The following is a two part series on the images of knowing. Today I look at the images that form the idea of truth.
The message education should convey is not identified by words like “fact,” “theory,” or “objective”. Instead, the message is called “truth.” The English word for “truth” comes from a Germanic root that also gives rise to the word “troth,” as in the ancient vow “I pledge thee my troth.” With this word, one person enters a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in a mutually accountable and transforming relationship. To know something or someone in truth is to enter troth with the known. To know truth is to become betrothed, to engage the known with one’s whole self. To know in truth is to allow one’s self to be known as well, to be vulnerable to the challenges and changes any true relationship brings. To know in truth is to enter into the life of that which we know and allow it to enter into ours. Truthful knowing weds the know and the known; even in separation, the two become part of each other’s life and fate.
Therefore, truth has nothing to do with manufacturing a world, keeping it at a distance, or manipulating it to suit our needs. Truth involves entering in to a relationship with someone or something genuinely other than us, but with whom we are intimately bound. Truth contains the image we are seeking – the image of community in which we were first created, the image of relatedness between knower and known.
Educating towards truth does not mean turning away from facts and theories and objective realities. If we devote ourselves to truth, the facts will not necessarily change. What will change is our relation to the facts. Truth requires the knower to become interdependent with the known.
The following was adapted from Parker Palmer’s book To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
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David is an entrepreneur, pastor, coach, and author. He has his doctorate from George Fox Seminary where he studied under Len Sweet, his M.Div. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has done post graduate work in communications from the University of Alabama and the University of South Florida. He lives with his wife Brenna Phillips in Smyrna, DE. 
