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Truth and how it’s communicated

There is an age-old question, the answer to which is earnestly important to all of us at all times: “What is truth?” There are those who would define it as a relative term—those who would say that what is commonly thought to be true by the constituted authorities of any particular time or place is true for that time or place.

• Truth is eternal

That is to say, what is generally believed to be true today is true for this day. But to say this is also to say that what was believed to be true yesterday was true yesterday.

In other words, if a man stands in the pulpit or at the marketplace or in the classroom and proclaims what he and his generation believe to be the truth, it is said by some that he is telling the truth. This sounds very plausible until we reduce it to specific cases. There was a generation that believed and proclaimed that the world was flat.

They were sincere in this belief, and they thought they were proclaiming truth, but that didn’t make the world flat, and the truth was and is that the world was not and is not flat. And so we could go on multiplying examples of what people have believed and have not believed, suddenly to come to the realisation that no matter what men at a given time happen to believe, if it isn’t true, their belief doesn’t make it true.

Truth cannot be made or unmade by arbitrary authority, nor by the belief or unbelief of any man or any generation of men. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” But a falsehood or an error couldn’t make a man free. Indeed, it would shackle him with chains of ignorance. And so, we must come to the conclusion that truth is not an unpredictable variable but a determinable constant.

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Popular conception of what constitutes truth can change, but not truth, for “truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” And it doesn’t matter where it is found or who discovers it, it is the common property of the whole universe.

Our knowledge of it may increase; our ignorance concerning it may be profound; our willingness or unwillingness to accept it may vary, but what is fundamentally true today will always be true.

Truth is eternal, and never shall we be called upon by that God whose glory is intelligence and whose first law is order, to discard any fragment of truth, scientific or religious or whatever men may call it, but assuredly we may expect to be called upon to discard a good many of our theories and opinions.

There is a sentence from one of the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge that suggests a deeply significant subject: “Veracity,” he said, “does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.”Too often it is assumed that the truth has been told if someone simply says the right words.

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Too often it is assumed that a person has told the truth when actually he has told a half-truth and withheld the other half.  But a person hasn’t told the truth when he has deliberately left a false impression, no matter what words he has used or how he has used them. 

Men may mislead other men by the inflection of their voices, by insinuation and innuendo, by gesture, by what they suggest rather than by what they say, and by what they leave unsaid.

They may say so much and imply much more, and then hide behind the literal limits of language.  In many such ways men frequently falsify and often we could not legally prove that they had perpetrated an untruth, yet morally we may know that they intended not to tell the truth.

 There are those who, as Isaiah indicts them, “Make a man an offender for a word”those who resort to slick, legal loopholes, those who insincerely rely upon the letter of the law and ignore every intention of honour and honesty.

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Words can be wonderful, but whatever our words we shall ultimately have to answer for the broad intent of our actions and utterances not merely for legal terminology or technicalities, not merely for the letter of the law.

The whole intent of a man, what he means to do and what he means not to do, what he means to say and what he means not to say, what he thinks in his heart, what he is in, his soul, are all involved in “telling” the truth; for which we are all accountable before our fellow men and before our eternal Father.

God grant that in our time we may hear and know and speak and write and live the truth, not rely on tricky technicalities or, legal loopholes or ambiguous utterance that is a mere mask for falsehood. 

To close with the words with which we opened: “Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.”The mere appearance of truthfulness is not enough.

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Craze for x’mas shopping:  Crowded markets, low patronage

• Traders display their items

 Vendors of food and other wares associated with the Christmas cele­bration have expressed surprise at the low patronage despite the increased number of visitors to some of the ma­jor markets across the capital.

Four days to the celebration(Christ­mas), the markets are filled with vari­ous products ranging from food, cloth­ing, livestock and many other stuff, but according to the vendors, patrons are doing more ‘window’ shopping.

The Spectator on visits to some of the markets in the capital, notably the Odawna, Makola, Accra Central Business District, New Town and others made similar observations as shoppers crowd them but did little in terms of purchases.

The paper also observed that ma­jority of vendors, originally selling other wares have switched to product related to the festive season.

 What it means is that there are a lot more clothes, food and vege­tables, livestock and poultry, toys, firecrackers, drinks of different types and many others on display.

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The markets have also stretched to the pedestrian pavement, leaving very nar­row spaces for commuters to move about freely.

That, in addition to a few of the female vendors dressed in coloured attires to reflect the occasion, has heightened the euphoria, leaving the low sales as the only headache for the vendors.

Speaking with this paper, they sounded very optimistic, believing that sales would improve in the last few days to the yule­tide.

According to them, there was the oppor­tunity to sell beyond Christmas as the New Year celebration offers similar opportunity to trade the same wares.

They urged patrons to throng the mar­kets to shop since prices were quite mod­erate and products affordable for all.

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 Retirement service for Elder John Ackom-Asante,3 others

 Retired Deputy Editor of The Spec­tator, Elder John Ackom-Asante, was last Sunday honoured by the Church of Pentecost Windy Hills District in Kasoa in the Central Region, with a retirement thanksgiv­ing service, after serving for 26 year as an Elder of the church.

He was honoured with a citation and certif­icate of service along with three other elders who served in the capacity for various years.

Elder Ackom-Asante was baptised at the Darkuman Central Assembly in 1979 and or­dained as an Elder in 1997.

The citation read “Your selfless service, zeal, willingness to relate wholeheartedly and your desire to effect change has gone a long way to shape the lives of many people in the church and the nation over the 26 years of your dedication to the service of the Lord.”

Elder Ackom- Asante held many positions at the Darkuman Central Assembly, Obuasi in the Ashanti Region and Tema, serving in various capacities as youth and evange­lism ministry lead­er and marriage counsellor.

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He was the founding member of the Darkuman Christian Fellowship, a member of the Greater Accra Chris­tian Fellowship; member of Bible Society of Ghana; founding member Obuasi Chapter Full Gospel Busi­nessmen Fellowship Interna­tional and founding member of New Times Corporation Christian Fellowship and Chaplain, Methodist Universi­ty Tema Campus 2009- 2010.

As a professional journal­ist, Elder Ackom-Asante com­bined effectively and effi­ciently his duty as a member and elder of the church and the demands of his profes­sion, with admiration from the church, kith and kin, till his retirement on December

 From Alhaji Salifu Abdul-Rahaman, Kasoa

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