Preferring The Lie To The Truth
Sermon
Life Injections
Connecting Scripture to the Human Experience
... When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth...
Facing up to the truth can be very difficult.
__________
One of the biggest challenges that a priest or minister faces is presiding at the funeral of someone whose life was far from exemplary. You'd like to say some good things about the deceased, but there is little if any good to be found.
A colleague of mine told me recently of a minister who was up against that dilemma. John Smith, who was an adulterer, a liar, a cheat, and a thief, was to be buried and his wife approached the minister about the funeral. She admitted to her husband's reprehensible life but wished the truth not be told. So she asked the minister if he could tell the congregation that her husband was a good man. He said, "I can't do that! I have to speak the truth!" "Look," she said, "I'll pay you $10,000 if you'll say he was a good man." The minister, not wanting to pass on the money, said, "Okay, if you insist." Now realizing his need to speak the truth and realizing his promise to the wife of the deceased, he embarked on an interesting strategy. Rising to the pulpit on the day of the funeral, he told the congregants, "My friends, we all know that John Smith was an adulterer, a liar, a cheat, and a thief, but, compared to his brother, he was a good man."
I begin on this humorous note because I'd like to talk with you today about truth and, in particular, why it is that we all have such a hard time accepting the truth, why we so often wish to avoid the truth. We can speculate all we want as to why the widow in my apocryphal story wanted her husband cast as a good man, but the fact is that she preferred the lie to the truth. I'm afraid that in far too many cases we, too, prefer the lie to the truth.
Sometimes, it is excusable. Sometimes when you look at what a person is dealing with, you can appreciate why a lie is preferred.
Linda Topf, in her book You Are Not Your Illness,1 talks about her journey through the illness of multiple sclerosis. One of the hardest things about the illness for her was accepting its reality. She did not want to face the truth of the disease and so she did all she could to deny its reality. She found that it was only when she finally accepted the truth that she could proceed with her life.
We call that denial, and denial is common with any horrible disease or any horrible diagnosis. Not able or ready to face the truth, we slip into denial and that often serves us well until we can muster the inner resources necessary to deal with the bad news. In due time, and sometimes the time can be long, we face the truth and, like Linda Topf, only then can we go on with life.
So there are cases where people prefer the lie to the truth, and it's excusable and we can appreciate the preference. But I'm afraid that in most cases people prefer the lie to the truth, and it is not excusable because we're not dealing with illness or disease or a bad diagnosis. We're dealing with a general unwillingness to face up to the responsibilities, the revelations, and the changes which the truth requires.
A minister was called to a church and was warned that the church is dead. Nevertheless, he regarded the call as a challenge and he decided to accept it. He soon discovered that the church was dead. No planning, no toil, no exhortation, no urging could kindle a spark of life or awaken any response. He told the congregation of that discovery and he proposed to have a funeral for the church. A day was fixed. A coffin was brought into the church. The walls were decorated with mourning wreaths. When the time of the burial service came, the church was packed. It hadn't been that crowded in years. The minister did a lovely job with the service. Then at the end, as a last token of respect, he invited the congregation to file past the open coffin. As they did so, they received a shock. The coffin was open and empty but the bottom of the coffin was not wood. It was glass, it was a mirror. As people looked into the coffin, they saw their own faces.
The pastor used the burial service to bring home a truth no one wanted to accept, the truth that all their fingers of blame were pointed in every direction but the right one. The church was dead because the people had died. It was not someone else's fault, it was their own fault.
Now that's a typical truth many of us have a hard time swallowing. We're big on blaming and complaining but we're not big on responsibility. We're big on laying the cause for a problem or a misery onto shoulders other than our own.
I like that story about the two painters on their lunch break. One of them looks into his lunch box and protests, "Peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter, I hate peanut butter. I can't take another day of it!" His partner inquires: "Why don't you ask your wife to make you something else?" "Oh, I'm not married," said the first painter, "I make my own sandwiches."
