The Suppression of Truth by Wickedness
October 12, 1999
Romans 1, 16-25 + Luke 11, 37-41
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Today Luke and Paul both discuss the problem of truth being suppressed by wickedness.
Paul begins with a strong confession of his faith. "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the
power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes!"
He goes on to say that the glory of God is revealed through Creation, and thus knowledge of God
is available to all people, even in the absence of Revealed Truth. He shows how this knowledge
becomes degraded into idolatry, and connects this corruption of "natural theology" with "lusts of
their hearts." Which is to say, they abandoned the natural dignity of the human person for
disordered appetites and desires.
As I was meditating on these words, I was struck by how we today in the United States,
supposedly the most "Christian" nation on earth, are repeating these ancient idolatrous errors. We
have abandoned the dignity of the human person for the false gods of convenience, absolute
selfish autonomy, and the reduction of all aspects of life to a combination of politics and
economics, all unfolding within a series of cultures of death that overlap to cover the entire
globe.
In today's Gospel, Jesus has been invited to dinner at the house of a ruling religious authority,
and at the beginning of the meal He omits a customary liturgical obserance. He is questioned
about this by his host, and Jesus responds with a series of denunciations of the "scrupulous
hypocrisy" of the era, where fine attention was to be paid to liturgical details while the greater
truths were missed. Jesus does not dismiss liturgical observations or religious duties, but he says
that they must be animated by justice, love of God. The leaders are denounced for laying burdens
on people that they themselves will not carry.
The problem in both readings is the suppression of truth by wickedness. The glory of the worship
of God is changed into the offering of infants on fiery altars before statues. The requirements of
the Law are emptied of meaning as we debate fine details while ignoring our violations of justice.
There is a hierarchy of truths, this is a clear teaching of the Church. Some things are more
important than others. Truth, justice, and the dignity of the human person are right up there at the
top.
And if truth is suppressed by wickedness, then it follows that righteous is a revelation of the
truth. In my experience, the primary antidote to the suppression of something is to make more
news/noise about it. Like Paul and Luke, we can look at our world and recoil in dismay at the
tragedies. But the answer is not to break our engagement with the wicked -- Jesus himself today
sets the example for us, he goes and has supper with his persecutors. Rather, our call is to reveal
the truth of the Gospel by our righteous living. As the saying says, 'It is better to light one candle
than to curse the darkness.' The more the truth is suppressed by wickedness, the more important
it is for us to reveal the truth by our righteous living. And as Paul reminds us today, this
righteous living begins in our faith. "The just shall live by faith."
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