True or False?

“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.” Those are words from the movie Secondhand Lions. At the end of last month, Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs shared that statement and related comments with me and a few mutual friends, prompting an interesting discussion. 

Are there things we should believe even if they are not true? That seems to be what is implied in the above-mentioned movie. Three years ago, my wife and I watched, and enjoyed, that 2003 American comedy-drama film. But I hadn’t remembered the words cited above or the longer statement:

That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil …. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

My first reaction to the above words was negative, mainly because I think a person always ought to believe in only what is true. How could it be possible, let alone necessary, to believe in things that are not true? If every statement is either true or false (which I think is correct), why should we ever believe what is false?

There are, indeed, many “facts” that can readily be determined as either true or false. But so much of what we encounter in the world are not facts that can be scientifically verified. Often, we must affirm what we believe to be true without any assurance that those things are, in fact, true.

That certainly doesn’t mean we should believe things that we think are false, even though we must realize that whatever we believe might be false. That is far different, though, than believing things that are false.

Michael Polanyi’s book Personal Knowledge (1958) is on my list as one of the “top ten” most important non-fiction books that I have ever read. I spent numerous hours in graduate school reading and seeking to understand Polanyi’s thought. That study became foundational for my epistemology (= the study and understanding of knowledge).

Several years later, my first writing to appear in a published tome was the 18^th chapter of a book published as a Festschrift for Dr. Eric Rust, my major graduate school professor. The title of that chapter is “Scientific Knowledge as Personal Knowledge.”**

Thirty years later, in October 2009, “All Knowledge is Personal Knowledge” was the title of one of my earliest blog articles. In a comment further explaining my point, I wrote,

Knowledge is always tentative. And there is no proof; there is only belief. Thus, there is always the possibility of being wrong. One "can only believe something that might be false," says Polanyi—and he adds that that is his argument "in a nutshell" (Personal Knowledge, p. 312).

Even though everything we believe “might be false,” rather than embracing the idea that we are going to believe what we believe, whether it is true or not, Polanyi emphasizes the importance of “heuristic passion,” the ongoing desire to seek and to find what seems most likely to be true.

Perplexity AI summarizes well Polanyi’s concept of heuristic passion: “He thinks all knowing (from physics to ethics to theology) is personal, fiduciary, and fallible, and therefore always involves passionate commitment and an open‑ended search for deeper contact with reality.”

There is no place for the “lazy” stance of saying we are going to believe what we choose to believe whether it is true or not. No, since none of our core beliefs (including scientific beliefs) can be scientifically proved, we continually strive to examine those beliefs, driven by heuristic passion to seek more adequate, more comprehensive articulations of reality.

If heuristic passion for determining what is true and what is false is necessary for progressive Christians (such as I), it is certainly necessary (and maybe even more so) for secularists on the one hand and conservative evangelical Christians on the other.

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** The title of the book, edited by Robert E. Patterson, is Science, Faith and Revelation: An Approach to Christian Philosophy (Broadman Press,1979). Last month, my wife came across a long letter handwritten by Dr. Rust (over 45 years ago!) in which he thanked me for the essay I wrote about Polanyi for the Festschrift. 

Remembering Martin of Tours (and Pete Hegseth)

Perhaps many of you don’t remember much (or anything) about Martin of Tours. But he is a man worth recalling, and his commitment to non-violence is commendable for people of all ages to consider and to emulate. 

Icon by Kreg Yingst

Martin of Tours was born around 316 A.D. in what today we call central Europe. He was the son of a Roman military officer. Like his father, he was compelled to serve in the Roman army. Even though a soldier, Martin was drawn to the Christian faith, still relatively new and sometimes suspect within the Roman Empire.

When he was still under 20 years of age, he encountered a poor, shivering beggar on a bitterly cold winter day. Moved by compassion but having nothing else to offer, Martin cut his heavy military cloak in half with his sword and gave one part to the beggar, keeping the other for himself.​

That night, Martin had a vision or dream in which Jesus appeared to him wearing the half of the cloak he had given away. Jesus said to the angels around him, “Martin has clothed me with this garment.” This story may have been embellished with dramatic details, but it captures the essence of Martin’s compassionate character.

This vision deeply affected the young man, leading him to be baptized soon afterward. For two decades or so, however, he continued to be a Roman soldier. But when he was about 40, Martin finally decided he could no longer remain a military man.

According to some sources he had another dream or vision which convinced him he could no longer be a soldier. Julian, the Roman emperor, prepared a military campaign in which Martin’s unit was expected to participate. But before the campaign began, Martin stepped forward and declared, “I am a soldier of Christ; I cannot fight.”

The emperor interpreted Martin’s words not as a matter of conscience but as cowardice, accusing Martin of seeking to avoid battle. Martin replied that his refusal was based on his Christian faith, not fear. This was the beginning of conscientious objection to warfare, embraced by only a minuscule percentage of Christians in the following centuries

The Waldensians, who began in France late in the 12^th century, is the only Christian group that practiced pacifism/non-violence before the beginning of Anabaptism in 1525. But it was challenging for even them and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which began in England in the mid-17th century, to maintain that practice.

In the U.S., conscientious objection to military service was not recognized as valid until World War II. (See my May 20, 2017, blog post about conscientious objectors).

