All Great Truths Begin As Blasphemies

‘...I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.’

The Book of John

Chapter 14

Verse 6

The Holy Bible

New International Version

Bekina my sister!

Let us not kid ourselves by indulging in sympathy seeking and wallowing in the wonderful melancholic feeling of wounded victims. Do we not perpetuate them, all of us? I am talking about lies, rumours, fabrications, deceits and half-truths. Aren’t we all experts at wrapping them up in the beautiful seductive package of Untruth? What to believe? Definitely not what you and I say! Who to believe? Not you! Nor I! Yes, I know we have suffered at the hand of Untruth! But you forget that we have also ruthlessly inflicted suffering with the same hand of Untruth!

My sister, I have come to see what is meant that our tongues are flaming fires and darts of venomous poison. The capacity we have for empty, dangerous, hurtful, emasculating, flattering and treacherous words is frightening. It never seems so but when Truth visits you and shows you your bones, then you see how horrifying the colour white can be. Sister, behold! Your bones are as white as mine. Let’s look at the big picture here. Do not get biased and myopic. And stop your hypocritical whining. Our husbands are cheats and what Ayirini and Hilida say is true. Stop thinking that they are just jealous, that they have nothing better to do.

A saying on this African land of ours floats in the wise corners of our conversations; ‘All great truths begin as blasphemies’. Have you heard it before? It was coined by our elders when they perceived the disruptive and disturbing tendency that Truth exerts on the human soul; when they saw the frightening power it holds over Falsehood. And, in the befuddling juxtaposition of Falsehood and Truth, they saw how men who dwell in the shrouded Land of Falsehood are threatened by the revealing light emanating from the Land of Truth. The elders saw how Falsehood wreaks destructive havoc in the lives of men; but...they also saw that Truth wreaks another type of havoc as well, albeit an ultimately liberating and redemptive one. The elders went on to coin a whole host of other snippets of wisdom; ‘Truth hurts’, ‘Truth heals’, ‘Truth frees’, ‘Truth lives’, ‘Truth endures’ and so on. Hmmh! It is incredible how aptly these sayings hit matters right on their heads.

Bekina, what is it about us that hates Truth? Yet, aren’t we always going on about it? ‘Tell us the Truth!’ we shout when we feel wronged. ‘Tell me the Truth’ we fume with our breasts hugged tight when our foolish husbands cheat on us. We want the Truth, it is clear, but when we encounter it, we behave very oddly. We are disappointed somehow and do not want to accept that we have the Truth in our hands. So we continue shouting, ‘Tell us the Truth’, and the Truth we have in our hands, we label it a lie. We label it a blasphemy.

Well, maybe I exaggerate and generalise. We are happy with some small truths and we are satisfied with them. Especially when the classy, well-to-do neighbour falls to the ground with embarrassment and shame when the scandal of their deeds surfaces. Then we get happily, righteously indignant and for weeks we share the juicy gossip. Remember when Rabeka got caught, birth-uniform style, with the youthful electrician working for her husband? Or how it came out that Rhoda’s wealth was built on drugs when she was caught in China with some stuffed up her ... ahem! Oh! Then we love the Truth!

Once upon a time He was asked rhetorically with disdain, ‘What is Truth?’ The asker walked away without waiting for a reply. He didn’t care for the answer. He, too, didn’t want the Truth. He curled his lip at Him and walked away into Falsehood. Maranã-thã! That was a very black, peculiar time. Yes, when Truth begins, the elders saw, it begins as blasphemy. Today we testify that He too, ‘began’ as a blasphemy; He stayed a blasphemy; and He died a blasphemy.

But I get ahead of myself. Let me begin like this, sister.

Truth! Indeed, let us ask, what is Truth? Well, whatever it is, there can only be one for sure. I mean, if my nosy, gossipy neighbour sees me with a bloody knife having just heard a scream issue from my house, there can only be one Truth to the different versions that spew from her mouth. Is it that I have killed my husband? Or is it that I have stabbed my mother-in-law? Or is it that I have slaughtered the Christmas chicken, the scream having issued from me when the blood splattered on me? Only one would be true; that is obvious. Because here’s my husband walking to the car and my mother-in-law petting him as if he is still a chubby babe in her hands. So it is the chicken.

