Truth and Its Yield
by
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Imagine if we could trust no one to tell us the truth. Imagine if we deliberately tried to deceive others in our advice to them. Imagine if we couldn’t rely on our parents to guide us in growing as human beings. Imagine if our teachers were known for their ability to distort the truth or provide outright lies to us. Imagine if doctors could not rely on anyone to pass on the accumulated knowledge of medicine and the treatment of our illnesses. Imagine if we could believe nothing from those we meet who might be a possible spouse in life.
It’s a nightmare scenario isn’t it, even an image of hell? That is the great name for Satan—the deceiver, the liar, the trickster. Even what is clearly true, Satan will try to find a way to distort. “The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh had made. It asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’”
That’s his way—create a doubt, distort, and confuse.
Truth seeks to do none of these. Truth gives assurance, accuracy, and clarity. Truth leads and untruth leads astray. Truth is essential to human life, growth, and peace of heart.
But is that true? How would we know? If it were a lie, could we know why with certainty?
Truth is a deep thing, rich and worthy of understanding. That’s what this book is about—it’s an inquiry into truth. What is truth? What is important about truth? Why should we know how to distinguish truth from deception? How can we know the difference?
Let’s begin with this: imagine if we were all liars. Here is a story that imagines we are incapable of truth—knowing truth or telling truth.
Wanda met Bill at a party. “Hi,” Bill said to Wanda when they first met, “I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” It was a lie—he really thought she was the ugliest girl he’d ever seen.
“Hi to you,” she answered. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.” All the while she was thinking what a lie he had just told her and that she really didn’t want to get to know this guy.
But my imagination won’t take me much beyond this in terms of carrying on a conversation between liars who can’t tell the truth. It’s because I really can’t imagine life where lying is the norm. It’s unnatural. It runs against the normal use of conscience, the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” People don’t want to be deceived, lied to, or manipulated.
There’s no question that underhanded people wanting something from us sometimes dupe us. But generally, they know what the truth is; they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And when we find out what has happened, usually there is some price they, and those deceived, pay for the deception.
Why is truth so necessary to us? Why do we rely on it to live normal, healthy lives?
Let us begin with the nature of God, for truth is related to God’s nature. “My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.” Any understanding of truth has to have its origin in this key understanding of God.
There is a second understanding that we need to know as well. “What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.”
Jesus says, “I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth, and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
To put these things together: God is love; God created us out of love to participate in his life. By his very nature and purpose, God can neither deceive nor be deceived. Jesus is the truth who has come to reveal God to us in truth.
Life without ultimate truth is incoherent. Imagine a God who is a liar. Where would we be? How could we function? On whom could we rely? We need a God who is truth itself and who cannot deceive us. We need this assurance. We need, as human beings, who have intelligence and the ability to choose what to believe, to know that there is truth, and it is truth uncorrupted by human imagination, machination, or ignorance.
Let us look more closely at the truth Jesus reveals to us and see what believing it means to us and what it would mean if it were a lie. Everything depends on the truth of Jesus Christ: who he is, what he says, what he does, what he handed on to others in authority, word, and action. The veracity of any other person or persons is irrelevant if Jesus Christ and all that is proclaimed about him by the Church, in its sole authority to do so, is not true.
Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of truth, and so we must look to him for truth, for he himself is truth. If any lie should be found in him, everything proclaimed by the Church would fall. But if no lie is found in him, then all the Church proclaims about him must be given credibility as a foundation on which to build one’s life
Let us examine five things about Jesus Christ to test their truth: Jesus is the Son of God; Jesus cannot deceive or be deceived; Jesus died for our sins; Jesus is the Bread of life and Jesus is the Word of Life.
What if these weren’t true? Imagine if the Church itself, the bride of Christ, were a liar.
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About the Book
God made us for himself, to be in eternal communion with him. This one single claim makes sense of mankind, why he was created, and what it is that gives man his deepest meaning and fulfills his deepest yearnings.
But are these things true? How do we know they’re true? How important is truth itself? What flows from truth? Human experience has taught us how important truth is--truth frees and falsehood enslaves.
There is something within man that needs God, created by God himself, and something given by God to meet that need. At its base, the need is for happiness, and happiness, once understood, has its source in one place alone, God himself. This truth is pivotal to man’s well-being as a full human being. It is God’s revelation about this core nature of man that is essential to man’s own self-understanding. St. Augustine expressed this in one simple line: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
God’s own revelation of eternal life provides the very meaning for our existence. It reveals the eternal mind of the Father, what he had in mind for mankind even before creation--a being that would have life through, with, and in him. Truth has its yield. Our own happiness is linked to knowing what it is. But the truth about God is subject also to our reason. We have discovered that religious truth must stand the test of human reason, experience, and time.
Truth and Its Yield deals with the very importance of truth itself.
About the Author
Dennis Coates attended Catholic and public schools. Very early on, Dennis had faith, prayed, and believed. He became an altar server at age nine. He recalls vividly and with great warmth serving early morning Masses. This was the time when Dennis was genuinely and permanently evangelized.
He drifted away from his faith in his later teens and twenties. But the Lord always called him back, as was the case when he met and married Diane, the love of his life. Then Dennis tasted some material success and actually said to a friend, “I don’t need God.”
He discovered soon enough that he not only needed God but also felt God calling him back. In 1976 he experienced Christ personally in a deep and lasting way through the Cursillo Movement in the Catholic Church. At that point, he committed himself to follow Christ. He now had a method by which he could live his faith fully, deeply, and perseveringly and finally leave behind his previous in-and-out, come-and-go pattern.
Dennis sought to live his faith in the family, in the workplace, among friends and acquaintances, and in his parish. His desire that others have the opportunity to encounter Christ personally, as he had, became his principle motivation. In 1977 he gave his life totally to the Lord and was willing to answer Christ’s call to serve in whatever way the Lord wished. He served the Church from that point principally through the parish and the Cursillo Movement.
During a retreat in 1992, Jesus told Dennis, “I want you to write your gospel.” “Fine,” answered Dennis, “what’s a gospel?” His retreat spiritual director told him that every follower of Christ has his or her gospel, his or her good news, to share with others. For some it may be through witness, others through service, and others through writing. It became clear to Dennis that his would be through writing.
During that retreat, his first book began, God Is My Shepherd, I Lack Nothing. He then converted a lengthy letter to someone close to him into a book. He followed this with Of Spirit and Presence, summarizing the spiritual dialogue over a thirty-seven year period with his closest friend, an agnostic. Then Evangelized! Dare I say it? told of his Cursillo encounter with Christ and some of its consequences. He followed this with In the Power of God, a book about the power of prayer.
The spiritual dialogue with his agnostic friend took the form of innumerable letters. This dialogue became a key component of his early writing. Business writing became an important ingredient in his professional advancement. Dennis considers these two forms of writing as his greatest background in the development of his writing skills.
In 2003, at age sixty-five, a new stream of writing began. Dennis described it this way. “I showed up at the computer ‘for work,’ and the words would come. I never knew what the subject matter was or even what the next word or paragraph would be. I would first hear the name of the book and then the name of each chapter. I set up the book format, went to chapter one, and the words would come. I was the typist and truth-checker. Twenty-nine books were written in this manner over a six- to seven-year period.”
At one point Dennis asked Jesus, “Lord, what am I do with these books?” He answered, “You are not to be concerned with that; I will take care of that in my time.”
It seems that now is his time, and he has provided the means.