Saturday September 16, 2017
Trees don’t tell lies; only human beings tell lies. There is a scientist who has been working for many years at teaching a chimpanzee to use language. One day he knew he had made a breakthrough: the chimp told a lie! (He tried to blame someone else for breaking a mug.) That lie showed that the chimp now had a sense of being a separate self; he had stepped aside from the truth; he had an ego, like us. The ego is the fundamental lie. We are the only creatures on this earth who tell lies: we and one chimp! We settle our very identity on a lie. That is why it is so hard—even for the world’s greatest teachers—to dispel it: it’s not just a puff of nothing; it’s the self-assertion of intelligent beings.
Jesus faced this fundamental lie in his adversaries, “You are from your father the devil. He does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me” (Jn 8:44-45). I have to imagine these words addressed directly to myself.
But the truth emerges eventually. “The work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it,” wrote St. Paul (1Cor 3:13). One day we will be completely truthful. Perhaps that is the attraction that trees have—and nature generally: those are being that are already true to the core. Sit under a tree for an hour, and it will become harder to tell a lie afterwards!
