Living the Truth

Living the Truth. By Alan Jones. Boston: Cowley Publications, 2000. 166 pp. $12.95 (paper).

Near the beginning of his book, Dean Alan Jones includes a quotation from novelist James Carroll, writing in the Boston Globe: "What if human beings are never in full possession of the truth, but must constantly seek it in new experience in a dialogue of respect and mutuality with others?" The author's answer is that this is indeed the situation for humanity-"pilgrims of the truth."

This is more than an attempt to define truth; the book aims to tell what the truth has to do with us and how we live. Jones leads the reader on a grand tour, viewing the subject from a number of vantage points. Though we never get to the unfathomable heart, we come satisfyingly close and end outfitted for further exploration.

The book's four parts cover truth as fact, fiction, relationship and mystery. Within these Jones offers twelve meditations, including "Finding a Story Faithful to the Facts," "The Craft of Truth-Telling "Truth and Cunning," "Truth as Betrothal," "Truth as Moral Adventure" and "The Kingdom of Love and Truth,"

The author suggests that in a fruitful search for truth we must experience a self-forgetfulness that is not self-annihilation, but a form of pleasure. It has to do with love, which, as Iris Murdoch wrote, is "the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

Jones observes that "The world is essentially something I share with others. It is social. There is no strictly private reality." And he quotes Michael Ignatieff, who wrote in his article, "The Elusive God of War Trials" (Harpers, March 1997, p. 15 ff.), that the truth that matters to people "is not factual truth but moral truth; not a narrative that tells what happened but a narrative that explains why it happened and who is responsible [Jones's italics]."

We are led to explore such questions as what it might mean to act truthfully, what sort of relationship there is between truth-telling and integrity, how telling the truth makes us whole, and most important, what we mean when we say that Jesus is the Truth. "What we attend to most shapes our souls," Jones writes, "It is then that we learn that truth and freedom go together; you cannot have one without the other. Our truth is Christ. We go further: we claim that Christ is the Truth `whose service is perfect freedom.'. . . We believe that the deepest truth of our lives has to do with dying and being raised to new life."

The author ends: "When I am dying. . . I hope that I will be part of a community of trust and love that understands the intrinsic value of human life. As long as I am a member of Christ, my living and dying as a person who is known, loved, and accepted is what really matters.... How we act depends to a large extent on who we believe ourselves to be. And who we really are is safe in the hands of God, whose love sometimes burns us before it transforms us. And this is the truth."

ROBERT B. HORINE

Forward Movement Publications

Cincinnati, Ohio

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2001
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