In Defense of Truth – Sunday, September 16, 1984
It is not true what some have said: that truth needs no defense, that truth will overcome the false, with power of its own, with none to speak its name or plead its cause. Perhaps when eternity has balanced all that is on time’s unerring scales, and future, present, past are one, then truth will stand alone, without the aid of just and fearless men.
But, for now, as long as man’s ambition divides the false and true, every particle of truth requires its advocate. It is as Mencken wrote: “The smallest atom of truth represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash heap…”1
Recorded history is evidence enough that falsehood often reaps rewards of fame and praise, while truth inherits the scaffold or the rack: For Socrates the hemlock, for Christ bleak Calvary.
Even now, in these enlightened times and this liberated land, the voice of truth is often either unheard or unheeded. For the sound of truth is soft, almost a whisper. It can be drowned out by the roar of greed or political ambition. It can be squelched by the clang of diplomacy. Its delicate nature is chained by the strong fetters of ignorance and superstition. It is bought and sold by racial prejudice and whispered away with gossip. But, by and large, truth dies the pauper’s death—succumbs to poverty, friendless, without nourishment or aid.
It is not enough to believe in truth, for in truth, “Faith without works is dead.”2 So, too, a belief without action is a lifeless creed. It is not faith alone which drives Niagara’s turbines, but faith’s application in harnessing the latent power of the massive falls.
There is more at stake here than parables and rhetoric. Truth is every country’s most valuable national treasure. And that nation which suppresses it in the name of social convenience, conceals it for the sake of political expediency or camouflages it behind false diplomacy not only deserves to fall, but surely will.
We are all accountable. Every voice adds that much more weight to the side of fact. We must be sincere, objective in our pursuit of truth and unequivocal and dauntless in its defense. Much depends on it.
1 Mencken, H.L., “Prejudices,” The Great Quotations, Pocket Books, 1967, p.927
2 New Testament, James 2:26
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September 16, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,874