BRYN ATHYN COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT 2017
Always the Right Answer:
Good and Truth
Erin Glenn Busby
B
eing back in Bryn Athyn reminds me of my high school days, and I
thought about a story that might be apocryphal. But I will tell it the way
I remember it. One of my friends had not attended church schools before
moving to Bryn Athyn at the beginning of high school. Part way through high
school, someone asked her if religion classes were hard because she didn’t have
the same background as the other students. She said, “Well, it was intimidating
at first, but it got much easier once I realized that the answer was always good
and truth!”
I don’t know how well that strategy really worked for religion class. But
I have become convinced that it is the right answer for life – good and truth
really are always the answer. Pursuing both is never wasted, and combining the
two is the route to happiness.
I will mention that my friend’s statement that “it’s all good and truth” is
not without support in the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. In The New
Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, we read: “All things in the universe,
which are according to Divine order, have relation to good and truth,” (11) and
that truths without good have no life, but are like a body without a soul. (22)
I have found that, if you pursue truth and good for their own sakes, you
never know when you might use them. One example in my life is the book
Middlemarch. I’ve always loved novels, and probably my favorite class in
college that had nothing to do with my majors was a class on the Victorian
novel. George Eliot’s Middlemarch is one of the greatest of these novels.
Among other things, it is foremost an exploration of how people find their
use in life, and what they can do when they get that disastrously wrong. In fact,
the main storyline of Middelmarch is a good example of what happens when
you don’t combine good and truth: Dorothea Brooke is an idealistic young
woman who marries a much older clergyman with the idea that she will help
315