And what is truth?

This question appears only in the testimony of John, not in any of the other gospels. According to his report, Jesus and Pilate were alone. If they were alone, only Jesus or Pilate could have reported it later. Roman justice was swift. Within hours Jesus was stripped, was being scourged. He was unlikely to been capable of passing on any such details. But, if it was not Pilate, who was the witness? The Army had taken over a particularly ugly four-story modern tower block for its headquarters. In the long hours of the night there was a need for some distraction in the operations room. Lit by a glaring wall of illuminated maps, in a silence broken by the squawk of radios sending regular reports, and only occasionally more excited chatter, it was my solitary kingdom from late evening until early morning. When the rest of the operations staff arrived, after I had delivered my report of the previous twenty-four to the general, sometimes together with his brigade commanders, I was free to breakfast and sleep. It was rare for the general to ask me what to do next. In fact he never did: missing a valuable opportunity. I was hardly an important cog in his army. In contrast to his soldiers on the street, I was as safe as in a submarine. I was desk-bound, a scribbler. No-one ever shot at me. I was never required to shoot back at anyone. As I left my place, another officer would take over in front of the maps, the radios, the telephones and the tape-recorders. I was bored. Perhaps one of the Army padres left a bible there, intending it to save another soul. Forty decades later, I am now able to realize: this is where it started. Within five miles of my kingdom, Christians were killing Christians. The Catholics, known as and calling themselves Taigs, were killing Protestants. The Protestants, known as Prods, were killing Taigs. All of this was happening in a ferment of hatred not known in for centuries Europe.

 

FOREWORD

There can be no greater gratification for a teacher than to hear gracious and encouraging words from former students. All of us who stand at the front of a classroom like to think, and wish to believe, that our efforts with our students have borne productive fruit. Colin Hannaford has for many years dedicated his life to that sometimes challenging and always critically important task of pointing students in the direction of broader horizons and of leading them step by step to new discoveries and to life-changing commitments.

When a group of graduates from the European Union School in Culham near Oxford, England, invited him to a reunion for former students and teachers, Colin was greeted with a surprising and career-affirming challenge to write a series of essays to appear on Facebook to “tell the world what you taught us in your classroom.” What more genuine and humbling words could a teacher ever hope to hear than these?

What you are about to read is the faithful product of many long hours and many restless nights devoted to meeting the challenge laid down by his students. What could he say of significance about how to help the children of the world defuse the explosive dynamite of the absolute certainties held and defended by religions and governments and societies the world over that threaten, in the end, to be our collective undoing?

“We kill to defend our idols,” he suggests, and he encourages us always to think it possible that, contrary to our unquestioned convictions, we may find the wisdom to acknowledge that in some critically destructive way we just might be wrong. What hideous results of our being wrong might we discover some sad and awful day lying at our feet on our own doorsteps?

What, you may ask, does he have to offer by calling into question the madness that all too often passes as “standing our ground,” or for defending “the truth” against error, or for protecting and ensuring our clearly parochial way of life?

Could it be that, as the author suggests, the most powerful weapon of nonviolence is “the refusal to accept shabby lies as certain truths”? Could it be that we often confuse habits and traditions with morality? Could it be that it is to our children that we must look to help us out of what Colin courageously identifies as “Satan’s trap”?

As you read, you will find yourself drawn into the delightful and sometimes sobering continuing dialogue between a thoughtful and beloved teacher and an admiring group of former students, many of them now parents with children of their own. He writes them letters and sends them emails, and he makes them all available to you, the reader, as he thinks his way, with his students and with you, through the dark labyrinth of failed ideas and, with hope, into the light of new possibilities.

“Quo vadis?” he wonders. Where are you going? But more importantly, perhaps, where are we going? And if we need to change directions, is it too late?

You may not like or agree with everything you read here, and that’s okay. But if you don’t, that probably means, more importantly, that you are doing some careful thinking. I think I can assure you that nothing could please Colin more than to believe that you have taken it seriously.

Duane E. Davis, PhD

Professor Emeritus, Religion and Philosophy

Mercer University, Georgia, USA

An explanation

“And what is truth?”

This question appears only in the testimony of John, not in any of the other gospels. According to his report, Jesus and Pilate were alone.

If they were alone, only Jesus or Pilate could have reported it later. Roman justice was swift. Within hours Jesus was stripped and scourged. He was unlikely to have been capable of passing on any such details. If it was not Pilate, who was the witness?