My point is, it is not possible to have two Truths. If it were possible to have two Truths, how would that work? Right now, as surely as you live, all Existence is running on one Truth. Is that not an obvious fact? I mean the sun, the moon, the stars, the animals, the plants, the soil, the air and the light, they all follow one set of laws; one Truth, to be precise. And still, despite this one Truth, this World of ours gets chaotic at times and destruction happens all the time. If there were two Truths then, what do you think would be the result? Wouldn’t there be total confusion? The lion would want to follow Truth number one and the lioness Truth number two. Their food would invent Truth number three. Time wouldn’t know which Truth to follow and it would spin forwards and backwards at the same time. And the trees would turn into behemoths and seedlings at once and the sun would shine during the night and darkness would be light and light would be darkness and your nose would be your mouth and ... get my point? Existence wouldn’t know whether to be or not to be. Even Sin would be confused and start thinking it is Truth. And Mr. Satan would start thinking he is Jesus!

No, there is only one Truth. One. And all animals and plants, rocks and soil, bodies of water and the expansive blue sky follow it. They, instinctively, know what we have trouble acknowledging; that, really, there is only ONE Truth. They are incapable of following anything else let alone inventing something else and following it. They are wonderfully trapped into following the laws of that one Truth set during the foundation of the World.

But Man? What a troublesome creature Man is! And how different he is from the obedient animals and plants, rocks and soil, bodies of water and the expansive blue sky. He is the only one who juggles Truth and Falsehood in between his ears. Out of all creation, he is the only one with the vocabulary which is the opposite of Truth. He was given One Truth but oh sister! Look now how many other ‘Truths’ he has invented!

Let’s take an event that may or may not but could have happened one thousand, two hundred and forty-two years ago in 777AD. In a certain village on this lovely continent, a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Bisa lived. One night, a raid happened on her village and the raiders came into her house. They played with her and raped her and slit her throat. In the midst of war, who kills who gets lost into the Memory of Time and Space. Afterwards, Bisa’s mother grieved with her heart in her mouth. She died years later without knowing who killed her beloved daughter, without knowing why. But the event surely resides in the Memory of Time and Space, and in there, it is as clear as day, who unsheathed his knife and slowly moved it across Bisa’s throat, slitting the carotid artery and looking on with ruthless laughter as the red Life blood gushed out, ignoring her pleas, his manhood still throbbing with the pleasure he had derived from the dying woman.

Or let’s take the madman I meet on the way to drop my little son at his school. He is an old bald man with a grizzled beard. He sleeps beside a wall that we pass by along the street to the school. He strikes a sympathy cord inside me all the time and I always give him a little money. He is old enough to be my father. And I wonder about him. Once, a lifetime ago, he was a little baby bubbling with Life. He fed at the breast. His mother wiped his bottom. He learnt how to walk and talk and he grew up. Somewhere, sometime things went wrong inside his head and here he is at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Now who knows of his days? Who knows of his whereabouts? Who knows of his struggles? Who knows of his sexual relations? Who knows where he relieves himself? Who knows of his numerous forays into the garbage bins that he searches through? Who knows of his bed at night? Who knows his blanket? Who knows the last time he brushed his teeth? Who hears his mutterings? Who can make sense of them? Now he is just a madman on the street and the World gave up on him and ceased to care for him. He is now in the hands of the One who guides and provides for the birds of the air and the fishes of the seas.

I came across this quote from someone I don’t know called Tracey Emin. ‘What is Truth?’ He says, ‘Truth doesn’t exist. Who is going to judge whether my experience of an incident is more valid than yours? No one can be trusted to be the judge of that.’ An atheistic observation, I warrant but he had a point. There’s no one on Earth who can tell us who murdered Bisa or how that old madman spends his days. Now put this into the perspective that these violent, mundane, unnoticeable, forgotten, hidden events have been replicated in the trillions of our human lives since the dust of the Earth was moulded into a body and the breath of Life was exhaled into its nostrils. That is when you begin to see the complexity of Truth. Truth cannot be a thing or some abstract concept we refer to. It cannot be a byte of information on some celestial computer recording everything. This is information that matters! Information that does more than what some computer can do. This is information that deciphers and sifts the minds of men and follows their motives and intentions and the pathways of their thoughts and desires. It is information that pierces the mysterious stain called Sin harboured in the breasts of men. Truth does not just merely record, but also knows why we do what we do and then goes an extra important step. It cares enough to keep that record and weep or rejoice at it.

