Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, January 21, 2010

During times of universal deceit, telling
the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

George Orwell, author; he died on this
date, 1950


It’s been over four years and more that I have been writing these Reflections. I’ve learned many things. Most, I’ve learned that people say entirely contradictory things. Do they forget? Or do they change? Both, I suppose.

I think, “spiritually”, that Orwell is dead on. We might call this the “Theological Principle of the Emperor’s Clothes”. Or, more correctly, the Un-Clothes.

In my view, people who “tell the truth”, especially in “times of universal deceit”, are very often murdered. We’ve just, in the so-called “United” States of America (a falsehood if I ever heard one; “America” is anything but united), celebrated (at least in the Episcopal Church Calendar) one of our murdered “saints” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Christians can go right back to Jesus, who definitely falls into this category. Many other faiths and religions have “founders” who were killed for telling the Truth. Especially to “Power”. That’s when the rubber hits the road: people in power do not take kindly to hearing the truth if it calls into question their values – or their Greed. America has murdered many whom they felt challenged their right to live on top of the materialistic heap.

Our problem is, we now live in a World in a time of “Universal Deceit”. On a massive scale, people lie to themselves and to others. People deprive other human beings of Justice and Fairness and Equality and call it Love. The Inquisition did this. People profess to act out of their Gospel faith who basically have perverted the Gospel - like the man who is claiming that he could kill a doctor who performed abortions because God wanted him to prevent what he considered theologically acceptable. Does he not remember (he who is a Biblical “fundamentalist”) “Thou shalt not kill”? Many Americans (seemingly a majority) claim we are a “Christian Nation,” when they espouse completely un-Christian principles of intolerance and un-Love and “not considering themselves as better than others”, and “Love your neighbour as yourself”. On and on it goes.

Need I say anything about the recent vote in Massachusetts? Ponder this. What does it say about caring for the 6th of our citizens who have no health care? About 30% of our children hungry while we spend nearly half of our national budget on the machinery of war??

Be a Revolutionary. Tell the Truth.

Brian+