How often has it happened that we complained about something; we expressed our dismay over something; we stewed over something; yet it lay within our capacity and power to do something about it. It was well within our means to change what had to be changed, to restore what had to be restored. It was well within our capacity to make sandwiches other than peanut butter. But that meant commitment, that meant responsibility, that meant work, and we weren't willing to assume any of the three. So rather than face that truth and accept that fact, we go instead with the lie and we keep right on blaming, complaining, and protesting.
You have the matter of embarrassment. We sometimes prefer the lie to the truth because the truth would mean our admitting to something we'd just as soon not admit.
Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense, practically admitted in his latest book that that was one of the tragic realities of the Vietnam War. The powers that be knew the war was wrong; the powers that be knew the war was unwinnable; the powers that be knew they should get out. But instead of admitting the truth and confessing the error, the powers that be went with the lie, and I need not outline the horrible ramifications of that lie.
How often has it happened that we've done the same, that we've not faced the truth, that we've gone along with the lie, because we couldn't stand the embarrassment of admitting we were wrong, of admitting we were dishonest, of admitting we were stupid, of admitting that we, of all people, were capable of sin.
Then there is the matter of change. People will prefer the lie to the truth in many instances because to face the truth is to face change. I needn't tell you how much we dislike change.
I'd like to share with you a vignette from one of Anthony De Mello's books.2 It's titled "The Ashram Cat":
When the Guru sat down to worship each evening the ashram cat (who had wandered in from the outside) would get in the way and distract the worshipers. So he ordered that the cat be tied during evening worship.
After the Guru died the cat continued to be tied during evening worship. And when the cat expired, another cat was brought to the ashram so that it could be tied during evening worship.
Centuries later learned treatises were written by the Guru's scholarly disciples on the liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is performed.
Many of our habits which we view as sacred, many practices which we proclaim as the way it's supposed to be, many practices which we refuse to abandon are like the tying up of that ashram cat. The whole basis behind it is silly. It might have made sense a long time ago, but it makes no sense now. But rather than accept the truth and give in to the change, we continue to tie up our ashram cat and hold fast to the lie of its relevance, importance, and sacredness.
We prefer the lie to the truth to avoid responsibility. We prefer the lie to the truth to avoid embarrassment. We prefer the lie to the truth to avoid change. We also prefer the lie to the truth because the truth involves our admission that we are powerless.
How often have you heard people say that they're in complete control of things, that they can quit smoking or drinking or gambling or drugs any time they want? How often have you heard people say that, when it's obvious to everyone but themselves that it's simply not true? It's a lie that has destroyed thousands of lives, and it stems from a person's unwillingness to claim the truth of his or her powerlessness.
That's the beauty of the twelve-step programs. People admit they're not as powerful as they thought they were, that their addiction is out of their control. It's only when they can face up to that truth that any hope of rehabilitation is possible.
There's a psychiatrist in Brazil who suggests that the most common human mental illness is what he calls theomania: the delusion that we human beings can be God, that we can be the scriptwriter for our life. That lie not only results in resistance to the reality of addiction but it also results inevitably in anger, depression, and self-blame when life doesn't turn out as expected.
In my work with people who have experienced a tragedy, one of the hardest nuts to crack is the idea on the part of the grievers that had they been present, the tragedy wouldn't have occurred -- had they been there somehow or another, death would have been held at bay. Sometimes you get the opposite reaction in which people feel they were the cause of the tragedy -- they were responsible for the death of their loved one. Although in some cases there may be some truth in that line of thinking, in the overwhelming majority of cases there is no truth to it at all and the hardest thing to accept on the part of grievers is the truth that they were powerless to do anything about the tragedy or about the death of that loved one.
There is also the matter of comfort and security. People will choose to stay with the lie; they will prefer the lie, because admitting to the truth would be too disruptive of their lives and their lifestyle.
