In common parlance there are two expressions that offer the proverbial food for thought. Though they are seemingly unrelated, they share one aspect.
The first, “He can’t manage the truth”, has two possible meanings. One is that an individual denies the truth by ignoring it or suppressing it with distractions. The other is that he accepts the truth, but only inasmuch as he can manipulate it to accommodate his desires, the sort of person who legitimizes his behavior by rationalizing that ‘everyone else does it’. This concept of managing the truth is backward. The truth is God and God’s purpose. ‘Managing the truth’ is cooperating with God’s will. The earliest example appears in in Genesis. God, the Creator, gives man the responsibility to name the other creatures. In a sense man is a co-creator with God, a collaborative partner. The paramount example of such cooperation is, of course, enshrined in Jesus’s words the night before his self-sacrifice: “Thy will be done”.
For non-believers, the danger of thinking we manage the truth is that we begin erroneously to believe we are in complete control and that we can bring about our aspired goals on our own. Even for believers, there is the danger. We tend to think that ‘with God’s help’ we can do what we want, while the proper attitude is that with our help God does what he wants.
The second expression is “the Established Church”. Because of our Constitution’s First Amendment we Americans do not have an established church. However, many of us use the term in reference to the so-called mainline religions. For us the word ‘established’ signifies an institutionalized, unchanging, even autogenetic entity, the raison d’ etre of which is the existence of the church itself. We lose sight of the fact that a church is established for a purpose beyond itself.
This misunderstanding is unfortunate. In considering an established church to be a static organization focused on itself we fail to see that it is, or should be, a dynamic community focused on a future oriented purpose, a community which finds security not in the unrelenting grasp of an unchanging present but in the evolving, faith-filled hope for what is to come.
As unrelated as they are, these two expressions, “managing the truth” and “established church”, share one aspect. Both call to mind the need for detachment. To be managed by truth rather than attempt to manage it is to eschew that pseudo-sovereignty that binds us to the false world of solipsistic independence. We must accept that we are not in complete control. And, to see ourselves as ‘sojourners and aliens’ (1 Peter 2:11) is to understand that we are a vibrant community moving forward towards a purposed destination and not an established, static body paralyzed by our present situation.
Philanthropy requires detachment. Donors separate themselves from personal resources in support of a cause outsides of themselves. In collaboration with the promptings of the Holy Spirit our donors contribute to a wide array of charities established throughout the world, endeavors that manifestly demonstrate the ongoing advance of the Church and the Kingdom.