Letter to the editor: We need an awakening to return to basic truths

Some say the market is volatile, and it is. So is life. Perhaps we would wish it not so. But we still live and move and have our being. As a pastor and financial professional, I am often shocked by just how far we Americans have moved from our roots. Of course it has taken many years to get to this place, but the acceleration is truly disturbing. While it does not take much sense to know that a person cannot spend more money than they make, the vast majority of Americans are doing just that. And while it doesn't take much sense to figure out that we are not accidents of space and time, many live with that idea as if it were perfectly rational.

I tell folks we need an awakening. I am not sure most of us understand that need, but it involves a return to the basic truths which made us great with the main truth being that truth exists. If truth does not exist, then the whole idea of argument fades into meaninglessness. But if truth exists, the main function of the human mind would be to find it. The ones who built this nation said it clearly: "We hold these TRUTHS to be self-evident...." It follows then that truth ought to be important to us. Yet today we find that one's opinion is often substituted for truth without a blush of embarrassment.

Truth is hard work. There is truth about an internal combustion engine. There is truth about the Sun and photosynthesis. There is truth about gravity. And there is truth about male and female. When we lose the ability to find and recognize truth, it creates an environment of fear, confusion and contradiction. Suddenly we do not know what to believe or why, and we find it impossible to build bridges of contact and continuity among ourselves. When that happens, we simply wander in and out of conflicting thoughts and commitments.

Thus, the need for awakening begins with the idea that you and I cannot take lightly claims of truth. But that raises another issue: how do I segregate the truth out of competing ideas that are not true?

For Plato the solution was that truth lived in the archetypes of original creation regardless of where they originated. But several hundred years later there appeared One on this Earth Who simply said, " I am the Truth," and that this Truth would "set us free." When I speak of awakening, that is what I mean. Of course I know that the founding fathers of this nation had differing understandings surrounding this, but to the man they believed that there was a God with whom we had somehow to make our peace and security. This is why we one day ended up with the motto, "In God we trust."

The key to our future as a free people is not held in who wins office. That key is simply whether enough of us are willing to say and truly believe that "in God we trust." If we as a nation cannot rise to that standard, then we will inevitably fall into the same dust bin of history of great peoples who sadly forgot who they were.

JAMES R. CHANDLER

Sumter