All of us have been born into this world. All of us! Born! And then we die. Look down the generations. What was before us? Who was before us? Who knows them all? Who knows of their hopes and desires? Who knows of their dark deeds and thoughts? The ones before die out and leave us an imperfect picture of what was before us. Their lives printed into the Memory of Time and Space their deeds and thoughts and words. Who will come after us? What will come after us?

It is obvious that there is no one on Earth who knows these things! So who does? If there’s no one who does, then what is it all for? What is the point if no one is keeping record? If all this information doesn’t matter, Truth can as well be some recording on some celestial computer. But who would access it? And if we could, who would bother about some commonplace woman called Bisa who died in 777AD or an old bald dirty madman who resides in the middle of nowhere in a small poor country like Malawi? But we cannot access the Record of the World. And you and I and the World are useless if this information is not being kept by someone. But something deep inside each of us, something we cannot deny in the deep of a seventh night, tells us we are important. And information like Bisa’s dying moments and the hopes and befuddled thoughts of a madman matter. They matter a lot.

Bisa’s killer took Bisa’s Life and I am quite sure that Bisa did not want that. And wouldn’t Bisa’s mama have liked to know why her baby was murdered? Likewise, the madman inhabits this Earth just like you and I. Did he choose to be a madman? I ask you, Bekina, where is the Justice in all this? We all yearn deeply for Justice in this world. Oh! How we covert Justice! But the cornerstone of Justice is Truth. Truth begets Justice. Truth is the pillow the madman’s befuddled, confused, psychotic soul rests on that one day he will get another shot at living a normal Life. Truth is the dream that Bisa’s right to Life bases on that one day her Life will be restored. Since this information is recorded, the Recorder must care about the precious Life of a commonplace woman called Bisa and the dreams and hopes of an unkempt, smelly, old madman. He must care about the mothers of Bisa and the madman, whose hearts broke when their babies’ lives turned into tragedy. He knows Bisa’s last horrified moments and the madman’s pained and anguished mumblings. The Recorder cares about these things which you and I cannot possibly care for.

That is when we begin to see that Truth can only be a Caring Being. That is why Truth IS a Caring Being. A Being who cares that Bisa lived and died violently and weeps for her and remembers and cherishes her dying desire to live. A Being who recorded Bisa’s Life and Death and stored it forever and cares for it forever. A Being who traces the footsteps of the madman and hears his incoherent silent agony and understands what he is articulating. A Being who deciphers the lay of the madman’s mind and records the truth of it and locks it in His heart with tenderness and love. A Being capable of resurrecting that information and powering it to the ultimate use of an ordinary murdered Bisa and a simple forgotten old madman along a nondescript wall in the middle of nowhere.

Bekina, you know some deeds are concocted in the oven of secrecy and behind closed doors and windows. Some are done in broad daylight but not everyone witnesses them. From the instance of their happening, both Truth and Falsehood go out into the world to be. And we encounter both but with limited perspective and subjective prejudice. The entire picture is never clear to us, though we like to think it is. We guess and speculate, we suppose and surmise, we theorize and hypothesize, we analyse and scrutinise, we infer and refer, we presume and assume, we interpret and construe, we conclude and still we wonder. Meanwhile, our tongues are going off at seven kilometres an hour, spewing out all our speculations, interpretations and conclusions jumping from one hapless head to another. Is it any wonder that now we have so many ‘truths’?

What happens, happens. And when it happens, it becomes true. Now, Falsehood denies that it happened the way it happened and says it happened another way! Falsehood creates confusion and gets things muddled up. And since we are, most of the times, none the wiser as to what actually happened, we believe it happened the way Falsehood says it happened! And because Falsehood is manufactured in the breast of all men who pass through the Earth, in the form of deceptions, treacheries, dishonesties, cheatings, pretences and duplicities, is it any wonder that Truth, whose Source is incapable of Falsehood, has a hard time being heard?

