Talking nonsense
Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It’s by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! … Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense. —Dmitri Prokofych Razumikhin holding forth in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
How do we figure out what’s true, what’s good, what’s right? Who has the straight dope? What’s the 411? How do we learn the absolute and unvarnished truth about whatever it is we’re puzzled about?
Back in the pre-AI and pre-Google era we researched things in the library. And in the home of my youth, when I wanted to find out everything there was to know about aardvarks or the element Cesium or the musculature of the human body, I went to the set of Encyclopedia Britannica that our Mom had provided for us at great cost, because she didn’t want to raise ignorant children.
Reading and writing is how I’ve always tried to find clarity and truth. I read to learn; I write to try to synthesize and make sense of whatever I’ve read.
Unhappily, in my search for truth and clarity, I’ve sometimes believed and written nonsense. It’s never apparent to me at the time, but when I’ve gone back and re-read a few of the things I’ve written over the years, I’m occasionally chagrined at the gap between what I thought I knew and what I’ve learned in the years since.
Nonsense is a strong word. Razumikhin is one of those people you might know yourself who express their opinions with great bluster and certainty, especially when they’ve had too much to drink. And Razumikhin loves drinking as much as he loves to say things to stir the pot. If he has perhaps gone too far in accusing his friends of speaking nonsense, he’s not wrong to point out that we sometimes say or believe things that just don’t hold up under closer examination.
Discovering and submitting to what’s true and good and right is a process that every one of us must go through—hopefully?—as we grow from childhood to adulthood, from uninformed thinking to the maturity that comes from life experience and education and inquiry and the willingness to have our wrong ideas challenged and corrected.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. —1 Corinthians 13:11-12 (NIV)
The world was once taught that the sun revolved around the earth, until Galileo proved otherwise, to the great consternation of church and scientific authorities invested in a different world view. In our own times, the public and scientists are still debating the mandates enforced during the Covid-19 pandemic, as further research has cast doubt on at least some of the medical advice and government mandates implemented during those terrible months.
Authorities and experts are sometimes blind to what is true and right and good, just as we are, because at the end of the day we are all just fallible humans, susceptible to bad data, bias, prejudice, ignorance, wishful thinking, and the pressures to conform to our tribes.
There is no shortage of nonsense being confidently posted on X and Bluesky, much of it eye-rolling in its naivete, some of it maddening for its complete departure from reality. Truckloads of nonsense are dumped daily on gullible audiences by influential celebrity talking heads. Our political conversations increasingly resemble propaganda campaigns, with each side in a race to discredit the other side, truth be damned.
And we can get sucked into those rhetorical wars when we put loyalty to our tribes ahead of an honest examination of our convictions.
Who can blame us, really? So much of what energizes and sustains modern society is hidden from view or distorted by funhouse mirrors, sometimes for nefarious reasons, more often for the simple reason that the inner workings of a watch are less beautiful and interesting than what’s on its face. The mysterious complexities of government systems, national economies, and markets lead some with minds of a certain bent to imagine deep conspiracies and malevolent manipulations where only a benign, ticking clockwork exists.
What’s true and how do we discover it?
Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. —Psalm 25:4-5, 8-9 (NIV)
To take the journey from nonsense to sense—from opinion to truth—requires humility. A teacher is only able to teach when students are willing to listen and have their preconceptions challenged. As I have gone through life, I have acquired a mix of solid convictions (God is real; I am a sinner; Jesus lived and died for my sins), as well as things that I might be talked out of if I’m humble enough to admit to fallibility.
The Bible doesn’t answer every question, but it answers the most important questions. The first step to uncovering the nonsense taking up space in my heart is to admit that I might be mistaken. In other words, to be humble and willing to be humbled.
The second step is to distinguish between my opinions and God’s truth. I’ve read a lot of books in my life, many of them by very impressive thinkers, both ancient and modern. But the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that truth originates in God, the perfect and good and eternal Creator and law-giver, the supreme intelligence who formed all of the lesser intelligences in this universe of ours.
The Apostle Paul puts it like this:
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. —1 Corinthians 1:25 (NIV)
The third step is to educate myself about God’s wisdom. The Lord is a willing, able, and excellent teacher. The life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament are among the most challenging and counter-cultural wisdom literature ever written, even if you simply can’t accept the idea of Jesus as the Son of God. It’s remarkable how many who have opinions about Jesus have never actually read the accounts of what he said and did. Read and consider how Jesus challenges the prevailing wisdom of his time and ours.
As for politics, I believe it’s vital to approach those questions with the same openness and humility I’ve described above. Research. Read. Be wary of facile, bumper-sticker answers to tough questions. If you’re a Christian, share your political convictions with love. Make it your aim to speak with brothers and sisters in ways that preserve unity and good will.
This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him. —1 John 1:5 (The Message)
True enlightenment comes to us when we submit our minds and hearts and convictions and “nonsense” to the God of light.