Ye Shall Know the Truth

By Bobby Neal Winters

We are in a very confused and chaotic time. There is a lot of information and a lot more “information.”  I was about to write “but you can’t make a pattern out of it,” but, hell, you can make dozens of patterns out of it. Mutually contradictory ones. It’s all over the place.

Maybe I am just not ready to understand. 

You would think that being clear and forthright would be the best way to communicate, but there are some things you can’t just say to people outright. 

They are not ready to hear.  

After my Rotary trip to Russia, I explained in plain terms what it was like to a man who had certain preconceptions that he couldn’t overcome.  I could tell by his facial expressions that he was writing me off as an “ugly American” so I stopped talking to him about it.

Communication to those who are unprepared, or negatively prepared in his case, is sometimes so difficult as to be futile. Or worse. Sometimes people lash out.  Sometimes they will use what you say against you.

I am in a Bible Study that is going through the Gospel of Luke right now. Jesus taught in parables and then explained to his disciples what the parables meant.

They asked him why?

He quoted from the Book of Isaiah saying: “though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.”

The truths he was sharing were meant for the in-group, the group of people that was on his side. Others might eventually pick up on it, but only after they had studied him so much they would almost be a part of the in-group anyway.  Indeed, the final insight might actually bring them in.

The process of being prepared to learn the truth can often be difficult.  It is so intertwined with the process of growing-up as to almost be inseparable from it.  This is because the truth is often unpleasant.  When it’s too bitter for our unprepared palate, we reject it.

I can hear my own voice in my head saying, “Oh, Dad, that’s not true.”

He’d just turn away.

Years, nay decades, have passed, and not only do I understand what he was saying, I know he was right, and that maybe that was only the half of it.

We ignore truths that we are not prepared for. We ignore truths that don’t fit our DisneyLand idea of reality.  We sip at the bitter medicine and spit it out, or sniff at it and don’t taste it at all.

In skillful hands, this can be used to transmit more than one message at the same time. A potent medicine can be hidden inside a sugary liquid.

I watched a movie last night.

No, I actually watched two movies. They were on at the same time, on the same screen, starring the same actors.  They were saying the same dialog, but one was there for you to pick up on the surface and the other was in the background and very subtly told.

By great writing and understated acting.

The movie was “The Family Way” with Haley Mills, but don’t dismiss this as being for kids.  While the surface story can be followed by teenagers the deep story requires you to bring something with you. It’s given in small pieces spread throughout the so-called main plot. You know those codes hidden in a book where you pick out the first letter of the word and it spells out a message.

It’s like that.

In the current tempest, I try to do more listening than talking. I am looking for pieces to the puzzle.  I am trying to make sense of it all.  Trying to put together pieces of the puzzle.

Nothing yet.

Maybe there is no puzzle.  Maybe this is just a descent into chaos.

Or maybe the Descent into Chaos is the puzzle and I just don’t want to see it.

That could be.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.