Truth Comes Last

Plato located the soul of man in the head; Jesus, in the heart.

(source unknown)

We tend to think that because Jesus said, "Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free," that Truth comes first -- and then we believe it.  However, reading Mysticism by E. Underhill, I am realizing that Truth comes last.  Jesus told the Apostles that they would know the Truth only after having been with them for three years.  They had had many opportunities to walk away from Him because they did not understand Him, but they could not.  They were drawn by something more powerful than intellectual understanding; they were drawn to Him by a powerful and irresistible love. 

Many times He said to them:  Are you so slow to understand?    It was not intellectual enlightenment that held them fast to Him.  As simple men, fishermen, they probably had not cared too much about the fine points that fascinated the scribes and Pharisees; they just wanted to catch fish and eat them.  They just wanted to provide for their families and share a laugh with their friends.  But His Love -- well, that was something else. 

It is only after passion has awakened interest that we want to know all we can about the person who has awakened our passion.  The desire of knowledge is a part of the desire of love.  We want to know in the deepest, fullest, closest sense, the thing we adore.  Love is a quest which moves us out of ourselves toward something or someone that can be fully known only when possessed.  The aim of religion, like that of love, is communion, union with another.  Intimacy is its essence -- and in being intimate with Someone or someone, we come to know that Person/ person in a way we could not know them otherwise.

Love is energetic, moving us forward toward the other.  Knowledge tends to be passive, receptive. 

Love is stimulated by emotion and interest; we act because we feel we must.  All of our achievements in life are born of love, never of mere thought.  "The intellect by itself moves nothing," said Aristotle.  Our reasoning powers are analytic, not exploratory, and our thoughts do not probe that in which we have no interest, attraction, or desire.

That is why we cannot teach children or teens about God unless we touch some part of their emotional life.  In religion, the "God known of the heart" is more important than "God guessed at by the brain."  Loving intuition is more fruitful than intellectual proofs.  "Life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is in the last analysis the end of religion" (Leuba).

At the touch of passion, doors fly open which logic has battered on in vain, for passion rouses to activity not merely the mind, but the whole vitality of man.  It is the lover, the poet, the mourner, the convert, who shares for a moment the mystic's privilege of lifting that Veil of Isis which science handles so helplessly, leaving only her dirty fingermarks behind.  The heart, eager and restless, goes out into the unknown and brings home, literally and actually, 'fresh food for thought' ."  (Underhill: Mysticism)

God can be known only from within, as is true of other people and all of nature.  That is why a small child can "know" God in a way the scholastics cannot.  I remember being drawn to the tabernacle, to Mass, to prayer before I knew anything at all.  And later in life, much of what I thought I "knew" was based on something, I don't know what, but something outside of God Himself.  It was as if my heart had been coated over by my mind -- but in one moment, all that "knowledge" was swept away and "I knew the Real God," in the words of someone for whom I myself prayed many years afterwards.

Being born again I think means letting go of what we "know" through our senses and through our minds and going with our hearts, our spirits, our inner cores -- letting them love, for the first time, without reserve, and without understanding, and without caring to understand.  Once we "fall deeply, passionately, hopelessly in love" with the Living Presence of God, we can begin our walk into the Truth as led by the Spirit, as revealed by God Himself to our open hearts.