OT: "Why it's So Hard to Face Reality" - Harmony Grant
- From: Howard Duck <hbduck@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:14:26 -0500
WHY IT'S SO HARD TO FACE REALITY
By Harmony Grant
8 Oct 08
Recently while eating eggs in a diner, I wrote my friend a three-page
list of the reasons she should not go back to her husband. He broke my
collarbone when he was angry. He taped a list of my physical flaws to
the bathroom mirror. He beat up his niece. We had to write the list
because she "still loves him." I put it on her refrigerator and told
her to re-read it. She needed the list because she couldn't hold the
truth about him in her mind. Her fantasy was such a strong competitor.
If her mind were the stage for a strongman competition, illusion beat
out the truth every time. She has the broken bones to prove it.
Her self-deceit may seem extreme. You'd never stay with an abuser,
right?
Yet in the strongman battlefield of our minds, we have our own muscled
enemies. When it comes to politics and religion, many people are so
whipped they don't even try to find truth; they don't even give truth
a chance to defeat a lie. Apathy is a beefy giant; false beliefs stomp
around like Goliath sextuplets on steroids. Our economy is on the edge
partly because we Americans are so good at telling ourselves what we
want to hear about money. Most of us believe in Christian morals but
our power to rationalize those beliefs away - to tell ourselves
convenient fiction - shows in our sick national statistics of
adultery, premarital sex, addictions to pornography and other sin. The
evangelicals whose Bibles explain our current political crisis are
least willing to address a Jewish agenda against Christ and freedom.
Most people on the far left and right who accept that truth
simultaneously reject the greater, Biblical reality that explains it.
Why! Why is it so hard for humans to know the whole truth and hang
onto it once we do? I'm talking important truths: the existence of God
and the other world; life's purpose (it's not just to be happy); and
the realities of political and moral forces shaping our world. Why is
it so hard for people to recognize the basic existence of God or the
divinity of Christ - or to even consider objectively the idea that the
Bible isn't lying about a Jewish Pharisaic conspiracy and a moral
battle leading up to the end of the human age? There are some truths
we can barely think about, let alone hold to.
There's at least one good and simple reason that truth evades us.
Every courtroom knows it. It's why jurors are examined for
impartiality? This is the reason: It's almost impossible to find truth
if your will is committed to the version you want. Like jurors in a
courtroom, our desires for reality to be a certain way - our fear of
one answer, our need for another - blind us to reality.
Subconsciously, we are driven to insist on the answers we want. We
rarely recognize when we do this. Christ described the kingdom of
heaven as a precious pearl for which we must be willing to sell
everything most precious to us: our self-interest, our dreams, our
values, even our own lives. Without radical self-denial, our love of
self will continually, invisibly influence our pursuit of truth. He
said to know spiritual truth we must become like small children; we
can't approach God - the ultimate Reality - wanting Him to be a
certain way.
In the most important questions, we all have an emotional stake. Deep
down, we all do care - a lot - what the truth turns out to be. We care
whether there's a God. In The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of
Skepticism, Timothy Keller talks about a prominent atheist who
admitted his fear of religion. Keller comments, "Depending on our
experiences with religion, on our other beliefs and commitments, and
on how we are living our lives - we all are deeply interested in
seeing the case for God go one way or the other." (p119) In his
excellent book, Keller himself argues that every person knows God
exists. But many repress that knowledge. It is a rare atheist who
admits his emotional desire for God to not exist. Inside, we all care
one way or another. We also care whether there are ugly political
truths, because talking about them could ruin our lives.
The rejection and repression of truth may be so subtle, their
motivations so subconscious, that we can't even see that we're doing
it. We don't know exactly why a certain concept or premise is so
unacceptable, but it is. Sometimes we shove ideas away before we can
consider them. We reject possible truths for no good reason at all.
The more important and life-impacting a truth might be, the more
emotionally biased we are. This is definitely true about the question
of a Jewish agenda. Maybe you hate every e-alert in which Ted Pike and
I bring this up. Maybe you accept this reality just fine, but your
friends and church family won't let you speak a word about it. This
reality is so emotionally charged; the price for speaking up is almost
higher than the price for speaking against homosexuality at a gay
pride parade or abortion at a NOW meeting. Those who should be bravest
and most concerned - evangelicals, respecting the Bible and at
greatest risk from Jewish activism - are most unlikely to trespass
into this dangerous and taboo truth.
Self-preservation is a deep, primal, subconscious drive. It's like the
eyeballs we look through. We don't see them, but they affect how we
see everything else. We might never consciously say, "Oh, I can't
think about that (Jesus being real, or a Jewish agenda, or hell)
because if it were true, it would ruin my life." We might not
consciously state that to ourselves. Yet the drive to preserve our
lives and our perceived happiness is so strong; it subconsciously
influences our thoughts on the most important questions. It shuts down
our access to the whole truth.
So I offer this challenge.
If you really want the truth - about God, Christ, what's tearing our
nation apart - you have to do one thing. You have to give up your
life. You have to be ready to accept for the answer you don't want to
hear and for the worst fallout. I'm not saying you will suffer it. I'm
not saying you will have to do prison time or lose your job, or your
friends' respect. But you have to be willing to lose those things. You
have to become impartial.
The apostle Paul said it is repentance - forsaking one's personal will
and submitting to the will of God - that leads to knowledge of the
truth. He ought to know. Few people suffered more for truth. Paul said
people who love their own lives can't know truth. Because they are
"lovers of themselves," such people are "always learning but never
able to come to knowledge of the truth."
Is it possible to become impartial toward truth? For most of us - not
really. That's why we need God.
If you read our e-alerts and get mad - or share them with your friends
and they get mad - either because of the Christian stuff or the
"anti-Jewish" stuff?then this is how you can win the challenge. Get on
your knees. Bow your head. And say, "If this is true, God, if You
exist and if this is true - I'll do whatever it takes, whatever You
empower me to do. I'm dying to my life. Show me the truth." I pray
that prayer, daily. Writing on this topic - for which I could
potentially go to jail as a "hate criminal" - was the last thing I
wanted to do with my life. (Well, one of them. Cleaning urinals is
pretty high on the list.) I just turned 26. At this age, I wanted to
be married, writing lovely books of poetic prose and being happy.
But, ultimately, the cost of falsehood and fantasy is far higher - for
us all - than the cost of finding the whole truth. My friend in the
diner had found that out. Her eyes were puffy from endless tears; her
broken bones still struggled to mend. Her mind was so corroded by
falsehood she was crying over a man who belonged behind bars. The
price of illusion is high. Ultimately, you'll pay with your soul. If
you cling to a lie - that God doesn't exist, for instance - you'll
find out you're wrong too late. Now is the time to surrender our
lives, to face the most uncomfortable questions with unflinching
willingness for the whole truth.
The courtroom is already in session. We can't excuse ourselves from
the case. The time to get on your knees and ask God to open your mind
- it's now.
Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a
Christian/conservative watchdog organization.
Harmony Grant writes and edits for National Prayer Network, a
Christian/conservative watchdog group.
Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they have
saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians:
http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.
Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants to steal it
now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's Hate Laws: Making
Criminals of Christians at video.google.com. Purchase this gripping
documentary to show at church. Order online at www.truthtellers.org
for $24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address
below.
TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this topic. Call (503)
631-3808.
National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015
.
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