Twisted Truths

Mom and I had a "friendly" debate a while ago. I had been reading the book, "Dark Side of Catholicism" and was asking her opinion regarding particular details mentioned in the book. She said that the book was fair in its claims, but cannot be completely trusted since not all its contents could be taken as absolute truths. I supported that notion by telling her that there is no such thing as absolute truth, as I've explained often to most of my peers. She began becoming hostile by reproving that if there is no such thing, we might as well label Jesus to be faulty in his discussions of the faith since he too was human and his words are subjected to human bias. I responded that it was different case since he is both man and God, blessed with special powers and knowledge which no mere mortal is capable of understanding.

Here's a rough script of the debate that followed:

Me - For every situation, we would have our own interpretation of things. If you compare my version with another person reagarding a particular situation or say, event, it would be easy to detect discrepancies despite the fact that both of us are speaking the truth. Sometimes I may give more information, sometimes I may give less. The relationship of the speaker to the object, as well as the relationship between the speaker and the listener does present some form of bias in how a story is molded, understood and translated.

Mom - So there is no sense in this conversation since there's no absolute truth anyway, and thus its best that people should just shut up.

Me - Not exactly. You have to know how to listen to people. Take different sides of the situation. Understand it from the different perspectives people take, then take your stand as to what or how you would like to perceive it. That will your truth, a bias, but nonetheless, your truth regarding the situation. If we speak of faith, no man can tell you exactly the depth of their relationship with their creator in parallel versions. Your dad, my grandfather's spiritual understanding, no matter how profound will not be similar to your mom's, my grandmother's spiritual understanding, no matter how devout she is too. Thus, all we have to do is to supplement everybody else's truths to find and build our own. We make our own truths, because we believe what we would like to believe, understand what we want to understand, perceive how we intend to perceive.

Mom - *quiet... Oo na, oo na. You done? (Fine, fine.. are you done?)

So much for explaning the philosophy.