“Searching for Truth: A Detective Story”

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, March 30, 2008

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

It was a dark and stormy night when Jack Rousseau, a retired “private eye,” was awakened by an annoying ringing in his ears. Jack was retired from full-time work for several years now. A widower, his children grown and gone, Jack lived alone in a high-rise apartment in the city. Once in a while, he would take an investigation case, mostly to keep his skills honed, but lately he has felt his life becoming increasingly lonely, and even pointless. He was proud of the career he left behind, but at this point in his life he began to wonder whether there was anything currently in his life, or in his future, of which to be proud. On this particular night, he shook himself out of a deep sleep in response to the ringing, and eventually he recognized the sound as the obnoxious telephone. He answered it, though he wasn’t fully rational -- and certainly unsure of whether he should.

In the old days of his private detective agency, answering the phone in the middle of the night has seemed always to lead to something he would regret. There was the time, for example, when Frederick Lockett awoke him one night long ago and, with panic in his voice, begged Jack to devise an alibi so the police wouldn’t suspect him of the break-in across town that Frederick mysteriously knew a lot about, though he couldn’t explain why he knew of it. Jack Rousseau told Frederick that he was a detective, one who verified alibis, not a creative artist who made them up. So when he hung up from that call, Jack called the police, reported his suspicions, and went back to sleep content that the man who violated his sleep would get his just desserts. A few years ago, Maude Glasgow, an eccentric and wealthy society matron, called in the wee hours to enlist his help, immediately, to search for her cat Boots who had, after years of involuntary captivity in her apartment, finally escaped to freedom. Jack decided that he held more sympathy for the cat than for Ms. Glasgow’s plight, and declined to get involved.

In the old days, middle-of-the-night calls were invariably exasperating -- it was a fact of life he learned the hard way, but this time of his life was different, and he needed work to make him feel useful and meaningful, and if it came in the form of a wake-up call, he would not turn it away. In the old days, he had learned a middle-of-the-night call was bad news. Now, he threw that lesson aside, and reached for the phone.

“Hello, Jack?” came the voice at the other end. “This is Martin Blake. You remember me, don’t you? I live in the apartment across the hall from you. Anyway, I’m in desperate need of a private investigator right now, and I naturally thought of you.”

“What’s the problem?” Jack asked, though he suspected he’d regret the question later.

“You investigate things, don’t you?” Martin asked. “I mean, you try to find out the truth about things and people, what really happened and didn’t happen? Right? I mean, I’ve been sitting here all night with an old buddy of mine, talking all night about what’s true and false, what’s right and wrong, and we keep arguing and never agreeing. And frankly, I’m getting real tired right now, and so finally I told Mike – that’s my buddy, Mike -- that I have the solution. I’ll just call up ol’ Jack, the private eye across the hall, and I’ll hire him to investigate truth (since investigation of truth is his business), and then we can get some shut eye. Jack suspected also that they may have exhausted their stash of beer.

“So, what do you say, Jack? Can I hire you to find out what truth is? Can you do it, and then let us know in the morning? Don’t make it too early. We’ll probably sleep in.”

Well, this one takes the cake, Jack thought to himself. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had solved cases that seemed impossible before -- a missing person who was eventually found in a remote village of Thailand, an embezzlement in which the money embezzled turned out to be counterfeit anyway, and a murder where neither the body nor the murder weapon were ever found. And now his neighbor wants him to search for truth. A piece of cake, he concluded.

But this had to be a first for a person in his business. Who had ever been hired to search for truth? Besides, he thought to himself, it will keep me busy for a while, get my mind off my loneliness, and maybe even be interesting.

So he decided to take the case, in spite of the strange hour, circumstances, and request. Jack told him it was an unusual request, so morning was out of the question. Give me a little longer, he said. They discussed fees, and Jack, who still resented the ungodly time of the call, and hadn’t completely let go of his hard-nosed reputation as a private eye, quoted him twice his normal rate, but Martin agreed.

When he awoke, Jack thought he had dreamed the whole conversation, except that no dream could ever be so bizarre. The fact was that he had been hired to search for truth. He couldn’t help but wonder whether his private eye colleagues would laugh at him with ridicule or be envious that he was given such an easy case. Oh, well, he thought, if I start this morning, I might wind it up by lunch.