I'm reminded of the story of a Peace Corps worker trying to convince a native of India not to drink from the Ganges River because of its high degree of pollution. To demonstrate the truth of what he was saying he took a microscope and put a drop of water under its lens. There, as clear as day, were all sorts of germs floating in every direction. He then asked the Indian to look into the microscope to see the germs, hoping that by seeing them he would quit drinking the water. His reaction was classic. The Indian took his cane and smashed the microscope into pieces. The thought of drinking water elsewhere was not a thought he wanted to entertain. It would mean a major disruption of his lifestyle and life habits. So he figured that by getting rid of the microscope, he'd get rid of the truth and stay with the lie.
We can laugh at that, but consider how we're often guilty of doing the very same thing. We don't smash microscopes with our canes but what we do in its place is mentally to shred the many medical reports indicating that the food we're eating and the lifestyle we're leading can be hazardous to our health. Rather than disrupt our lives with change, we prefer to stay with the lie that our present eating and living habits won't do us any harm.
In our Gospel today, Jesus tells his disciples and he tells us that the Spirit of truth will guide us to all truth. I firmly believe the Spirit is constantly doing that, but we offer heavy resistance.
The Spirit is guiding us to a mirror where we might find the real source of the pain and trouble we're in, but we prefer blaming and complaining. The Spirit is guiding us towards an admittance of our error, an admittance of our mistake, but we can't or won't handle the embarrassment. The Spirit is guiding us to make a change, but we insist on tying up our ashram cat. The Spirit is guiding us away from theomania, but we keep coming back to the illusion that we're in control of our addictions, that we could have done something about the tragedy. The Spirit is guiding us to a recognition of our terrible lifestyle, our terrible eating habits, but we decide to break the microscope and mentally shred any evidence of the truth.
Jesus said the Spirit of truth will guide us to the truth. May we all give up our preference for the lie and give in to the guidance of that Spirit.
____________
1. Linda Noble Topf, You Are Not Your Illness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
2. Anthony De Mello, The Song of the Bird (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1982), p. 63.
Facing up to the truth can be very difficult.
__________
One of the biggest challenges that a priest or minister faces is presiding at the funeral of someone whose life was far from exemplary. You'd like to say some good things about the deceased, but there is little if any good to be found.
A colleague of mine told me recently of a minister who was up against that dilemma. John Smith, who was an adulterer, a liar, a cheat, and a thief, was to be buried and his wife approached the minister about the funeral. She admitted to her husband's reprehensible life but wished the truth not be told. So she asked the minister if he could tell the congregation that her husband was a good man. He said, "I can't do that! I have to speak the truth!" "Look," she said, "I'll pay you $10,000 if you'll say he was a good man." The minister, not wanting to pass on the money, said, "Okay, if you insist." Now realizing his need to speak the truth and realizing his promise to the wife of the deceased, he embarked on an interesting strategy. Rising to the pulpit on the day of the funeral, he told the congregants, "My friends, we all know that John Smith was an adulterer, a liar, a cheat, and a thief, but, compared to his brother, he was a good man."
I begin on this humorous note because I'd like to talk with you today about truth and, in particular, why it is that we all have such a hard time accepting the truth, why we so often wish to avoid the truth. We can speculate all we want as to why the widow in my apocryphal story wanted her husband cast as a good man, but the fact is that she preferred the lie to the truth. I'm afraid that in far too many cases we, too, prefer the lie to the truth.
Sometimes, it is excusable. Sometimes when you look at what a person is dealing with, you can appreciate why a lie is preferred.
Linda Topf, in her book You Are Not Your Illness,1 talks about her journey through the illness of multiple sclerosis. One of the hardest things about the illness for her was accepting its reality. She did not want to face the truth of the disease and so she did all she could to deny its reality. She found that it was only when she finally accepted the truth that she could proceed with her life.
