Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 4th August 2024

Dear Friends,

Every so often ministry in meeting restates what a gem our first advice is: “Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us new life” (QF&P 1.02.1).

We usually pay most attention to the “love” aspect of this because its meaning is easier to grasp. Like me you may be less confident about what a prompting of truth feels like. It is possible that in its original context the phrase carried overtones which we are now less sensitive to. Early Friends referred to themselves by several names. Alongside Friends (or children) of Light, they had Friends of Truth and First Publishers of Truth. These last two seem to refer to a doctrinal purity, because, while they did not insist on coercing anyone to their viewpoint, it was really important to them to bring in a particular understanding of the Bible. This obsession may seem outmoded to us, but the arguments about religious practices and understanding was part of the framework of the Civil War which raged at the time, compounded of course by essentially political power struggles. The Quakers asserted that true Christianity was an inward matter where individual spiritual leadings were more important than human hierarchies and power structures. Challenging those hierarchies was genuinely dangerous at that time. Hence the query “how has truth advanced among you?” which was regularly circulated round the movement would have felt quite charged.

To modern ears the word truth is more likely to suggest honesty and reality. Responding to  promptings of these aspects can be no less challenging.  We are upset or outraged when people have been less than honest with us. You don’t need to believe that there are absolute moral standards, whether or not policed by a divine watchdog, to feel burning betrayal through falsehoods, so honesty is widely expected. But can we really be called to be absolutely honest? We can find it difficult to be totally open if our reputation or our safety – or of others – is at risk. Many of us discover this early in life (the dog has eaten my homework). It gets worse beyond childhood. Many trades people and politicians find it hard to avoid being “economical with the truth”. It may even be mandatory in cases of cabinet or corporate responsibility.  Other difficult choices around being truthful arise, say, for doctors or relatives communicating diagnoses to the sick, especially to the terminally ill. What is said seems often to affect the progression of the illness, or may trigger emotional scenes which we  would rather avoid. While absolute honesty may be troublesome, my gut feeling is that it usually easier in the long run to be candid, as most secrets eventually leak out, while keeping in them strains the mind and saps the soul.

What about the wider issue of truth as reality? My assumption is that the better we understand the world, the more likely we are to be able to live effectively in it. Is it actually all just random, or does it have some kind of purpose?  If we don’t know how the world works, how can we get a handle on what actually counts as successful, or happy,  or meaningful living? These are difficult questions which have been argued about since the dawn of time. I am, of course, not able to offer definitive answers. Some say there are no definitive answers, claiming “everyone has their own truth”. I distrust that idea, and I doubt that anyone fully believes it. We hope, for instance, to win court cases, historical disputes, scientific controversies and the like, by producing concrete evidence. We take steps to lay such evidence down when we make agreements. So there is one truth but we have multiple approximate perceptions of it.

A crunch time can come if the promptings of truth lead us to think “I have been following this path all my life, but it has been based on a mistaken view of reality”. That can be a devastating and/or scary realisation, but responded to (alongside the promptings of love) becomes an opportunity for burgeoning new growth.

Bob Harwood

on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms and Nancy Wall)