THE TRUTH !!?? You can't handle the truth ...

Last night talking with a dear friend, he shared with me a comment about truth ... The jist of it was simply this: "The only creatures in the world who understand truth are children and animals ... " He laughed as he shared this observation and said - "ain't that the truth !!??"

My mind floated back to the climactic scene in the film "A Few Good Men" when Jack said (rightly) "THE TRUTH ??? You can't handle the truth ..."

Or the scene in the Gospels where Pilate asks Jesus, "Truth? What is truth?"

Maybe my friend is on to something ... for an animal truth is the moment. If a dog is hungry he eats. If she is thirsty, she drinks. If she is tired she sleeps. So too with children. They live in the moment and know what they know and believe what they believe.

As adult we begin to rationalize our understanding of the truth. We begin to add irrelevant things. We start to rely on things that may well be UN-truthful. And we start to fall for all manner of things ...

As my friend shared his observation with me last night, I thought of the wickedness of gossip in small towns, and I could only compare it's destructive power to the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction mantra the Bush administration chanted as it marched in to Iraq. We know KNOW that there never were any WMD's, and there was no truth to the contention that there were WMDs ... but to the thousands of Iraqis who have senselessly suffered because of the war, it makes little difference ... The truth was irrelevant. The drums were beating and people were saying - "I heard ...", "I read ...", "They say ..." and so on ...

It is true on a lesser scale with with gossip.
Just because it starts with the phrase "I heard ..." doesn't mean it is so !!
Just because someone told you, doesn't mean it needs to be passed along and spread!!
Just because you heard it was true doesn't make true at all!!

The real truth is what's important.
The problem is that too often, we've lost the ability to focus on the truth, because we've lost our perspective on what truth is ...

Maybe it's time to learn from our pets and our children ...