Jack knew exactly where to start. His old friend Stacy Spence was a scientist down at the police crime lab. She was a scientist with impeccable credentials, and Jack concluded that if anyone knew what truth is, it would be a scientist. So he called her up and arranged a lunch, but when she asked what he wanted to talk with her about, he was vague and elusive, saying he’d rather save it for later. She was persistent, as always, and finally Jack told her he’d been hired to find out what truth is. The phone went silent, and all he heard her say was,

‘I’ll see you at noon.”

At lunch, he told her the story of the middle-of-the-night phone call, and when he got to the end, Jack said, “So I decided that in my search for truth I ought to start with experts on truth -- you know, with a scientist.”

“I’m very flattered,” Stacy said, holding back a derisive laugh, “But I’m afraid you’ll need to be more specific.”

“Well, I figure that scientists know how to find truth -- with their eyes and ears and microscopes and test tubes. Isn’t that what science is all about? Finding truth by measuring and testing and experimenting....?”

“Well, I guess you’re right, in a way. We scientists look for truth. But I need to know whether when you say ‘truth,’ you mean absolutely, completely true, or do you mean more or less true.”

“Well, true is true, isn’t it?” Jack said with a puzzled tone to his voice. “Aren’t things either true or not true? How can something be just more or less true?”

“Well, technically, I suppose you’re right.” Stacy answered slowly and deliberately, wondering how she could explain this without sounding unscientific, or raising mistrust in her detective friend. “In a technical sense, truth is probably purely true. But in the real world, human beings are imperfect enough that you cannot completely rely on the purity of truth you investigate. Some conclusions are extremely reliable in their truth, some are less reliably true, but nothing is absolutely reliable in its truth.”

“How can that be?” Jack was beginning to get frustrated now. “Isn’t it true that grass is green and that the sky is blue?” He picked up his coffee cup. “Isn’t it true that this coffee is hot?”

Stacy kept her calm. “They are true, but we cannot say so absolutely. Take for example your astute observation that grass is green and sky is blue. I certainly won’t dispute that, unless you tell me that I must be absolutely certain. These conclusions are based entirely on observations from human eyes, human senses. And the truth of the statement is only as perfect as the senses. You look at grass and say it is green, and I look at grass and say it is green. How do we know for certain, with absolute certainty, that what you see and what I see are the same thing? How do we know that what you look at and call green doesn’t look different through my eyes, but I happen to give it the same name, “green.” The color I see in the sky may be different from the color you see -- but we both give it the same name, “blue.” You cannot look through my eyes, and I cannot look through yours. What we know for certain is subjective: that we both call that color “blue.” What we don’t know is what the color actually is. What we can conclude is that whatever color we see, we happen to give it the same name.

“And there’s another problem with absolute certainty, too. Color is a function of light. What we call color is really a reflection of light. If you dim the lights, the colors will change hue and become grayer and grayer. If you increase the light, the colors change hue and become brighter and brighter. Look at the green grass or the blue sky at evening dusk and tell me if it is the same color you would see at noon on a sun-shiny day. So somewhere on the scale between a grayish hue and a bright hue is the actual color. But what is it? Color isn’t a precise truth, it depends upon the brightness of the light. And, more significantly, it depends upon our senses, our eyes, which are always subject to personal interpretation. So yes, the sky is blue and the grass is green – that’s pretty reliably true. But I wouldn’t go out on a limb and say so with absolute certainty -- I wouldn’t bet my life on it.”

“And yes, you can say that the coffee is hot. But if you stick you finger in water that has been boiling, and then stick your finger in your coffee, I’m not so sure you would say absolutely that it is hot. It would probably feel refreshingly not hot. Cool, even.

“The fact is that scientific conclusions are highly reliable, but they are based on human observation. It is equally true that human observation, such as the human senses of sight, hearing, touch, and so forth, are themselves imperfect. Our senses, we know, sometimes deceive. You and I know that. We know that when we see a puddle of water on the road on a hot summer day, when it isn’t really there, or when we hear a train go by and the sound has one tone when it’s coming at you and another tone when it is moving away from you.

“Scientific conclusions are highly reliable -- probably the most reliable information we can ever have. But you didn’t ask me about what is reliable -- you asked me about what is true, absolutely and with certainty. Anything that depends on human interpretation, even through our senses, has some degree of uncertainty.”

By now, Jack was becoming fidgety and uneasy. His client simply wanted him to search for truth and come back with an answer. It seemed simple at first -- find a scientist, since science deals with truth, and bring back the answer to the client. But it didn’t seem to go as easily as he hoped. His friend Stacy made one more attempt to explain.