But what happens is recorded by Truth. Falsehood cannot erase what happened because it happened. Truth is there, staunchly in the background, just waiting to reveal what happened. And though Time passes and Bisa’s name gets lost into the oblivion of Time and Memory, Truth recorded her. And Truth cares, even now, one thousand two hundred and forty-two years later. He cares for Bisa when not even one single person alive today cares. He remembers her always. He remembers all. And He holds the truth of her Life in His breast.

There is only ONE Truth. And He holds the Memory of Time and Space. He deciphers all thoughts and words and actions. He cares and weeps and rejoices and records. All animals and plants, rocks and soil, bodies of water and the expansive blue sky follow Him. They know Truth because in their existence, He is all there is. One beautiful complete Truth to guide them and provide for them and to love them. The lions and birds and fish wake up to Truth in the first rays of the light of the dawn, they go forth out into the world with the morning rumble of hunger in their stomachs knowing Truth will provide, they kill or are killed by the consent of Truth, they play and are magnificent and blessed by the imagination of Truth, they obey the laws of light and darkness and sleep when the times Truth set approach. They bring forth their young and die in obedience to Truth. The rocks and soil, bodies of water and the expansive blue sky lie where they were placed by Truth and obey Truth’s instructions to change or not to change as He pleases. He is Truth from everlasting to everlasting and all is under His control and dominion.

One Truth.

And here we are, Bekina, all wanting the Truth about our lives. We want the Truth about this puzzling existence we have been thrust into. Why this strange world to play out our lives in this melodrama we call Life? But Falsehood spins us around and gets things scrambled up and we don’t know which end is which. So much so that, when Truth came into the World once upon a time, we rejected Him. Blasphemy! We cried. Falsehood laboured about vigorously in our breasts, instilling fear and outrage at the ‘lies’ Truth was telling. We lusted for blood and proceeded to treat Him violently. We caught Him, we beat Him, we strung Him up onto a wooden cross and we watched Him die. We bayed with animal satisfaction at the vindication we felt that we had tamed ‘blasphemy’.

Well, we know how that turned out. Truth cannot be killed. Truth cannot die. Falsehood may trample on Him and suppress Him but He resurrects all the time. He resurrected from Death on the Third Day and took up again holding the Memory of Time and Space. He knows all the Bisas and the madmen who have existed and are existing and will exist and He knows them to an unimaginable extent, sifting the motives of their actions done in the seconds of their lives and caring and grieving and rejoicing.

But because we think of Truth as some abstract concept, and our understanding of Truth is tainted by Falsehood, no wonder we were shocked when we saw that Truth was a nondescript, not-even-handsome, poor carpenter from Nazareth, born dubiously to a woman called Mary and raised by a man called Joseph who accepted Mary’s story of an immaculate conception when we clearly thought he was duped, pure and simple. How then could we accept that this man, who was born in a manger and was as poor as most of us are not, not even owning a house or a piece of land, could be Truth who owns the whole Universe? How could we accept that it was He who holds the Memory of Time and Space for all of us? That it was He who created us and had the power of the Universe in His hands? We considered Him a blasphemous sod and promptly shut Him up. And when He bled to Death we curled our lip and said ‘See! He bleeds just like the rest of us’.

Yes. Truth began as a blasphemy, He lived as a blasphemy and He died as a blasphemy. But He is no longer a blasphemy. Truth is what He has always been; a Living Being none of us can deny into non-existence. Truth holds the Memory of all Time and Space in His Hands. Truth is the most powerful Being in the Universe. Truth is the King, the Ruler, the Creator, the Provider, the Sustainer, the Word, the Redeemer, the Saviour, the Friend, the Brother, the Resurrector, the Way and the Life.

Truth is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Bekina, let’s get our heads straight. All great truths begin as blasphemies but all great truths end as victories!

‘For, as I have told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.’

The Book of Philippians

Chapter 3

Verses 18 to 21

The Holy Bible

New International Version