Truth

Much of the time I forget about the amazing miracles I have witnessed in my lifetime. The last 150 years has been filled with tremendous breakthroughs in technological advances. Great minds have unlocked mystery after mystery this universe holds and because of these discoveries; our lives have been blessed in innumerable ways. Why I complain about my car breaking down or my cell phone receiving bad reception is truly ridiculous when you think about how people in most of the world’s history could never fathom such devices to ever exist. With the existence of these great technological advances come many blessings we forget to acknowledge. One of those great blessings is the ability to accomplish many things in one lifetime that would have taken many lifetimes without the technological advances we have today.  

Despite the joy and the ease of life that have been a result of these technological advances, the truths that were discovered were not always welcomed with open arms. Galileo met fierce opposition to his discovery that the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the earth. George Washington died partly as a result of a well known medical practice called blood letting thought to heal many ailments by doctors throughout the centuries.

These examples show that what society believed and what was really true were completely different. Neal A. Maxwell described this concept in a beautiful way. He said, “The theology of truth about man, life, and the universe does not depend for its validity on acceptance by many, or even any. Only eight people were right about the weather in Noah’s time when being right really mattered.” Spencer W. Kimball phrased what Galileo and the Wright Brothers must have felt in this statement: “Sometimes small seeds of truth have to fight a mountain of falsehood.” We have seen these concepts played out numerous times throughout history and it continues today. Why is it that we are afraid of the truth or too lazy to seek it, and how does one seek truth? 

To find truth we must understand that there is a formula for every truth in this world. If you do not follow the formula for that specific truth, the result will be something different. To build an I-Pad that works like an I-Pad, you cannot follow the steps that are used in growing a plant. You also cannot grow a strawberry by planting a seed for a cactus. I can’t follow the formula to make peanut butter and expect the same formula to work on making my hair color go from dark brown to blonde. Plus that would be even messier than color already happens to be. Everything in this life has a formula by which the fruits of that formula are produced. If we want to find truth, then we must follow the correct formula that will produce that specific truth. We as humans do not make up that formula. We can only discover it and follow it. No matter how hard we try, it is not within our power to change it. We may think that that formula doesn’t work because it seems absurd, but isn’t space flight, cell phones, television, and vehicles absurd to almost every person who has ever lived on this earth? Just because it may not make sense to our human logic does not change the fact that truth is truth even if no one believes it and a lie is a lie even if everyone believes it.  

Douglas Callister wrote a wonderful article in which he explains an experience his brother had with one of his classmates in medical school. “One of my brothers is a physician. During medical school he was assigned to study anatomy in companionship with an agnostic. Their education eventually required that the two of them carefully examine and dissect a cadaver. They studied the incredibly complex yet harmonious systems of the body. They noted the body’s power to correct its own deficiencies and to send healing antibodies to the place of injury or infection. They learned of over 150 trillion cells within the body. If set end-to-end, these cells would encircle the earth more than 200 times. Today medical students learn of more than 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) of DNA in one human body. My brother and his fellow student learned of a brain that continually receives signals from 130 million light receptors in the eyes, 24,000 hearing receptors in the ears, 10,000 taste buds, and hundreds of thousands of receptors in the skin, with specialized commissions to recognize touch, vibration, cold, heat, and pain. My brother and his friend became silent as they contemplated the miracle they were examining. Sensing the moment was right, my brother challenged: “Coincidence is a marvelous thing, isn’t it?” His agnostic classmate responded, “You win.” 

Like the pioneers who discovered the amazing complexity of the body as explained above, I too admire and love the example of so many of the technological, scientific, and medical pioneers in our history that refused to remain in the dark. Who decided to be a seeker of truth and accept the truth no matter the consequence. They knew that truth builds upon truth. Their example inspires me every day! As I close I want to end with another great truth that scientists have discovered that I find absolutely fascinating. It was brought to my attention and written about by Douglas Callister. He explained as follows: “This earth departs from its orbit of the sun by only one-ninth of an inch (2.82 mm) every 18 miles (29 km). If, instead it changed by one-tenth of an inch (2.54 mm) every 18 miles, we would all freeze to death. If it changed by one-eighth of an inch (3.18 mm), we would all be incinerated.” Now that is pretty precise stuff! Coincidence?