“Let me put this in words that may feel more familiar to you. In courts of law there are varying degrees of proof that are required for a jury to convict an accused offender. Depending on the nature of the crime, in some cases, they require a ‘preponderance of the evidence;’ in other cases they require evidence beyond ‘a reasonable doubt.’ There are varying degrees of evidence that a court will require, but never do they require proof beyond any possible doubt -- only reasonable doubt. When it comes to human beings, there is always room for some kind of doubt, whether it involves the arguments of a courtroom attorney or the observations of a laboratory scientist. When humans are doing the interpreting, the conclusions might be highly reliable, but never absolutely certain.”

This monologue frustrated poor Jack no end. His disappointment showed in his face. His search was not going to end by finding truth in a lunch-time conversation.

Stacy Spence understood his frustration, and tried to soften a bit what she had said. “Look,” she said with attempted consolation, “it’s not as bad as it sounds. The fact that absolute truth is ultimately illusive gives life some opportunity for meaning and interest. Imagine if we knew the ultimate answers to every question. Why would we have any interest in sharing opinions with others -- or even having opinions in the first place? The reason I love being a scientist is because, like you, I enjoy solving a mystery. Without mysteries, scientists would all be out of work.”

“And there’s an aesthetic value in this, if you’ll allow a scientist to say so. As far as I’m concerned, I like the idea that it takes human input and human participation to claim that grass is green and sky is blue. It means, among other things, that since the color depends in some minor way on my personal interpretations, that I have a part to play in the beauty of grass and sky. If everything were only the way it is, and not the way it seems to each human being, we would be little more than computers who report what we encounter, and play no role in life.

“In fact, I find it quite personally significant and meaningful that truth is not entirely something outside of me, but it is a part of who I am and how I feel and what I see and how I react to the world. It enhances my sense of my own role in life.”

Jack remained skeptical, and he appreciated her trying to rescue the fact that truth can be meaningful to us personally even if it isn’t absolutely certain. The problem, of course, was what he had to tell his client. It will take much more investigation, he knew. So he thanked his scientist friend, and went on his way unsure of the next step.

It occurred to Jack that scientists weren’t the only ones whose business it was to search for truth. When he saw a steepled building in the next block, he knew what his next step in the search would be. Religions deal with the subject of truth -- they have for a long, long time. Surely he should explore this path if his investigation was to be thorough.

He entered the church unsure of what he was going to say, but figured he might as well be truthful -- after all, that was his mission. With an awkwardness he told the secretary who greeted him that he was looking for some specific answers, but being cautious and not a little unsure of what he was doing, he was vague about the questions to which he wanted answers. She arranged for him to see the minister, and as he entered the minister’s office, he was confident about what he needed to say: the truth.

“You may never have had a visit like this one,” Jack began, and jumped right into the tale. He introduced himself and occupation, and told of the phone call. “I’ve been hired to search for and discover truth,” he told the minister boldly. He gave a brief summary of his visit to Stacy, the scientist, and only revealed a little of his frustration over her answers. Now, he said, he needs to investigate deeper, which is why he came to the church. “I’ve never been much of a religious man,” Jack admitted somewhat squeamishly, “but I understand that religion is about truth, so I’ve come to ask your help.”

What he didn’t say to the minister is that his impression of religion was very negative, and that in his experience, ministers tend to be authoritarian and rigid about things like truth. This was one of the reasons he had avoided churches for so much of his life. But in this visit he was in for a little surprise. The minister began sympathetically.

“It seems that we share something in common,” he said with a smile. “I, too, am paid to participate in the search for truth. The difference is, I suppose, that if I ever find it completely, and announce it to the world, I might be out of a job.”

Jack managed a guarded smile. Funny, he thought, but his scientist friend made a similar point. The minister continued. “I know that there are religions and clergy out there who will claim that they have found the certain and absolute truth,” he said. “But I am always skeptical about that claim. Some say that the Bible is it, that this book offers all that we need to know about truth. But there is a problem with that, of course, and the problem is us. Some say that the Bible is the infallible and unerring Word of God, and that what it says is the absolute truth. The problem is that whatever it says has to be filtered through interpretations of the readers -- and all of the readers are human and subject to human frailties and imperfections. Again, Jacque managed a little smile. This sounded strangely like what Stacy said about the truth of blue sky and green grass.

