Fact Bullet

I once read that, “Noth­ing kills a good the­ory like a solid fact.” You just can­not argue with real­ity. Fif­teen months ago, a politi­cian said that we would never see snow in the Wash­ing­ton DC area again (due to the the­ory of global warm­ing). This week that area is dig­ging out from under one of the heav­i­est snows in his­tory. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, politi­cians are more oppor­tunists than sci­en­tists. You would think that the pub­lic would have caught onto that long before now. It takes more than a micro­phone and a famous name to be an author­ity on something.

Reli­gious cults have pro­moted var­i­ous the­o­ries about the end of the world and have even set dates. Those times came and went, and the world is still here. What was inter­est­ing about the stud­ies done on those groups is that they actu­ally got stronger after the fail­ure of their the­ory. There is some­thing about the human ego that just can­not admit being wrong — even in the face of real­ity. Denial may be the strongest ego defense mech­a­nism peo­ple have.

Rather than going with the facts, the the­o­ries are revised. They snake into other con­fig­u­ra­tions to keep the money flow­ing and the faith­ful fol­low­ing. The­o­ries become myths, defended par­a­digms, and even­tu­ally ortho­doxy. One day some­one dis­cov­ers the sil­ver bul­let fact that kills the the­ory, but the herd con­tin­ues its migra­tion for a very long time any­way. Change is disconcerting.

If they found the body of Jesus this morn­ing, I would be out of here by noon and back into every sec­u­lar indul­gence I could find. The fact of the res­ur­rec­tion sent the imme­di­ate eye wit­nesses to early graves. They staked their lives on what they saw. For now I must con­tinue to go with the cred­i­ble wit­nesses of the event. The truth would set me free if what I am in is a lie. I would have to go with the truth — what­ever it is. I am not inter­ested in spend­ing my life fol­low­ing some phony the­ory. (Even the Apos­tle Paul said that if there is no res­ur­rec­tion then we should just enjoy life through what­ever indul­gences we can afford until we die.)

The truth that sets us free has to make its way through our col­lec­tive denials. For truth to be truth, it must be con­tin­u­ally tested and not tied to my con­ve­nient pref­er­ences. Any­thing I refuse to admit to myself about myself lim­its me. Lib­er­at­ing truth is often painful but always preferable.