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A Covenant With Truth


Chapter 2:   Quest For The Truth


"Raw authority and basic survival have ruled a great part of mankinds history--
not light... nor reason."




In every civilization...
In every ancient culture...
In every tribe on every continent...
There is ingrained in its core
The acknowledgment of... something spiritual...
Something with power...
Something beyond understanding...
Something that enters into life causing a moment of surprise...
Causing a moment of harmony and beauty...
Causing a moment of fear...
Causing a singular moment
In the chaos of the unarranged passing of time.

There are moments of glory... some large, some small...
That hint to an Infinite Truth touching life...
Or an Infinite Beauty touching life.

Spirituality and the evolution of religion
Have taken many forms in the known history of man.
Various definitions of a spiritual life-force emerged...
And how that life-force has power in the material world...
And how that life-force has power in the spiritual world.

It's as if a Truth was revealed to all men,
And then that seed took on its own life in the world...
Each of them seeking their own answers
Through their own contexts of life.

We look to these stories to try to connect to mankind's Truths.
We look at these beliefs... these folklores...
To try to discover the history of humanity.
We want to rebuild the library at Alexandria.
We want to reclaim what was lost to time.
We want our ancestors to talk to us.
And, we want to find what was revealed to humankind
Through whatever prophets there may have been.

Among these manifestations of the understanding of spirituality
Was a people who believed that there was only one God...
The God who created all that is.
Their mantra was love, dignity, truth, and righteousness.

Their heritage is traced back... not as being born from a god...
But only as being designed by this God...
As human beings... intended to live in a beautiful garden...
Now destined to give form to a civilization.

It is this story that has withstood the passage of time.

This God led this people... protected them...
Made covenants with them... and worked miracles for them.
He proved his existence to them...
First to a sole man... but then to all.

He gave wisdom to prophets...
Prophets that faced cruxes in their lives...
Prophets who dealt with some adverse human condition...
Prophets that sometimes met with a harsh end.

The history of the Hebrews is filled with stories
Of hardship and survival...
Slavery and freedom...
Judgment and love...
Stories of true love...
That reveal the procedence of Truth on earth
As God wrote it into creation.

That history describes real confusion at times
And huge misunderstandings of what was being told to them.
It's as if they were kept distant from their own truths...
Held back from the sureness of that promised land...
Put interminably into a holding pattern...
Not sure of what was occurring.

The scriptures are not a fable of bragging rights for the Hebrews...
Whose faith, understanding, and stubbornness
Were often scorned by God...
Who often had their very hopes taken from them.
If this history were fiction
Surely it would have been written with more flattery.

The ferocity of God's Truth
Was written with the very lives of the Hebrews
Whose sons were Living Prophets...
Living the story of all humankind...
While they wielded their mantra of righteousness.

The Hebrew nation was even scattered to the four winds
As they bent under the prophesying Hand of God.
Being chosen... did not mean lives of ease
But lives of hard truths...
Truths written with their lives.

Even if we are lacking a belief in this God,
We must, at the least, respect the fact
That people who based their lives on righteousness
Did believe.
There is enough truth to be found to justify interest
In what has been told to us
Even if that interest is not in churches or doctrines
Or in the varying interpretations of scriptures...
Nor in the actions of those who say they believe.

Today, in a technologically sophisticated world,
Science has shattered old myths and superstitions.
It is easy now for some to surmise
That human beings needed to invent religion
To survive their hardships...
To endure the darkness and their confusion...
To give meaning and comfort in a cold world of survival.

It is easy... for some to say now...
That religion was created solely
As a way for leaders to control the people...
A way to ensure civil order in their societies
Without using overt aggression.
And... religion has proved to be a remarkably agile tool
In the reigns of both benevolent and tyrannical rulers everywhere.
Throughout all history... everywhere on earth...
Just claiming the blessings of any of the powerful gods
Has always had its benefits.

But... no matter what spiritual beliefs a people might claim...
Mankind's history has been a story of authoritarianism.
There were no sure answers... none that were clear...
And so power has ruled...
And misunderstanding has reigned...
And as such, authority only enforced that darkness
Lest that authority be questioned
And civil order be lost...
... The premise being...
It was for everyone's own good.

And any king worth his salt
Would defend the right to that authority
As if his life depended on it...
Which surely it often did.
Kings were often not the ultimate protectors of the people...
They were not the final defenders of their home...
They were many times their peoples' worst enemy

It is easy... now that the silence barriers have been broken...
To expose how the concept of authority had corrupted reason
In governments, institutions, families, and the workplace.

Raw authority and basic survival
Have ruled a great part of mankind's history...
Not light... nor reason.
It's as if the darkness had had its own set of rules
And all humanity found themselves in its grip...
Everyone being compelled further into it.

