It May Be True

It May Be True…Or?

“Do I have to decide?”

“I think it would be a good idea?”

“Who cares what you think?”

“I think, maybe you should!”

It always seems to be about the choices. When I was five it was, in the mud puddle, or around the puddle, jump off the garage roof, stay on the garage roof; why is life so difficult? Self-imposed challenges change into different choices, but choices all the same. It seems like it is just one choice after the next, and it is never going to end.

Good and bad, right and wrong, up and down, in and out, over and under; I could go on forever with the dichotomy between reality and fiction or life or death; but I felt the majority of choices, even the one between life and death, did not compare to the one question that is not influenced by fact or faith, but by reason. Reason infers a sense of diligent information gathering and a degree of experience that it relates to, let us say 12 years of parochial school, two years of seminary, and two years of therapy, my attempt to rationalize the previous 14 years, of what I came to think of as air without a balloon.

The day I left the seminary I was asked the only question I’d been asked in 14 years that was relevant to my life. Not the person I wanted to be, or the person others thought me to be, but me, just me. There is a process for leaving the seminary. The usual questions about faith, vocation, doubt, all rolled into an elaborate array of questions that are similar but different, to determine your true reason for leaving. A reason they explained when I questioned the questions was that often times we do not know what we do not know and often misinterpret what we do know. When the two hours was over I was more confused that I’d been about the last questions asked; “Do you believe in God?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to appear disrespectful or flippant, and I wasn’t attempting to avoid the question, I’d asked it of myself many times, I was simply not sure which one they were referring to.

Every major religion has a God that differs slightly from the God’s of the others. It may be a philosophical difference, a debatable difference, or a difference based on your deities ability to provide you with the answers you desire. Everyone has their own reason for believing in one God or another, or an aspect of a God that appeals to you more than aspects of the other God’s. Or it could be the their depicted skin color, eyes, hair, or their overall appearance; when you looked at an image of them did they come across to you as a God?

In reality there are more similarities amongst the renditions of God than there are differences. They all provide lessons so that we may better understand God, that no one follows.  The majority of them are against our human nature, which consists of aggression, arrogance, superiority, egotism, and dozens more subtle characteristics that are the basis for the religions we created to more or less keep the lid on our extravagant behaviors. That is not a bad thing in that we humans have a tendency, no matter what it is, to fill in the holes and gaps to make something more relatable, despite understanding how relating to a God is even possible.

Good intentions as we know do not always turn into what we had intended. Most often our intentions leave us feeling inadequate when the final outcome is evaluated. But it is our attempt to control our emotions when going to battle with facts and reasoning, that causes the most damage to what we refer to arguably as our soul. 

It was while I was seemingly trapped on a cat walk of a bridge, let’s say the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which I believe, the one person who has jumped has survived. I think the odds may be better going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The reason I choose the bridge as a metaphor is because of the fact that in all but one case the verdict is conclusive. When it comes to life and death, as it is so adequately described in the various bibles, it is the lesson that is absolute; people come and those same people go.

We’ve all heard the stories of a man stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family, and another man stealing millions of dollars to enable him to buy a yacht to take his family on the vacation they so richly deserved. They are both guilty of theft, and yet the degree you would think would make a difference, but in the eyes of gate keeper who supposedly keeps track of sins, they are the same. It appears our legal system is designed after the principles of biblical justice, with the added adjustment allowing for monetary influence to impact or postpone the final judgement, until it is no longer relevant and can be forgotten without implied guilt.

I guess it is the degree of separation between guilt and guilt, that causes me the most anxiety. Not because of the unfairness in applying the punishment, but it depends on a status you do not have. 

Stories change and laws change, because people change. Situations change to accommodate the moral attitude of the people which cause a divide to form between two factions that are guilty of the same sin but are treated differently because of the perceived character of the persons involved. In Buda's, Mohamad’s, and Christ’s world, a man would have, out of desperation, spent his last few dollars on a lottery ticket and won 500 million dollars. In the world without the oversight of the trinity he is jailed for having stolen the ticket from someone who had purchased a hundred tickets and surely must have lost one or had one stolen. Perspective seems to be everything when it comes to the degree of forged acceptance.

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“You do realize what you are about to do?”

“Yes, I have weighed the losses and gains and can find no appreciable difference.”

“You have obviously contemplated the irreversible options of having two possible outcomes and only one acceptable solution?”

“Acceptable to who?”

“Why, me of course!”

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The water looks placid from this height. I’ve bee told its 200 feet to the water from the bridge deck, I don’t know if that is true or not. So much of what I hear today is suspect. The truth, like morals, ethics, decency, have all been abused by manipulation.  I no longer believe anything. 

The usual arguments about faith and beliefs center around the infallibility of truth. Now it is center to what you believe the truth to be, not what it actually is. Once you have corrupted the idealism behind fact, you have managed to destroy truth which is based on fact. It is probably the greatest of all sins in that it has taken the citadel of hope, fact, and turned it into something personal and detached from fact, therefore detached from truth. We have become a nation of people looking for the truth and being told there is no need to look for it, all you have to do is make your own; it’s easy. You just decide what you need or what you want to hear and build a philosophy that incorporates the information that justifies your belief, regardless of other people’s facts.

The concept of acceptance based on your needs, regardless of documented fact, allows right and wrong to be negotiable; no longer a negotiation with the devil, but with yourself.

“I’d appreciate it if you left me out of this… this, madness of yours. I am no longer the standard bearer of the opposite view but have been relegated to a mere participant in a game that no one can lose, unless they get bored and quit. Human beings have been taught since birth to never quit. So everyone who participates is a winner, which does little for the competitive incentive of achieving something notable with your life.”

“And who are you?”

“I could be your conscience, I could be the one who questions the obvious. Or I could be the one who arranged for there to be more than one truth. I’ve always felt one is not enough. Options are so important when attempting to see all possibilities in your favor.”

“Are you who I think you are? … I heard that you convinced people you didn’t exist. Why would someone convince someone they didn’t exist?”

“I have no idea. But to tell you the truth I didn’t convince people, they were more than happy to convince themselves. Once you convince yourself there are no consequences for your actions, there is no longer a right and wrong, there is only your truth. I must be going. Which ever you decide about the water, I’ve got your back. There are always more than one way to appease the doubters; showing them the courage of your convictions is usually the most effective. See you soon, I hope.”

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Dusk has arrived and the bay has turned the most iridescent purple. The sky a crimson mirage being expelled by the ballooning fog that creeps effectively into the bay causing the memories of darkness to appear before they have been summoned by the moon and released by the sun.

If I jump I will end one chapter, but will it end the story, or will there be an epilogue waiting for the transformed me to begin a new story, or will I be tied to a rock and watched by those who appreciate failure sink to the oceans floor carrying multiple versions of the truth that belongs to someone but not me.

If I don’t jump, I will continue in the same vane as I have been, with nothing but the same old clichés to remind me life isn’t what I promised myself it would be. If sinking to the bottom of the sea is my reward for leaving a dream, what is the reward for remaining who I am. and continuing to live under the cloud of despair that has grown larger with the consumption of lies; becoming a grab bag of promoted assumptions that thrive in the chaos of a world about to catch on fire. 

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“Why do you insist on encouraging him to become what he is incapable of becoming? … Someone he will not recognize?

“Who is going to stop me? Those addicted to chaos are the most likely to follow. Taking the lead requires a reliance on the truth, and once the truth has been deemed dead, only the lies they tell themselves remain as cheerleaders. Once the truth has been extinguished, only possibilities remain; consequences disappear, and they are free to be who they are.”