What is truth? Or, which truth are you talking about?

Truth has always become a bone of contention. Different people understand it differently. Sometimes, people impose on others their understanding of truth. What is truth? Or, which truth are we talking about? While we do not know everything about it, we can think of several types of truth in our human world.

First, there is a scientific, objective truth. For example, the earth rotates the sun; this is a fact. Even in human lives, if there were a homicide, the truth is there are a killer and victim. Things exist or happen in the world apart from us, or regardless of how we interpret them. In some sense, science belongs to this category of truth.

Second, there is a phenomenological truth, which is a perspectival or interpretive truth. In other words, it has to do with seeing or interpreting what is happening. For example, people see the sun rising and setting. From their eyes, they truly see the sun moving. In complex human lives, for instance, in the case of a homicide, we need to know why it happened. Likewise, in an unjust world, some may point out the problem of unequal distribution of income. In a sense, spirituality, in its broad sense, falls into this category of truth.

Third, and lastly, we can think of religious truth, which is understood and canonized in a particular religious tradition. Various understanding and practices of spirituality are organized and developed into religious forms. For example, while Jesus was a "spiritual" person, later Christianity as a religion emerged and flourished with express claims of religious truth. Along the way, sacred writings (scripture) were produced, collected, and interpreted in ways to support and transmit a set of religious truths. While celebrating a diversity of sacred truth in various religions, we need humility because truth is more than religion.

We should acknowledge each of these areas as unique and necessary. Science helps us realize who we are and where we live. We are from the dust and return to it. Spirituality is a response to science in some respects. How can we live as dust-being? Questions ensue: What happens after death? Why do bad things happen to good people? Too much spirituality or speculation may not be sound. But the sound and proper spiritual response to the harsh realities we face daily is needed. When people codify spirituality or religious experience into a text, namely, scripture, an organized religion starts and helps people stay in a comfortable, challenging community of faith. But the problem begins when religion takes over sound spirituality and unifies people with a single truth claim.

It's interesting to see all three elements of science, spirituality, and scripture in a single text, for example, in Gen 2:7. The first human out of the dust speaks of science. The breath of life breathed into the first human reflects spirituality. When people read Gen 2:7, they read it as scripture and put it in a theological dogma.