In times like these, when the noise of opinion is so overwhelming, so loud, we may find ourselves echoing John Lennon’s lyric “All I want is the truth / just gimme some truth” (“Give Me Some Truth,” Imagine, 1971). Yet one person’s or group’s “truth” can be exactly the opposite of what another claims as truth. How are we to know what is actually true? Is truth relative, or is there such a thing as absolute, pure truth, independent of opinions?

Similar questions were probably common in the time of Copernicus. His radical idea that the earth revolved around the sun was viciously and stubbornly opposed and stirred mass confusion about what was true. Yet there never was a moment when the earth did not revolve around the sun. 

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, was keenly engaged in humanity’s struggle to find absolute truth. Referring to the question the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, put to Jesus, she wrote: “The question, ‘What is Truth,’ convulses the world. Many are ready to meet this inquiry with the assurance which comes of understanding; but more are blinded by their old illusions, and try to ‘give it pause.’ ‘If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch’ ” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 223).