Truth Created

Terry Dashner….. Faith Fellowship Church PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013

In his autobiography, Leading with My Chin, comedian Jay Leno recounts numerous stories of his rise as a young Boston comedian to hosting the “Tonight Show” as successor to the legendary Johnny Carson. One chapter tells of his appearance on the Dinah Shore talk show where he learned the importance of what in showbiz parlance is called the “outcue.”

“Okay,” said the talent coordinator. “What’s your last joke, so the band knows when to play you off?” “Listen, do I have to give you my last line?” Leno asked. Like all comedians, he hated to have any band step on a laugh and cut off the applause. But eventually he agreed. “How about if I just say, ‘Thank you, thank you very much!’ Twice, okay? And that’ll be the cue.”

Unfortunately, Dinah Shore’s welcome was so warm and the audience’s ovation for his one-line entry was so overwhelming that Leno was taken aback. Flustered, he muttered “Thank you, thank you very much.” The band leader looked up in panic, stubbed out his cigarette, brought the band crashing in, and ushered Leno out. Whereupon Dinah Shore smiled even more broadly, the audience went wild with applause, and the interview was over before it started. “It was the most ridiculous slot of my career,” Leno said ruefully.

An amusing, somewhat embarrassing anecdote in a book full of stories and jokes, Leno’s account has only one problem: it didn’t happen—or rather it didn’t happen to Leno. As a New York journalist brought to light, the incident actually happened to a fellow-comedian and friend of Leno’s. But Leno was so delighted by the story that he paid his friend a thousand dollars for the rights to use the story as his own material for a chapter in his autobiography. [Os Guinness, Time For Truth, (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, Michigan) pp 40-41.]

There is nothing odd about this practice, especially in a postmodern society like modern-day America. Truth is no longer something to be discovered. Truth is created. Remember President Bill Clinton? He was the first postmodern president of the United States. The Lewinsky affair is therefore an excellent gauge by which to assess the impact of postmodernism on American politics and law. In terms of the standing of truth in the American republic, the scandal represents the postmodern crisis of truth in presidential form: America’s “Nietzchean moment” in the Oval Office; the year America learned to live with the lie. [Ibid, p. 59]

Scholars have described Clinton as “the most skillful liar in American presidential history” and journalists have come up with a host of words to describe him—his “want of truth,” his “fluid conception of what’s real,” his “situational veracity,” his “believing everything he says when he says it,” and the like. One of the earliest bumper stickers skewered his lying perfectly: “Bill Clinton: 99% Fact-free!” [Ibid, p. 60]

Do you think I’m giving Clinton an unfair assessment? I wish I could say that his leadership legacy was one of impeccable integrity—punctuated with openness, honesty, straight-talk, and self-effacement. But, I can’t because he chose a postmodern life style over absolute truth—or even objective truth. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the former Soviet Union’s one-man dissident

movement—said in his Nobel speech: “one word of truth outweighs the entire world.” [Ibid, p. 10]

I think Jesus said it best—you “shall know the truth…” Then again if truth can be known, then truth exists. If truth exists, then it can be discovered. It should not be created at whim. If truth exists, is it universal? I think so. It’s as morally wrong to murder someone in France as it is to murder someone in the Bible belt of America. And if moral truth is universal, then a person who defies the moral law of monogamy in a civilized country will eventually transmit sexual diseases just like a person would in a third world country. Therefore, to know truth, to practice truth is to live a liberated life. Why? Because the same man who said that truth is to be known also said that truth would set a man free. After all, doesn’t everyone—even the postmodernist—want to be free? If so, then all should seek out and live in truth. The Word of God is truth.

Keep the faith. Stay the course. Jesus is coming soon.

Pastor T

About the Author

Pastors a small church in Broken Arrow, OK US Navy veteran, retired police officer, and father of three grown children.