I think that one of the most difficult things in life but at the same time one of the most important is the ability to discern. We are confronted all the time with claims and “facts” and “proof” and the like that X or Y is necessary, or that A or B is true. My own readings have taught me that when people disagree, it boils down to a difference in values and their value system. Ludwig von Mises taught me that the virtuous choose virtue over any advantage the alternatives afford. Recent attention to politics has taught me that even when we say the same words we do not always mean the same things.
Words are but the means to meaning, and they are only one mean. I teach my students about “organic” and “natural” and point out that some of the products labeled as such will not stand the tests if I apply them. I love chocolate cake, but that’s a different kind of love from that towards my sister or my dog or my job. In nuances of meaning, men make fake products and pretend to portended professions. Counterfeits constantly compete for our attention and resources. We are confronted with generic products and unlicensed knock-offs. We are faced with opinions masquerading as facts. We are faced with emotional pleas pretending to be reasoned arguments. We are surrounded by people playing parts, and it is important to learn how to tell them by their fruits.
Recently on Facebook, some of the folks I know have begun a protracted campaign to share jejune memes that construe a libelous assault on people of disparate views and values. As they criticize me for the mote in my eye, I think they should concern themselves more with the beam that is in their own. They can point out that we are judgmental and arrogant, but in so doing, doesn’t that betray that they are judgmental and arrogant. The thing is that they base this analysis on a misapprehension of why we value a thing.
A close friend of mine reported a recent viewing of a documentary on my Faith. He told me that he finally understood after watching this why people consider us to be preppers. In truth, we have been doing it for a long time, and if you understand why, it makes every sense. Rather than find out why, most men measure others using themselves as a meter stick. “If I were to do a thing, why would I do it?” Thus they project themselves onto others and accuse us of things without knowing why we do a thing.
Judging Righteously requires us to look at more than a book’s cover. I have seen plenty of homeless men who are recently homeless and still try desperately to look clean and fed and comfortable as they try to scrape their lives together. I have seen a few rich people who could easily blend in with the homeless population. In truly discerning a thing, like the appraiser when he looks to distinguish the genuine artifact from the artificer’s counterfeit, we must look at the details and pay attention to patterns and compare to others OF ITS OWN KIND. As Krister Stendahl used to say, it is a breach of ethics to compare your strengths to another’s weaknesses. You must compare things that are comparable in order to really tell the real from the pretenders.
All of that takes skill, which takes time, and so most people don’t bother. Instead, they watch people who declare their moral code openly for any evidence of divergence from perfection. Since it is not possible for an imperfect man to be a saint, the only option remaining in their eye is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Scapegoating the Saints, they assume that if any part is false, then the entire thing must be wrong or evil or worthless, although they would argue the opposite if the same unjust metric were applied to them. Even worse, some of them lie to win- fabricating half truths and whole lies in order to persuade via argument.
Perhaps the real reason for the counterfeits is because people talk about how they want truth when most of them want to discover they already have it. We have myriads of people who become connoisseurs of churches, who seek out a congregation or philosophy or author or politician or spouse or whatever who validates what they already believe. When they find someone or something that supports them, that’s all they see, despite the vast array of evidence to the contrary. Even worse, when they are validated in any whit, men frequently assume that everything about their belief is also true. In essence, they set up a win-win, in which either everyone else is lying or they are absolutely correct. I find it funny when Obi-Wan tells Anakin in Episode III of Star Wars that “only a sith deals in absolutes” because that sounds a lot like an absolute to me.
Truth isn’t made by man; it is discovered by him. Rules aren’t made by men; we are subject to them. Most of the truths we cling to were true before they ever came here, before we ever came here, and before we ever considered them. The real search for truth begins with a realization that as a mortal man you cannot possibly know everything or always be right. IN truth, sometimes I would rather be wrong. If we truly desire to find truth and separate the counterfeits from what is real, we have to rely on someone with greater skill and knowledge than we. It requires that we turn to God who sees far more and far more clearly than we to correct, clarify, confirm, and calculate what we cannot or do not.
An ability to discern correctly is one of the most valuable talents a man may have. Perhaps for that reason Solomon asked for it of God so that he might judge righteous judgment. Would that more men were of such a mind.
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