Kind
Formula
Interpretive layers
Teaching pattern
Biblical typology
The truth of scripture is not fact: asked by a murderer where your mother is, you would not tell the factual truth. The truth that sets free and sanctifies is always coupled with love: 'Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour, and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour' (Zechariah 8:16-17). So a true judgment need not conform to the external reality to which it relates: see the good in all, for we are never so blind to the truth as when we see things as they seem, and 'a truth told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent' (Blake). Later lectures join it to 'I am the truth' and to seeing roses where there are none.
Collections
Lectures
Bible wordings
John 8:32 | Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free
John 17:17 | Sanctify them by the truth
Zechariah 8:16-17 | Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor, and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor
John 7:24 | Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment
Blake wordings
Auguries of Innocence | A truth told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent
Own wordings
a true judgment need not conform to the external reality to which it relates
Never are we so blind to the truth as when we see things as they seem to be
Only pictures that idealize really depict the truth
The truth of the Bible is always coupled with love
It is never superior insight but rather, purblindness that reads into the greatness of another some littleness with which it happens to be familiar
He seeks not truth so much as support for his own point of view
If you can change your opinion of another, then what you now believe of him cannot be absolutely true, but relatively true
truth depends not upon fact but upon the intensity of imagining