Diana Butler Bass is a well-known and respected public theologian. She posts meaningful articles on Substack twice a week. Her November 11 post was the second one this year about Martin. I decided to write about him after reading “The Warrior Ethos,” her September 30 post about Martin (see here).

The latter was largely Bass’s criticism of Pete Hegseth, who from 2001 to 2021 served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard. On January 24, Hegseth (b. 1980) was confirmed as a member of the POTUS’s Cabinet. On an official U.S. government website, he is now identified as “the secretary of war.”

In late September, Hegseth called a surprise meeting at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, to deliver a strong speech to several hundred top military generals and admirals about reviving “the warrior spirit” or “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military.

As Bass wrote, “Hegseth is probably the most openly Christian nationalist true believer in the entire Trump administration …. He always brings Jesus to the war party. Because, of course, in the theology of Christian nationalism Jesus is a Warrior.” In contrast, Bass goes on to state,

No early Christian — not a single church leader, pastor, or theologian —
in those first decades after Jesus lived, taught, died, and rose again would have ever considered their God to be a warrior.

Except in the most metaphorical sense of being a warrior for Love.

So, whose example and words do we choose?—those of Martin of Tours or of the current U.S. Secretary of War? For those who are true followers of Jesus, it seems like a “no-brainer.” What do you think?

The 1920s and the 2020s: Similarities and Differences

 As some of you may remember, in his 2020 Democratic National Convention acceptance speech, Joe Biden stated that “hope and history rhyme,” words quoted from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Biden drew parallels between the 2020s and the 1920s by highlighting similarities in political, social, and economic contexts. 

The 1920s were often called the Roaring Twenties. That term indicates that that decade was characterized by significant economic prosperity, rapid social and cultural change, and exuberant optimism following the tragic years of World War I.

The slogan "Return to Normalcy" was used by Warren G. Harding during his successful 1920 presidential campaign. He ran on that theme, appealing to the widespread public desire for stability and a return to pre-World War I conditions after a decade marked by upheaval, including the war, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and other serious issues.

The economy boomed in the 1920s. People in the U.S. used installment plans to spend liberally on consumer products. They also poured money into speculative new investments, such as automobile and telephone stocks. The prevailing interest rate was around 5%, a low rate that encouraged “gambling” in the stock market.

In a November 7 essay in The New York Times, William Birdthistle wrote that the “influx of buying from 1919 to 1929 drove the stock market up more than six-fold over the decade.”** But we know how that ended in October 1929. The stock market collapsed, triggering the Great Depression.

As Birdthistle pointed out, "Between 1929 and 1932, the stock market dropped 77 percent, and the global economy staggered into the Great Depression while unemployment and malnutrition spiked. In 1932, suicide rates soared to their highest in recorded history.”

Is that a harbinger of what might happen before the end of this decade?

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (1925) was written to portray the 1920s as a time of decadence, materialism, and moral bankruptcy.

According to what I learned from AI, “The novel critically depicts the era’s opulence and empty pursuit of wealth through its characters and their lifestyles. Gatsby’s lavish parties symbolize the era’s excess, but beneath the surface lies a loss of authentic human connection.”** Does that remind you of a man you read/hear about in the news daily?

You probably heard something about the 47^th POTUS’s lavish Halloween party last month. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote on November 4, it was “a party complete with sequined, feathered dancers and, yes, a scantily-clad woman in a giant martini glass.”

That party, held just hours before 42 million Americans were about to lose federal food assistance, was, in Krugman’s words, “grotesque” and “unspeakably vulgar.” The vapidity of that evening might well be referred to as a Holloween, rather than a Halloween, party.

The 1920s was also the time of Eugene Debs, the energetic socialist leader paralleled in significant ways by Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York City and a dynamic, young trailblazer for progressive Democrats in the 2020s.

In her November 5^th “letter,” Heather Cox Richardson wrote how Mamdani began his victory speech the night before with a nod to Debs, the Socialist candidate for president in 1920. He said, “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said: ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’”**

A blog article I posted in March 2015 was titled “Christians for Socialism” (see here). I wrote briefly about Debs there, so I know there are many differences between Mamdani and Debs, who was 65 years old in 1920 when he was the Socialist candidate for president even though he had been imprisoned in 1919 because of his opposition to WWI.

I also know that Mamdani is a Muslim and not a Christian, although I personally know several Christians who are happy that Mamdani was elected mayor of New York last week.

The best hope for most U.S. citizens in the 2020s lies partially in the hands of politicians such as Mamdani—and Bernie Sanders, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), and other like-minded democratic socialist leaders.

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*¹ William A. Birdthistle, “Trump Is Bringing Back the Roaring Twenties. The Hangover Could Be Brutal.” The author served from 2021 to 2024 as director of the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

*² This is from Perplexity AI, which I am now using more than Claude. It is linked to the web browser called Comet, which I am also using regularly now. – Regarding The Great Gatsby, I tried to read it for what I call my “recreational reading,” but I found it quite unenjoyable and quit reading it about halfway through. June read it just before her book study group discussed it last month, and I have learned more about it from her.

*³ I heartily recommend clicking on the following link and reading Richardson’s Substack post (found here:https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-5-2025. In contrast, on November 8, The Washington Post’s editorial board posted a very negative opinion piece about Mamdani. One wonders how much that is related to the owner of the WaPo being Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is said to be over $215 billion.