*

The Army had taken over a particularly ugly four-story modern tower block for its headquarters. In the long hours of the night there was a need for some distraction in the operations room. Lit by a glaring wall of illuminated maps, in a silence broken by the squawk of radios sending regular reports, and only occasionally more excited chatter, it was my solitary kingdom from late evening to early morning. When the rest of the operations staff arrived, after I had delivered my report of the previous twenty-four hours to the general, sometimes together with his brigade commanders, I was free to breakfast and sleep.

It was rare for the general to ask me what to do next. In fact he never did ask me: thus missing a valuable opportunity. I was hardly an important cog in his army. In contrast to his soldiers on the street, I was as safe as in a submarine. I was desk-bound, a scribbler. No-one ever shot at me. I was never required to shoot back at anyone. As I left my place, another officer would take over in front of the maps, the radios, the telephones and the tape-recorders. I was bored.

Perhaps one of the Army padres left a Bible there, intending to save another soul. Four decades later, I am now able to realize: this is where it started.

Within five miles of my kingdom, Christians were killing Christians. The Catholics, known as and calling themselves Taigs, were killing Protestants. The Protestants, known as Prods, were killing Taigs. All of this was happening in a ferment of religious hatred not known for centuries in Europe.

Why is it so easy, we simple soldiers were caused to wonder, to turn fervent belief in a loving, compassionate, and merciful God into hatred of others? What is the mechanism? Where is the lure? Where are the trip wires in the mind?

Can it only be: as less optimistic humanists maintain, that there is a monster waiting in all of us, a beast, always hoping for an excuse, however feeble, to rape, to torture, and to murder?

How close is this beast to you: right now?

I leafed back a page or two. A few days before his arrest Jesus had told his followers: “When the Spirit comes who reveals the truth about God, he will lead you all into the truth. He will not speak with his own authority, but will tell you what he hears and will tell you of things to come.” And yet, when Peter with his drawn sword tried to prevent the arrest: “Do you not think that I will drink the cup of suffering which my Father has given me?”

If arrested by Romans, Jesus must know that he will be interviewed by Pilate himself. Only Pilate could order him killed. But crucifixions were as common to Rome as road kill is common to us. No-one would notice yet another wretch slowly dying on a cross. At his end only his women sat below his cross to watch him die.

But this ending was too banal. Although I did not agree with everything Jesus was said to have done or said, he was too bright to commit himself to such a dismal end! There is no flair; it lacks fizz. A much bigger story is needed.

Although having repeatedly to placate the Jewish mob, always especially volatile in Jerusalem, Pilate was no friend of Jewish customs or sensibilities.

Since that crucial day Christians have been taught that no-one has ever had more confidence than Jesus. What, then, might persuade Pilate to interview him after his first arraignment? Could Jesus then convince Pilate of the nature of this Spirit ‘which reveals the truth about God’?

What would that mean? Still more important: if this ‘truth’ was the most important message that Jesus intended this ‘Spirit’ to reveal ‘about God’, where the hell (perhaps literally) is it now? Why was this not recorded? If it was ever once recorded, who would have an interest in erasing it?

Apart from writing my daily reports of bombs, murder, kidnapping, and punishment by torture and murder, I had weeks in which to write an account of their private interview: in my imagination, remarkably similar men; quick-tempered, impatient of sloppy ideas; on occasion given to violent action; above all, both immensely sure of themselves.

They differed in only one aspect.

Pilate has been brought up to honour Rome’s laws, and is now required to uphold them. The truth that he believes is already written and codified. It has only to be applied: with justice, if possible; without, if not. He is, in the end, a lawyer. He can interpret, not change.

Jesus has been brought up to honour Jewish beliefs: although, as I now discovered, he held only two essential. At some early time in his life, he had broken free from the most pervasive, most powerful, and most limiting of all Jewish customs: their fascination with all the exact rituals that underpin Jewish identity. In his time there were several rabbinical factions competing to codify these rituals. Theirs was good business. Jesus annoyed them all.

I called my play ‘Game’. It really isn’t a very good play; but in it I try to show Jesus attempting to persuade Pilate that truth is never something to be fixed, codified, incorporated into customs and rituals; that although fixity of truth is insistently demanded by virtually all cultures, it cannot be the true end of intelligence, of inquiry; it cannot even be real knowledge. Truth must be forever increasing and expanding, so that one day, even if in the next millennium, our future generations may even know what it is to know God.

In my story, he fails. No shame is attached. It would be very difficult – as you will see – to do this even now. Despite a further two thousand years of promises of peace world-wide, the beast in men is still very active.

My first concern in these essays was to identify its true nature. They are printed here privately in order to preserve a record of what is, and should be, an endless quest, and they are dedicated to my ex-pupils, without whose encouragement they would not have been written. My thanks are due to them.

Colin Hannaford,

Oxford, September 2013