The true sickness of heart that festered in the darkness,
Fed on its own fears and confusion.
As any sickness can take hold... so did inhumanity.
Even as we approached our modern age,
The horror of arrogant authoritarianism
Was set to institutionalize that inhumanity
With an ideal whose very law was inhumanity.

Whether it is a modernistic dogma that refutes religion,
Or a traditional religious conformance to strict obedience,
That same authoritarian doctrine...
Those same rules of darkness...
Are used to force one human being on another...
For their own good.

Civilization has progressed slowly...
Like a blind man tapping along with his cane...
In darkness.
Step after step after step... yet, still no answers.
Mankind has lived as if there was no light.
It was there... but few could see it.

Universally... in all parts of the world...
Human progress has been slow,
And each moment of Light was singular in history.
Darkness has too often put out the Light that we needed to see by...
To see and to understand our world.
Darkness... seemed... afraid of the Light.

It has taken milleniums
To grasp things that seem so clear to us now.

From our perspective today,
We can see that advances in civilization
Have only been made through inspiration and will...
Through the light of an idea
And the knowledge to understand it and to use it well.
These moments have been hard won.
Those who have given us pieces
Of scientific or philosophical light
Have often met their deaths because of it.

As civilization advances in one way, it may lag behind in others.
For instance, it may not have the maturity
To contend with the consequences of such knowledge.
Science and religion
Have always seemed to be at odds with each other...
A battle between this "mortal" physical world
And a "spiritual" world somewhere we can't see.

It certainly is like a pressure cooker...
This refinement of forces in the world...
Waiting for us to be ready...
Maturity essential to what we seek to find...
Being kept in the dark... and as children.

In our most private relationships and in the world of nations,
We must walk step by step out of this horrible darkness...
This violation of all we are as creatures of intellect.
We must realize that there is enough truth that can be seen
To find our way out of the darkness.
The answers are there to be found...
We just must see them.

And, we must understand that, after all... Light rules us all.
If this were not so, many discoveries would have occurred long ago.
If suffering was the cure for darkness,
How bright our ancestors should all have been.

We must understand our world and our lives.
What we do... we must know enough to do it well.
We must grasp at the light that we can see,
And embark on a search for the greater light.
We must seek the truer light... the wiser light...
And understand the whole of each light we might see...
Lest we go walking towards it
And stumble in a pitfall on our way...
For surely the light that we see by... is a mysterious gift.

As our world grows more and more burdened with human beings,
We must contend with a looming rebirth
Of oppression, repression, and suppression
With all the force of our human souls.
We must understand what is elementary math...
We must understand ourselves and each other.
We must understand the consequences of what we do to each other...
The consequences of injustice and negligence.
These... are the precepts of Jesus...
And these are the true precepts of his God.

To intelligent and mature beings... what can be more true...
Than righteousness, mercy, and love?


We must lift our fellow man out of suffering.
We must win mankind's freedom
Without losing that freedom to chaos.
We must find our way to the light
As if humanity itself depended on it...
Because... with new and powerful technology...
Our shackles may never again be loosed once they have taken hold.

Faith has helped humanity survive a long darkness.
We needed to survive...
Survive until we arrived at a place
Where maybe we could finally get it...
Where we could understand all that we had been told.

Just to get to this point in time...
Just to keep going...
Meant having some kind of faith.
We have had to be led like children...
To keep us believing...
Even when there was no light and no understanding.

This ship called "Faith" has brought us many miles through the ages,
And has preserved above all
The precepts of profound Truths...
Albeit... shrouded.

Following faith blindly
Has provided some degree of civility in our world...
Keeping us from killing each other too too much.
We just did not understand and yet knew that we must.
Humanity's fate could have been much worse than it was.

For most, faith is believing that there is a God and that He loves us.
For most, faith is just an end in itself
To stave off the hopelessness of darkness...
To fill that void of understanding...
After all, mysteries are mysteries because they are mysteries...
No one understands them.

Believing in "goodness" has always meant
That we have to know what is "good" and what is "bad"...
Forever searching in what seems to be a vacuum of questions.
We want to be told where to go
And what to do
And what to believe.

It is a new freedom that is finally allowing us
To explore those things that have forever been lost to mere survival.
We are discovering new knowledge and new ways.
The world is sharing similar logic and similar scientific theories.
Knowledge is clashing with moral codes and traditional faiths.
Freedom and knowledge are now the human standard...
And yet the need to have that "faith" is still real.

Do we dare discover something more than mere faith?
Do we dare define faith in terms other than...
The knowledge of good and evil?



Chapter 3.   Faith Vs. Science






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