TRUTH IS A TREE

Every day I think about words. I must. I must think about them to exegete a text. I must think about them when I think about how to best communicate a sermon derived from that text. I must think about them when I blog. I must think about them when I am writing about thinking about them. It’s not that I must think about them, I enjoy thinking about them. Learning Greek compelled me to think of where words came from, their roots (their etymology). This is one of the most interesting things about words—where they come from. For example, “God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Gal. 6:7). “Mocked.” Imagine my surprise, when as a student doing research, I discovered the root of the word for mocked meant “to stick the nose up at.” Mock’s primary root comes from “snout” and bellowing, snorting, mooing through it. “God is not mocked.” One does not do wrong and then haughtily, defiantly, stick his nose in the air deigning God, sneering at His commands, boasting he can do what he wishes and get by with it. What a picture: One’s nose turned up at God like a snob’s nose at one whom he deems inferior and can treat as he wishes. Words were invented. Shakespeare invented over 1,700 new ones. In the end, in the beginning words came from life. People used what they saw, heard, experienced in life to come up with descriptions for new things, ideas, and experiences. That is why the rocket that breaks free of the earth’s gravity to traverse through space is called a spaceship. Ship. Previously, ships were the vessels that plied the waves of our oceans. Words were invented and then repurposed. And repurposed again. But still, however far removed from them, their roots flavored the words’ meanings. To understand a word’s root(s) is to see the word as one has never seen it, to understand it like he’s never understood it. It is to see the word in color, in 3-D, alive. Speaking of roots makes me think of a tree. Not a tree’s roots, but “tree” as the root of a word one might never guess. Tree is the root word for truth! Wow! How? Folks were trying to come up with a word that would describe the concept of “truth.” They thought of “tree.” We are compelled by the seeming incoherency to ask, Why? What does a “tree” have to do with “truth”? Although this root linguistically reaches back in time further than the English, I’ll start there. In old English, tree was treow and truth was treow. How is a tree related to truth? Centuries ago, people saw a mature, stately tree standing tall, straight up. Straight up day after day, year after year. Straight up, unbent, unbowed despite storms, strong winds, heavy snows. Straight up from earth to sky. Straight up and solid. Straight up compared to the crooked, the bent, the skewed, the awry. The tree spoke to them of steadfastness which spoke to them of trustworthiness. The standing straight up of the tree not only spoke of trustworthiness but, later, of accuracy. Thus, the connection between trustworthiness and accuracy. Truth, in essence, means faithful to reality. Something true is accurate because it corresponds with, is faithful to, reality. Steadfast. Straight. Solid. Reliable to reality. Trustworthily accurate. And there is one more thing about trees. Their longevity. The tree in a village was steadfast, faithful, trustworthy because it had also been there when one’s great grandfather was a child--and when one’s great grandfather’s great grandfather was a child. There are trees living today that were already mature when the word tree was first used for truth over 1,500 years ago. In the USA there is a California Bristlecone Pine that is over 5,000 years old. Truth like a tree remains though generations come and go, ideas come and go, fashions come and go, kings come and go…Truth, like a tree, still stands. Our western society used to embrace trees—and I’m not talking about embracing them like environmental whackos. I mean it believed in absolute truths that were unchanging despite changing times, conditions, etc. Truths that were straight, that could be used as a reliable measure in life. In this post-modernistic society, there are no trees. Just bent over trampled on blades of grass, every changing truth, my truth--your truth, true-today-not-tomorrow truths, etc. In fact, to today’s society, truth is more like a tumbleweed. Give me tree truth. Absolute truth. Unchanging truth. Reliable truth. Straight up truth. It is more than fitting our word for truth comes from the word tree. For truth really does exist as a tree. The greatest history-changing, life-changing, eternity-changing, truth is found in a tree. The cross. The cross is often called “tree” having been hewn from one. That tree, the one planted on Calvary, speaks the truth about humanity’s condition, humanity’s sin and rebellion, the truth about Jesus and who He is, the truth about how God dealt with our sins, the truth about God’s love for us, the truth about eternal life in Paradise, the truth about forgiveness, the truth about the defeat of darkness, evil, and Satan, the truth about victory over death. Nothing has spoken as much truth as a tree. And everything the tree spoke was capitalized, punctuated, emboldened, and underlined with the subsequent empty tomb. Well, there’s the truth about truth. Truth is a tree. --Pastor Hurst