We can understand Pilate’s scepticism with Jesus before he was taken to be tortured and crucified. “What is truth?” was his reaction to Jesus stating that he came to this world to testify to the truth. How many times have we asked the question, finding it difficult to get an answer.
There is always one objective truth but most times we fail to perceive it. We are tolerant to different perceptions and ‘different truth’. We empathise with speakers’ and respect others’ points of view and opinion. We do not, however, question whether perceptions can be distorted.
I can say things that do not really exist, and since you respect me you will listen to me and try to understand why I am saying what I am saying. You are making one fundamental assumption that I am being honest and that the society we are living in is honest. But is this the truth?
Let us take politics and business. The purpose of both politics and enterprise is a noble one. Through politics we build a better society based on respect for the person, that works for the social well-being and development of the person in society, and that establishes peace and security through morally acceptable means. Through business, the economy provides products and services to be consumed, gives scope for research and innovation, creates jobs for a wide spectrum of skills and a means for adequate living to families.
But this truth on politics and enterprise has been distorted. The pathologies destroying society and our environment are the result of ethical and cultural norms, and not because politics or business is by nature bad.
We live at a time of two major ideologies of populism and liberal individualism. In both cases, Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti (155-169) writes that we are “disregarding the legitimate meaning of the word ‘people’”. In populism, leaders “seek popularity by appealing to the basest and most selfish inclinations of certain sections of the population. This becomes all the more serious when… it leads to the usurpation of institutions and laws”.
With liberal individualism, the individual is given priority over society, which is seen as a “sum of coexisting interests” which rightly have to be respected but which do not compose a “shared narrative” that distinguishes between right and wrong.
Politics that refuses to understand the meaning of ‘people’ who need to be respected with their dignity and their role in society, degenerates in authoritarian policies, high-handedness, misinformation and lack of transparency, corruption, misallocation of public money, and instigation to violence. The monstrosity of social decay, poverty and marginalisation is also the result of business that has been led by greed, speculation, the invasion of globalisation and the indifference towards the people who work in enterprise, the consumers, as well as the society in which it thrives.
We have to set ourselves on a journey in search of “the truth that sets us free” (John 8:32). Truth and freedom go together, and a freedom that is rooted in goodness gives a sense of truthful purpose to politics and business, which respects people by respecting the environment, society, governance and rule of law.
The truth that sets the person free genuinely recreates politics and enterprise with the full understanding of the consequences of respecting the person’s physical, social and spiritual needs within society.