How Learning to See Truth Differently Helped Me Make Peace With Faith
I grew up in a faith that said, “We are right, and everyone else is wrong.” That wasn’t always delivered harshly; sometimes it came wrapped in kindness and concern. But the message was still absolute: there is one way, one truth, and one path—and any other viewpoint is “lost” or damned.
Beneath it was what I perceived as a quiet smugness—sometimes cruel, with words describing people as unworthy, disgusting, worms, or filthy rags, and other times just confident to the point of pity. A tone that said, “Poor you… lost boy,” or asked with soft condescension, “Are you happy… living in sin?” It was certainty disguised as compassion.
As a kid, some of it felt safe. It gave me belonging and structure. But over time, the walls of that safety began to close in. I remember being told that questioning was dangerous, that curiosity led to deception. So I stopped asking. For years, my silence looked like devotion.
But over time, my certainty began to ache. I didn’t have words for it then — only restlessness. Years later, I’d learn there was a name for what I’d been missing: Right View.
Unlearning What I Thought “Truth” Meant
Eventually, I encountered a teaching called Right View—not about replacing one belief system with another, but about openness to learn to see clearly. It invites us to ask, What kind of truth am I looking at? and Does the way I see it reduce or increase suffering?
That framework changed how I understood faith itself. It showed me that the way we hold truth can either liberate us or trap us.
The Three Kinds of Truth
1. Objective Truth
Things that are true regardless of belief.
Water boils at 100°C at sea level.
Gravity pulls things downward.
The sun rises in the east.
They don’t need us to believe in them to exist.
2. Subjective Truth
Truths that are real for one person but not necessarily for another.
If someone says, “I love Taylor Swift,” that’s a subjective truth. It’s absolutely true for them, but it doesn’t need to be true for anyone else to matter.
Subjective truth lives in the realm of experience — joy, pain, fear, beauty, meaning.
“I feel close to God when I pray.”
“I feel betrayed by religion.”
“I find peace in silence.”
They’re all true because they’re felt.
3. Intersubjective Truth
Truths that exist because groups of people agree on them.
Money only works because we collectively agree it has value.
Governments, laws, nations, and social customs exist because we participate in them.
Religion—any religion—exists through shared story and practice.
These truths are powerful, but they can change as people change. They’re real because they’re shared, not because they’re absolute.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
There’s an old story about several blind men who encounter an elephant. One touches the leg and says it’s a tree. Another feels the trunk and insists it’s a snake. Another feels the ear and swears it’s a fan. Another grabs the tail and declares it’s a rope.
Each man is right about his own experience—but wrong about the whole.
That story has stayed with me because I recognize myself in it. I used to think my version of faith was the whole elephant. Everyone else was mistaken. But now I see that most of us are just touching different parts of the same mystery, describing it through the language we were given.
Right View doesn’t say, “There’s no elephant.” It says, “Maybe we each hold a piece of it—so let’s stay curious about the rest.”
The Mountain View
Imagine standing at the base of a mountain. Up close, you can see bark, moss, and stone. If you climb higher, you can see rivers, valleys, and the horizon.
Both views are true; neither is complete.
Faith from the ground level gives intimacy—the nearness of prayer, the comfort of community. But sometimes, to make sense of life and suffering, we have to climb. We have to zoom out. From the mountain’s vantage point, it’s easier to see how each tradition, each perspective, fits into the larger landscape of human seeking.
Zooming out doesn’t mean abandoning your faith. It means holding it in context—seeing it as one view among many in a world too vast for any single lens.
When Certainty Became a Cage
When I finally started to zoom out, I realized how small my world had been. The dissonance between what I was told and what I felt had become unbearable.
For years, my resentment toward Christians—and even toward God—became one of the quiet engines of my drinking. When I encountered a 12-step program that encouraged finding a relationship with a Higher Power, I was convinced I’d rather drink myself to death than have anything to do with God again.
Sobriety slowly forced me to look at what I’d been running from. I wasn’t rebelling against faith itself; I was rebelling against the fear and shame that had been woven into it.
That realization was painful, but it was also freeing. The point wasn’t to throw away my faith—it was to let it breathe again.
Making Peace With Faith
I don’t resent the church anymore. It gave me a moral foundation, a sense of community, and language for compassion. But I’ve stopped confusing certainty with truth.
The teaching of Right View didn’t pull me away from God; it helped me meet God outside of fear. It reminded me that truth isn’t something we possess—it’s something we relate to.
When I stopped arguing with reality—stopped insisting that my way was the way—I began to experience something that actually felt sacred: peace.
A Faith That Breathes
I still believe in something larger. I still pray. I still love the language of grace and forgiveness.
But now, faith feels like oxygen, not armor. I don’t need to win the argument anymore. I just need to live in a way that’s honest, compassionate, and awake.
Maybe “Right View” isn’t about changing what we believe.
Maybe it’s about seeing what we believe—clearly, humbly, and with enough openness to let love have the final word.
Holding Truth Lightly
When I look back now, I don’t see my old beliefs as wrong — I see them as early maps. They got me to a certain place, even if they couldn’t take me all the way up the mountain.
The danger was never belief itself; it was how tightly I held it. When truth becomes a weapon, faith turns brittle. When truth becomes a conversation, faith becomes alive.
Holding truth lightly doesn’t mean having no convictions. It means trusting that love, compassion, and humility can carry what certainty never could.
In the end, I don’t need to know whether my view is the only right one. I just need to live in a way that helps me see — and treat — others as part of the same mystery I’m still learning to understand.
Maybe that’s what it means to stop arguing with reality — to stop fighting for one right view and start living in relationship with the mystery itself.