The minister continued. “Take two people who read the Bible, both claiming it is the fountain of absolute truth. One reads it and says that only adults can be baptized and another reads it and insists that baptism is for infants also. One reads it and decides that God forbids drinking and gambling, and another reads it and decides that God doesn’t care so much about drinking and gambling, but he does care about racial prejudice and care for the poor. According to one reader, you may kill under conditions of self-defense or for capital punishment, and the other reader says the Bible allows for no killing at all. To some, the God of the Bible is a Judge who condemns those who stray from his commands. To them, God is a vengeful God. But to others, the God of the Bible is a Loving Parent who forgives and guides and teaches, but mostly loves all people. To them God is Love.”

Jack did not expect this answer. He seemed to like it, but it was not quite what he was looking for. Most of all, it was not something he felt comfortable reporting to a client who hired him to discover truth.

“The problem with truth,” said the minister, “is that all claims must be interpreted by humans, and we humans make huge mistakes in interpretation. I do believe that the Bible can be a very useful tool for any of us. In fact, all books have that potential. But its usefulness, its meaning, depends to a great extent on how we choose to accept it and use it.”

Jack couldn’t help but think that this answer closely resembled what he heard from the scientist. There may be truth out there -- whether in the form of chemicals which can be placed in test-tubes, or in the form of ancient scriptures which communicate wisdom. Ultimately, truth has to be filtered through the human person, and sometimes we get it wrong, and sometimes we get it right. But we can never be certain of our conclusions.

The one hopeful comment that both the scientist and minister agreed upon was that this fact of the human participation in truth is, or at least can be, an asset to us. If we can never be absolutely certain that we get it right, we can at least work hard enough to be confident that we make our conclusions meaningful and useful to us, that we participate in the making of truth, whether we know it or not.

Jack, as was previously mentioned, was going through a particularly hard time in his life. With no close family or friends, and with little work in retirement, he was feeling increasingly worthless about himself. Life seemed to be pointless and purposeless. But if the scientist and minister were right in their assessment, we cannot look at life as something “out there” over which we have no control or participation. We are part of any truth of life -- whether it is truth of science or truth of religion – or just plain truth of living. We have a say in what is true, and however that plays out, that gives our life some meaning.

Jack felt more confident about his investigative powers than he had in many years. He was ready to report to his client, though he was unsure about whether the client would appreciate what he had to say. He set up the meeting for that evening.

“Martin Blake,” said Jack as the door opened to his knock. “I’m Jack Rousseau, the investigator, and I have an answer for you. There is bad news and there is good news. The bad news is that I have searched for truth and discovered through my investigation that there is no absolute or certain truth that we can know.”

He let that announcement sink in for a few minutes. Then he elaborated. “Years ago,” he said, “I took on a case in which a murder was committed and there was no body and no weapon. It was excruciatingly perplexing. Well, the case you have given me is similar. You’ve asked me to find truth. Well, we know it is there, but we don’t have indubitable proof. I’m here to report to you that truth cannot be finally and unerringly found. Any truth we can find is tentative or is imperfect, and subject to interpretation. Ultimate certainty is always missing. The best we can try to do is get closer and closer approximations of truth. More or less true.@

He let that sink in, too.

“But I said I have good news as well. That murder case I told you about -- where the body and weapon were never found -- was solved! We knew the event happened, and we found enough evidence to shape and mold a scenario that was convincing enough to a jury to have them act. And they did. We proved beyond a reasonable doubt, though not beyond all doubt. And it was enough.

“I can say the same thing here. My report is this. Truth -- ultimate truth -- is and always will be missing, simply because we human beings are imperfect. But what is not missing, and never has to be missing, is meaning. Our search for truth provides ample evidence -- scientific, religious, and personal -- that life can be meaningful. We cannot give up on the search for truth simply because we cannot, ultimately, find it, because what we do find along the way on that search are the resources we need to make life meaningful. The search for truth is important, not because we’ll find truth, but because it provides tremendously useful tools for meaning -- and meaning, after all, is what we are really after when we search for truth.”

Jack’ client didn’t respond much, one way or the other. It didn’t bother Jack, however, because Jack felt successful in his investigation. He may not have found exactly what he was looking for, but more importantly he found exactly what he needed -- if not for the client, then certainly for himself.

This case, as far as he was concerned, was closed. But his life felt more open and receptive than ever before.