We call that denial, and denial is common with any horrible disease or any horrible diagnosis. Not able or ready to face the truth, we slip into denial and that often serves us well until we can muster the inner resources necessary to deal with the bad news. In due time, and sometimes the time can be long, we face the truth and, like Linda Topf, only then can we go on with life.
So there are cases where people prefer the lie to the truth, and it's excusable and we can appreciate the preference. But I'm afraid that in most cases people prefer the lie to the truth, and it is not excusable because we're not dealing with illness or disease or a bad diagnosis. We're dealing with a general unwillingness to face up to the responsibilities, the revelations, and the changes which the truth requires.
A minister was called to a church and was warned that the church is dead. Nevertheless, he regarded the call as a challenge and he decided to accept it. He soon discovered that the church was dead. No planning, no toil, no exhortation, no urging could kindle a spark of life or awaken any response. He told the congregation of that discovery and he proposed to have a funeral for the church. A day was fixed. A coffin was brought into the church. The walls were decorated with mourning wreaths. When the time of the burial service came, the church was packed. It hadn't been that crowded in years. The minister did a lovely job with the service. Then at the end, as a last token of respect, he invited the congregation to file past the open coffin. As they did so, they received a shock. The coffin was open and empty but the bottom of the coffin was not wood. It was glass, it was a mirror. As people looked into the coffin, they saw their own faces.
The pastor used the burial service to bring home a truth no one wanted to accept, the truth that all their fingers of blame were pointed in every direction but the right one. The church was dead because the people had died. It was not someone else's fault, it was their own fault.
Now that's a typical truth many of us have a hard time swallowing. We're big on blaming and complaining but we're not big on responsibility. We're big on laying the cause for a problem or a misery onto shoulders other than our own.
I like that story about the two painters on their lunch break. One of them looks into his lunch box and protests, "Peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter, I hate peanut butter. I can't take another day of it!" His partner inquires: "Why don't you ask your wife to make you something else?" "Oh, I'm not married," said the first painter, "I make my own sandwiches."
How often has it happened that we complained about something; we expressed our dismay over something; we stewed over something; yet it lay within our capacity and power to do something about it. It was well within our means to change what had to be changed, to restore what had to be restored. It was well within our capacity to make sandwiches other than peanut butter. But that meant commitment, that meant responsibility, that meant work, and we weren't willing to assume any of the three. So rather than face that truth and accept that fact, we go instead with the lie and we keep right on blaming, complaining, and protesting.
You have the matter of embarrassment. We sometimes prefer the lie to the truth because the truth would mean our admitting to something we'd just as soon not admit.
Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense, practically admitted in his latest book that that was one of the tragic realities of the Vietnam War. The powers that be knew the war was wrong; the powers that be knew the war was unwinnable; the powers that be knew they should get out. But instead of admitting the truth and confessing the error, the powers that be went with the lie, and I need not outline the horrible ramifications of that lie.
How often has it happened that we've done the same, that we've not faced the truth, that we've gone along with the lie, because we couldn't stand the embarrassment of admitting we were wrong, of admitting we were dishonest, of admitting we were stupid, of admitting that we, of all people, were capable of sin.
Then there is the matter of change. People will prefer the lie to the truth in many instances because to face the truth is to face change. I needn't tell you how much we dislike change.
I'd like to share with you a vignette from one of Anthony De Mello's books.2 It's titled "The Ashram Cat":
When the Guru sat down to worship each evening the ashram cat (who had wandered in from the outside) would get in the way and distract the worshipers. So he ordered that the cat be tied during evening worship.
After the Guru died the cat continued to be tied during evening worship. And when the cat expired, another cat was brought to the ashram so that it could be tied during evening worship.
Centuries later learned treatises were written by the Guru's scholarly disciples on the liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is performed.
Many of our habits which we view as sacred, many practices which we proclaim as the way it's supposed to be, many practices which we refuse to abandon are like the tying up of that ashram cat. The whole basis behind it is silly. It might have made sense a long time ago, but it makes no sense now. But rather than accept the truth and give in to the change, we continue to tie up our ashram cat and hold fast to the lie of its relevance, importance, and sacredness.
