Oh no, you do, because it’s truth, not fact, and you have to take truth seriously even when it expands beyond the facts.
September 20, 2007
Truth vs. Fact
September 20, 2007
I publicly disagreed with wonderful, recently-deceased author Madeleine L'Engle in my post about Harry Potter. In case she was thinking of haunting me to get revenge, I thought I'd post this lovely bit from an interview she did with Newsweek. After Ms. L'Engle has suggested that not all of the Bible is meant to be taken literally, the interviewer asks if that means we don't need to take it seriously. Her response is wonderful:
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4 Comments:
Well, you beat me to it. I was thinking of blogging about this interview. I think that statement is lovely too, although I would be hardpressed to exactly explain or defend it. It seems a little like using poetic symantecs to cover our own discrepancy. Can it really be truth without fact? I feel that it can, because I believe in the power of storytelling. But I wouldn't have said it as blatantly as she. I have found, though, that it would no longer shake my faith to find that some statements of the bible aren't exactly the facts we've made them into. So much of our faith is a mystery.
I think I meant "semantics" actually.
Funny--Symantec is the company that puts out Norton Antivirus--probably more familiar to most people than semantics!
Yes, I believe something can be true without being factual. I think this is the essence of "story." The stories that speak to us ring true with our experience, with how the world is, even if they never really happened. In fact, I think we often miss or misinterpret the "truth" when we focus all our energy on defening these stories as literal fact.
Interesingly, I've found that once I got past the facts, the story didn't ring as true as it had. This is, of course, personal as there are some who find quite the opposite and can talk all day of the meaning while quite heartily disputing the facts.
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