truth (with a small “t”), for we are understandably cautious of capital “T” Truth that insists that we end our quest(ioning). As theologian Paul Tillich correctly observed, all too often “the passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.” Sometimes it is necessary to take the position that undisputed authority has no weight and that the dispute is the scale by which authority is weighed.

The integrity of our search for truth is critical. Paul Tillich advised, “Don't give in too quickly to those who want to alleviate your anxiety about truth. Don't be seduced into a truth which is not your own....” This can require the willingness to live with a certain amount of uncertainty and ambiguity until we arrive at our own truths. We need, however, to persist in our truth seeking, to find what is true for ourselves, and to live our lives out of that truth. The process is ongoing.

Some of our truths will last a lifetime, while others will be left behind as markers of our own evolution. This winnowing process occurs as we balance commitment to our truths with a willingness to revise our thoughts and actions based on new information and experience. Such a balance helps us from becoming dogmatic about our truth. One method of truth-testing is to seriously consider the truth statements of others that we do not believe to be true. Niels Bohr suggested that such serious consideration may result in paradox. He writes, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

What is true for you? What are the insights out of which you live your life? What commandments would you create to transform your truth into ethical action? And does all of this result in life lived with conviction rather than consistency? In his essay, Self-Reliance, Emerson reminded us, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. …Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.” Emerson also believed that the truth that is unchanging might not be the truth.