The Truth

It has probably been obvious that real life is rapidly overwhelming my blogging.

Not only have I been busy, but as the way I spent my life recedes into the past, I find it harder to care about it sufficiently to document in the detail I'd like. That's a good thing of course; it's just that I didn't really think I'd begin leaving it behind so soon. I have a short page of notes for brethren-related subjects not yet covered, and I had best start to expand on them before I lose the feeling of what it was like to be involved. It's not a feeling I'm anxious to hang on to purely for the sake of writing about it.

So, firstly, I was reminded of "the Truth" by a discussion last night.

I've touched on this one before. The brethren believe that there is no such thing as a grey area. Things are either so or not so, good or evil, godly or sinful. The things which "are so" are collectively the Truth, and this is not at all the same as fact.

Generally speaking, when the Truth is referred to, what is meant is the sum total of the doctrinal and practical teachings of the brethren's leaders, with room allowed for any yet to come. That's because there is nothing so real as a revelation from above, not even a concrete reality which may contradict it. The notional entirety of everything God wishes man to know will surely be encompassed by what His representative passes on, at least before the rapidly-approaching end of time. Actual fact, while occasionally useful, is not actually important in the same way as revelation.

This attitude is necessary if one denies the existence of anything between black and white, because only the narrowest blinkers can allow such a view to persist. Real life, with all its inspiring chaos, only rarely divides so neatly, just as the integers are an infinitesimal subset of real numbers. The indefinable will always greatly outnumber the tidily true.

There are whole fields of enquiry which the brethren regard not only as unnecessary but illegitimate. Not only those studies which turn up inconvenient facts, but those which deal in the impenetrable. The Gradgrind attitude has lived on a lot longer among the brethren than elsewhere. If a question has an answer the brethren don't like, then they'll say it shouldn't be asked, and if the answer is a matter of taste or personal choice, then it isn't a question that matters. Poetry is alien to the brethren mind, as anyone who has read the introduction to their hymn book will know.

Some questions have an answer which can be known clearly. Others have answers in a range which can be known. Others have answers, but ones which cannot be known at all. Others do not have answers. And some questions make no sense to ask, though they make superficial sense in themselves. All can be valuable, but only the first and the last are acknowledged by brethren doctrine. If they cannot declare an answer by fiat, the question must, by default, be pointless.

The same system then extends from facts to morals.

So, to return from the heights of abstraction, I am frequently asked if I think the brethren and their Truth are wrong. My customary reply is that I don't think they're right, but that I don't consider myself qualified to say they're wrong. Any brethren will always follow this with something which assumes that I have said they're wrong, but with some puzzlement because I haven't said it clearly. It appears to them that I am playing with words so as not to be accused of apostasy. The actual and real distinction between "not right" and "wrong" is a classic grey area that years of indoctrination has left them blind to.

That blindness explains more than I have room to go into here, but knowing that, for brethren, anything that cannot be stated unequivocally to be right must necessarily be wrong, allows one to understand more of their behaviour than is possible when thinking in terms of messy reality.