We prefer the lie to the truth to avoid responsibility. We prefer the lie to the truth to avoid embarrassment. We prefer the lie to the truth to avoid change. We also prefer the lie to the truth because the truth involves our admission that we are powerless.
How often have you heard people say that they're in complete control of things, that they can quit smoking or drinking or gambling or drugs any time they want? How often have you heard people say that, when it's obvious to everyone but themselves that it's simply not true? It's a lie that has destroyed thousands of lives, and it stems from a person's unwillingness to claim the truth of his or her powerlessness.
That's the beauty of the twelve-step programs. People admit they're not as powerful as they thought they were, that their addiction is out of their control. It's only when they can face up to that truth that any hope of rehabilitation is possible.
There's a psychiatrist in Brazil who suggests that the most common human mental illness is what he calls theomania: the delusion that we human beings can be God, that we can be the scriptwriter for our life. That lie not only results in resistance to the reality of addiction but it also results inevitably in anger, depression, and self-blame when life doesn't turn out as expected.
In my work with people who have experienced a tragedy, one of the hardest nuts to crack is the idea on the part of the grievers that had they been present, the tragedy wouldn't have occurred -- had they been there somehow or another, death would have been held at bay. Sometimes you get the opposite reaction in which people feel they were the cause of the tragedy -- they were responsible for the death of their loved one. Although in some cases there may be some truth in that line of thinking, in the overwhelming majority of cases there is no truth to it at all and the hardest thing to accept on the part of grievers is the truth that they were powerless to do anything about the tragedy or about the death of that loved one.
There is also the matter of comfort and security. People will choose to stay with the lie; they will prefer the lie, because admitting to the truth would be too disruptive of their lives and their lifestyle.
I'm reminded of the story of a Peace Corps worker trying to convince a native of India not to drink from the Ganges River because of its high degree of pollution. To demonstrate the truth of what he was saying he took a microscope and put a drop of water under its lens. There, as clear as day, were all sorts of germs floating in every direction. He then asked the Indian to look into the microscope to see the germs, hoping that by seeing them he would quit drinking the water. His reaction was classic. The Indian took his cane and smashed the microscope into pieces. The thought of drinking water elsewhere was not a thought he wanted to entertain. It would mean a major disruption of his lifestyle and life habits. So he figured that by getting rid of the microscope, he'd get rid of the truth and stay with the lie.
We can laugh at that, but consider how we're often guilty of doing the very same thing. We don't smash microscopes with our canes but what we do in its place is mentally to shred the many medical reports indicating that the food we're eating and the lifestyle we're leading can be hazardous to our health. Rather than disrupt our lives with change, we prefer to stay with the lie that our present eating and living habits won't do us any harm.
In our Gospel today, Jesus tells his disciples and he tells us that the Spirit of truth will guide us to all truth. I firmly believe the Spirit is constantly doing that, but we offer heavy resistance.
The Spirit is guiding us to a mirror where we might find the real source of the pain and trouble we're in, but we prefer blaming and complaining. The Spirit is guiding us towards an admittance of our error, an admittance of our mistake, but we can't or won't handle the embarrassment. The Spirit is guiding us to make a change, but we insist on tying up our ashram cat. The Spirit is guiding us away from theomania, but we keep coming back to the illusion that we're in control of our addictions, that we could have done something about the tragedy. The Spirit is guiding us to a recognition of our terrible lifestyle, our terrible eating habits, but we decide to break the microscope and mentally shred any evidence of the truth.
Jesus said the Spirit of truth will guide us to the truth. May we all give up our preference for the lie and give in to the guidance of that Spirit.
____________
1. Linda Noble Topf, You Are Not Your Illness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
2. Anthony De Mello, The Song of the Bird (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1982), p. 63.
