(The Nationalist, 10 January 2005)
John the Baptist, an older cousin of Jesus, was described by a writer of his own time as ‘A man wholly dedicated to the truth’. He was a wild sort of man who lived in the desert and ate locusts and wild honey. (He’d have done well in ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!) He was a man taken over by God, you could say he was possessed by God. He was committed with all his heart to following God faithfully. And people in large numbers came to hear him.
John challenged King Herod on his conduct and was arrested for it on Herod’s orders. (This was not the King Herod who slaughtered the innocents in Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus, but a son of his.) Herod had elbowed his brother out of the way and taken his wife for himself, and John had taken him to task for this. The Gospel says about Herod that he liked to hear John, although he was afraid of him because he knew he was an upright and holy man.
We are afraid of people who tell the truth; we can’t control or domesticate them. Instead of telling people the truth we often tell them what we think they want to hear, or we say what is politically correct, or go with the flow, or jump on whatever bandwagon is rolling.
Not many of us stand back from that, think for ourselves and say what we believe to be true. We posture, strike poses; we play to the gallery or say things for effect. The most powerful weapon we have – the truth – we allow to lie unused. But people respect the truth, even if they don’t like it.
It was truthfulness that gave the quiet man of Northern politics, Séamus Mallon, his voice of authority. Ken Maginess, a unionist politician of Séamus Mallon’s time, said of him, ‘I have never known him to tell a lie’. That was a great compliment.
The truth imposes itself on the mind by its own authority, that is, simply by being true. Shouting and argument are often heard first, but, when they have died down, it is the voice that spoke the truth that is listened to.
After being arrested, John the Baptist could have got together with Herod and struck a deal over a glass or two of wine. Instead he spoke the truth, and it cost him his head. But he is remembered two thousand years later as a man of integrity. If he’d not been like that, no one today would know anything about him. Jesus said of him, ‘Of all those born of women, there is none greater than John the Baptist’. Truth recognizes truth.