A friend of mine told me recently that he had received an invitation from a London borough, in which he was a parish priest, that had at the top a statement proclaiming that the borough was “multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-truth”. The first two were clearly descriptive of the number of distinct cultures among the population, and the reality of the existence of churches, mosques and gudwaras and their communities in that borough. What was much more questionable was the commitment to “multi-truth”. Taken to its logical conclusion (and that phrase implies that we have some common measure of what is true) it would be impossible to have a dialogue about any issue because there would be no ground rules. There would simply be assertion. “Your truth” and “my truth” ends in subjective affirmations. In fact, when two people meet, discuss, argue and try to convince one another they are, for all the passion with which they maintain their positions, trying to convince the other of the truth of what they hold. Our convictions are shaped by our experience and upbringing, but also by the understanding of the world that we inherit. Although the scientist needs faith to test a hypothesis, to set up the experiment the very hypothesis is framed in a tradition of scientific understanding. “Your truth” and “my truth” does not work in understanding either the Universe or our human genetic make-up.

No more does it work in courts of justice, when evidence is patiently assembled, heard and assessed, to ascertain what happened. Witnesses are summoned to give their testimony, but perjury and false witness are rightly condemned. Juries are asked to make judgments as to what is true having weighed the evidence.

The choices that we have to make in our lives about what is right and wrong, and how we educate children in those choices, imply the awareness of a moral truth. We may not always get it right but we believe that there is a “right” that we can get. We also judge that the “truth” of Hitler or Pol Pot is false and destructive. They are not models that we want our children to follow, or that we should follow ourselves. Human wisdom is not found there. The truth for human living we need to see embodied, it cannot be theoretical.

The Christian faith points us to the truth embodied in Jesus Christ. St John speaks of the Word (the creative reason, the structure of all things, God’s self-communication) becoming flesh, taking our human nature. And he goes on to say that “we saw His glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth”. The glory, which in the Bible means the very being of something, is the deep communion of love between Jesus and the God whom he names as Father. That embodied truth, that communion of love, is lived out in this single human life. St Paul speaks of Christ emptying himself, pouring himself out, love going to the uttermost, even into our human dying. “If I go down to Hell, thou art there also,” the psalmist cried out, and the good news is that, in Jesus, God has done just that. The truth of God is self-giving love, and the truth of our lives is that we are made in the image of that same God. Jesus said of himself: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

When Jesus was dragged before Pontius Pilate charged with sedition, subversion and blasphemy, St John records that Jesus said that He had come into the world to witness the truth — the truth of the Divine love — and therefore all attuned to that truth hear in Him the voice of truth. Pilate replied: “What is truth?”

The powerful can be more concerned with position than truth, but human integrity demands more. There is a longing for truth at the heart of our lives. Our longing to understand is an implicit search for God. Behind the partial truths, and the inadequate explanations, we thirst for the living God, the God of truth and love, whose truth will set us free. As St Augustine discovered: “When I have found the truth, then I have found thee, O my God!”

The Right Rev Geoffrey Rowell is Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe