Masquerading as Truth

Share

Since I first heard of people pretending to be relief workers or Red Cross employees after hurricane Sandy to today when I looked again at the Viceroy butterfly, I am reminded that things are not always what they seem. People sometimes hastily believe a thing because they desire it to be true or because they are afraid it might be. In truth, it's probably why so little changes- we are afraid that we might not be offered something true or because we believe one person because we don't know or don't like someone who says the opposite.

Years ago, I lost a friend for a while because I told her something she didn't want to hear. She asked me what I thought of her new male companion, hoping that I would tell her the same thing she thought, and when I told her my concerns, she stopped talking to me. This lasted for an entire year, at which point I unexpectedly heard from her. She called to tell me that she was pregnant, and that I was right- he was not what he purported himself to be. You see, she found something in him that may have been true, or that she hoped desperately would prove to be so, and so she latched onto that kernel even though the fruit surrounding it was rotten.

Today on Facebook I was added against my will to a group that celebrates bikini models. As soon as I discovered this, I left the group, not because I don't appreciate a pretty woman, but because their beauty may not be anything more than clever photoshop skills or plastic surgery. I know that Sunday night I caught myself looking at an actress on a show because of her beauty in her mid 40s, and then I saw the scars from her plastic surgery and I knew that it wasn't because of her behavior as much as it came from her wealth. Someone once told me that there are no ugly women, only poor ones, but I think he referred only to external beauty. Perhaps he forgot Odysseus and the Syrens or Perseus and Medusa or that some of nature's greatest predators lure in their victims with scents, colors, and motions. There is a great difference sometimes between what is true and what is made to appear to be truth.

The kingdom of God is likened unto a pearl of great price, which when a man found he went and sold all that he had to buy it. While it is something desirable, it is not the only desirable thing, nor is everything that appears to resemble it the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I have seen gobs of images on the internet of Chinese knockoffs that look like the real thing but are clearly fake. In 2000 I bought a leather jacket where the buttons said "quality since 2002". I had no idea that boutique was supplied by time lords.

I have been saying since I started teaching at the collegiate level that most people are not looking for truth. Most of them secretly hope that the truth will happen to corroborate what they already believe. In my experience, most people who leave Faith or change congregations do so because the teachings do not match their beliefs. Rather than align their will with God's, submitting to His will, and obeying His laws, they attempt to boss Him around the universe and then act all offended when He does not obey their commandments. In any event, it is certainly no mark of maturity to say, "Give me what I want or I will be a miscreant".  Sometimes there are elements of truth, but what they have found appeals only to a certain logic, a certain subset of facts, or a particular point of view. I love this video that illustrates how that can be a fallacy:

It's only when we get the whole picture that we realize what's truly going on, but some people don't wait for the whole picture before marching around with a portion thereof, which may not be the whole truth even if it is true. God isn't finished talking to us when He tells us something true. Science doesn't have all the answers when we discover something that is sufficient to reject the null hypothesis. We have some truth. It might only be true on earth, or in a vacuum, or for woodchucks or if the temperature is 2000K. It might not be true at all in the grand scheme of things.  We call that a false positive.

In our day, there are false pearls, that sound like truth but are really sand or stones or some other pyrite-like distraction from truth. Opinions of men masquerade as truth, and while they may have the appearance of godliness, if they deny the power thereof they will not satisfy or stand the test of time and circumstance. Just because a purse says Prada made it doesn't make that true. I have a beard, but it doesn't make me a Nazarene, a wise man, a miscreant, or a wizard. It gives me a hairy face, but only compared to some. Truth can be relative, but things that are really true are really true always and in all ways. I don't think we have as much truth as we think, but that's probably because we think we have enough. People only usually find things they seek, and if you already think you have it, you stop looking.  We receive not because we ask not, and in our vanity, we think we are learned and wise when in reality we are otherwise. It's part of why I hate being a professor- sometimes I feel like I profess things I don't really know. My mentor in Graduate School told me that "an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing at all". At least I'm wise enough to realize how little I really know.