Congressman Barney Frank had an encounter this past week
with a woman ascribing Nazism to President O’Bama. Rep. Frank recognized that having a
conversation with her would be like talking with a piece of furniture and he
would have no part of it. So how does a
relatively young, average looking, seemingly intelligent woman transcend from
an inquiring mind into a dining room table?
More to the point, when looking in the mirror, am I the fool, or the man
trying to reason with him?
The biggest problem we all seem to share is our absolute
faith that our positions and beliefs on any topic are the “right” ones. We are predisposed to believe we are right
before we enter a conversation, before we pick up scripture to read it, or even
before we hit our knees to ask for assistance.
It rarely enters our minds that we may in fact be completely wrong about
what we think or believe. That perhaps
we are praying so devoutly for the very thing that would destroy us completely
if God granted our request. We seem to
never pause long enough to consider.
Instead we prefer small sound bites from which we can form quick
opinions. Debate is not thought of as
enriching or improving a topic, it is thought of as only a tool to demonstrate
our intellectual prowess.
In short, we are right, about everything, just ask us and we
will tell you. But logically, and though
it may be very hard to admit it down deep in our soul, we know this simply
cannot be true. There is too much error
in our history. There are too many
mistakes along our pathway for us to have always been 100% correct about everything. This means though, that people face this fact
and with it face a choice: to become rational introspective thinking
individuals who allow for facts to alter their perceptions; or to cling blindly
to what we espouse whether we truly believe it or not and therefore adopt all
the characteristics of a sofa.
Almost gone from the American vernacular are the words … I
was wrong. It used to be the mark of a
man was his ability to learn from his mistakes.
In order for this to occur he would have to acknowledge that he made a
mistake in the first place. It used to
be that apologizing was considered an honorable action. A trait of nobility, of gallantry, was the
simple act of apologizing for his misdeeds, or mis-spoken words that cause
pain. Now it seems to be viewed only as
an act of humility, with no societal redeeming value at all. George W. Bush was indeed the leader of this
trend, but far from its only participant.
We like being right.
We like being proven to be right even better. We love it when our nemesis is forced to
acknowledge that we were right and they were wrong. But our nemesis seems never to find the words
to admit this, and frankly neither do we.
It is our pride that we nourish in the praises of being right. It is only our ego that is served when
feeling vindicated. It is seldom the
pure beauty of truth that we bath in when found to be right, rather we attempt
to attribute truth to ourselves as if our knowledge of truth somehow makes us
part of the truth.
So what is the difference between certainty of truth, and
blind ignorance – sometimes … not much.
The problem is not with truth. It
is with us. It is our need to believe we
know truth in the absolute. Rather than
be willing to learn and expand our minds by engaging truth as a learning
method, we treat truth as if it were an absolute that we alone can quantify and
explain. The truth does not change. But in our arrogance we assert that we know
ALL there is to know, that nothing else remains to be learned, and just like
the sofa, we learn nothing.
If we could approach differences with others without
considering ourselves absolute authorities on any subject, we could begin to
recognize our potential to expand our knowledge of truth. Even during a conflict when we believe firmly
that our premise is correct, it is still possible to expand our knowledge of
truth through discourse and dissent with someone else. Listening to another person’s argument,
wading through its logical conclusions, comparing it to what you believe is
true will either strengthen your position or if you are willing, allow you to
alter it. So much of what we think is
truth is really not. It is “human
wisdom” masquerading as truth. Often our
God must help us to unlearn what we have learned and reexamine a subject from a
new spiritual perspective to truly understand it. In this, it is critical that we are willing
to be taught.
The role of the shepherd is to lead the sheep. It is our God that leads us to discover His
truths. When the sheep runs off on its own,
believing the adventure will lead to new knowledge, they almost always find
themselves in life threatening peril.
The patient shepherd must then leave the flock to seek after the sheep
who wandered away and was lost, to bring them back into the fold. The sheep never seems to find their way back
on their own. It takes a shepherd to
lead them, often to carry them back.
Inquiring minds are a gift from God.
Learning and increasing our knowledge about truth through questions and
experience is essential to our existence.
But understand that real truth is what we are led to find, not what we
invent for ourselves. When following our
God we learn much, when we step out in front of Him, we wander off into the
abyss.
It may not be possible to convince the sofa of
anything. You can beat on it, but you
only risk breaking it. When someone else
refuses to even talk about truth, or to even acknowledge the existence of
truth, it may be that all that is left to you is to pray for them and
yourself. Sometimes it takes a shepherd
to illuminate the mind of a stubborn sheep, sometimes only He can reach the
places we cannot find.
For my part, when the young woman who confronted Barney
Frank took the microphone, she had pictures of the President doctored to look
like Hitler. She compared the effort to
reform Health Care to that of installing Nazi doctrines in prewar Germany. My first response to this assertion is to
look at where she might be getting this information. Who is the source of this thinking? What do they have to gain by it? What is it’s logical conclusion? What is she advocating instead of what she
does not like? What does she want? Does she believe what she is saying? Something about her looked to me as if when
hearing Frank’s responses and the crowd’s approval she was embarrassed by her
own behavior. She did not look like a
true-believer to me, she looked like a somewhat unwilling pundit, taking up
someone else’s talking points.
How problematic is pride to our happiness? Let me answer it this way, it is only pride
that prevents Lucifer from repenting for all that he has done and ending this
conflict entirely differently. The
constant nurturing of his pride has left him unable to repent. It is a foreign concept to him now, as would
be his learning anything more about truth.
His only interest now is in poisoning truth. What pride has corrupted in him, is working
its process in us when we nourish it.
Let us then nurture humility rather than pride. Let us become teachable even by those we
believe have nothing new to offer. Let
us believe in our truth, but always look to enrich it, by being led into deeper
and more truth by our tender God. Let us
not compromise our morals nor allow the underlying principle of love to be lost
in the application of any one of them.
The more we submit to God, the more we allow Him to take self out of our
equation; the more truth we will be led to discover.
