Have you seen "Cloud Atlas"?  A lengthy (almost three hours), but intensely fascinating movie that spreads its plots over many centuries, "Cloud Atlas" is a soulful and moving meditation on the power of truth and existential consequence.  At its center seems to be the contention that regardless of how little effect fighting for truth may seem to have, and regardless of whether the existing order accepts or accommodates it, people should not go to their grave without doing everything they can to promote and effect it.  Better that a person try and die for truth than to, out of fear that her efforts will not amount to anything, not try at all.  Truth is that important.
     As Jesus put it when he talked about the singular importance of the kingdom of God, the eternal order of truth he announced he had come to establish on earth, "The kingdom of God is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it" (Matthew 13:45-46).  If we have found truth, in this case, the truth of all eternity, Jesus is saying, we will be willing to give up everything we own to experience it--even if our lives, as many of them in the movie were, to borrow a phrase from the Britsh philosopher Thomas Hobbes, brutish and short.  The truth is that important.
     Indeed it is. Why live simply to die?  Why not live to proclaim a truth that will extend, as the movie depicts repeatedly, throughout countless generations (and even eternity) to come? After all, if truth were not worth doing, it would not be truth.

     Truth is that important.