Truer Than Truth

I was watching one of the TED talks the other day from Isabel Allende, one of my favorite writers. She started out by quoting the old Hasidic Jewish question:

What is truer than truth?

The answer, as any longtime reader of this blog might guess is:

Story.

Only in story can we truly explore truth in all its dimensions. Only in story can we get to the heart of issues and concerns, told with a passion and hope and power that cannot be found when we have to stick to facts.

A number of years ago I was part of a long-running public discussion of homosexuality and the Christian response. Needless to say I was on the side of a more open and accepting approach. In the discussions I eventually got around to telling stories about people I knew and how they felt they were treated by the church. These were true stories, but I told it in a story format.

Was I taken aback when the other side of the discussion challenged me to stick to facts and not bring these stories of people into the discussion. "Why do you always do that?" they asked. They knew, they hinted, that it was hard to respond to issues of the heart. We were responding with emotion as can only be found in story. For people invested in "ministry" to people this was next to impossible to deal with. It becomes an easy cliche then to talk about loving the sinner but hating the sinner, which in the context of the story was hard to explain.

But as I pondered the quote from Allende's talk I found myself asking if it is possible for evil to take center stage in story. That's what, in so many words the others involved in the discussions I was in would have claimed. We were misusing story to further our own, to them wrong, aims.

Those who would ban books might say that it is possible for evil to be presented in story. That's why we must prevent some books from getting into the hands of young people or, in reality, anyone. Some have said that the Harry Potter books, especially in the early years were evil, promoting anti-God behaviors. They were evil.

I would guess that it is more than just possible that those with less that good purposes can write stories that promote bad or wrong or sinful things. We all might be able to name such books. But I am not sure that this as much a worry as we might think. I have a hunch that we know truth when we hear it, especially in story. In fact, probably more likely to be heard in story than in essay or oration.

In short, I think that in the end truth does win out. Even when we don't understand it on an intellectual level but on the level of truth truer than truth.

Story.