facts

• humor lessens shock of unexpected

48:4.18Hu­mor should func­tion as an au­to­matic safety valve to pre­vent the build­ing up of ex­ces­sive pres­sures due to the mo­not­ony of sus­tained and se­ri­ous self-con­tem­pla­tion in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tense strug­gle for de­vel­op­men­tal prog­ress and no­ble achieve­ment. Hu­mor also func­tions to lessen the shock of the un­ex­pected im­pact of fact or of truth, rigid un­yield­ing fact and flex­i­ble ever-liv­ing truth. The mor­tal per­son­al­ity, never sure as to which will next be en­coun­tered, through hu­mor swiftly grasps—sees the point and achieves in­sight—the un­ex­pected na­ture of the sit­u­a­tion be it fact or be it truth.

• seek truth as well as

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.

• technical right can be wrong in truth

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

• court full light of comprehension

90:4.9The Greeks were the first to evolve truly ra­tio­nal meth­ods of treat­ing the sick. Both the Greeks and the Egyp­tians re­ceived their med­i­cal knowl­edge from the Eu­phrates val­ley. Oil and wine was a very early med­i­cine for treat­ing wounds; cas­tor oil and opium were used by the Sume­ri­ans. Many of these an­cient and ef­fec­tive se­cret reme­dies lost their power when they be­came known; se­crecy has al­ways been es­sen­tial to the suc­cess­ful prac­tice of fraud and su­per­sti­tion. Only facts and truth court the full light of com­pre­hen­sion and re­joice in the il­lu­mi­na­tion and en­light­en­ment of sci­en­tific re­search.

• needed for ruthlessly practical demands of life

111:6.7The ex­pan­sion of ma­te­rial knowl­edge per­mits a greater in­tel­lec­tual ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the mean­ings of ideas and the val­ues of ide­als. A hu­man be­ing can find truth in his in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence, but he needs a clear knowl­edge of facts to ap­ply his per­sonal dis­cov­ery of truth to the ruth­lessly prac­ti­cal de­mands of ev­ery­day life.

• technical right can be wrong in truth

143:6.1On the evening that Nalda drew the crowd out from Sy­char to see Je­sus, the twelve had just re­turned with food, and they be­sought Je­sus to eat with them in­stead of talk­ing to the peo­ple, for they had been with­out food all day and were hun­gry. But Je­sus knew that dark­ness would soon be upon them; so he per­sisted in his de­ter­mi­na­tion to talk to the peo­ple be­fore he sent them away. When An­drew sought to per­suade him to eat a bite be­fore speak­ing to the crowd, Je­sus said, “I have meat to eat that you do not know about.” When the apos­tles heard this, they said among them­selves: “Has any man brought him aught to eat? Can it be that the woman gave him food as well as drink?” When Je­sus heard them talk­ing among them­selves, be­fore he spoke to the peo­ple, he turned aside and said to the twelve: “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me and to ac­com­plish His work. You should no longer say it is such and such a time un­til the har­vest. Be­hold these peo­ple com­ing out from a Samar­i­tan city to hear us; I tell you the fields are al­ready white for the har­vest. He who reaps re­ceives wages and gath­ers this fruit to eter­nal life; con­se­quently the sow­ers and the reapers re­joice to­gether. For herein is the say­ing true: ‘One sows and an­other reaps.’ I am now send­ing you to reap that whereon you have not la­bored; oth­ers have la­bored, and you are about to en­ter into their la­bor.” This he said in ref­er­ence to the preach­ing of John the Bap­tist.

• technical right can be wrong in truth

189:2.6The Chris­tian be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus has been based on the fact of the “empty tomb.” It was in­deed a fact that the tomb was empty, but this is not the truth of the res­ur­rec­tion. The tomb was truly empty when the first be­liev­ers ar­rived, and this fact, as­so­ci­ated with that of the un­doubted res­ur­rec­tion of the Mas­ter, led to the for­mu­la­tion of a be­lief which was not true: the teach­ing that the ma­te­rial and mor­tal body of Je­sus was raised from the grave. Truth hav­ing to do with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and eter­nal val­ues can­not al­ways be built up by a com­bi­na­tion of ap­par­ent facts. Al­though in­di­vid­ual facts may be ma­te­ri­ally true, it does not fol­low that the as­so­ci­a­tion of a group of facts must nec­es­sar­ily lead to truth­ful spir­i­tual con­clu­sions.

• never quarrel with real faith

195:7.1How fool­ish it is for ma­te­rial-minded man to al­low such vul­ner­a­ble the­o­ries as those of a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse to de­prive him of the vast spir­i­tual re­sources of the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of true re­li­gion. Facts never quar­rel with real spir­i­tual faith; the­o­ries may. Bet­ter that sci­ence should be de­voted to the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion rather than at­tempt­ing the over­throw of re­li­gious faith—hu­man be­lief in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.