Truth and Perspective
And Lies
Lately I’ve had to listen to my life described by another person which was certainly not complimentary, and certainly not close to truth, okay let’s be clear: It was mostly lies, malicious lies.
This person has said that everything is just a different perspective. I have my truth and he has his truth.
Yes, there are different perspectives that colour what we see; but the basic reality is at least approximately discernible, knowable. There are limits to which one can go in describing something out of the past where it is not just a matter of a different perspective; it is a lie. It is not what happened.
That is not who did what; and sadly it is often the truth with this person that terrible things that he attributed to me, are actually the terrible things that belong to him.
If you enter a dark room and there is an elephant in the room, and one person says there is a rough round item (the leg) he is right in a way. Another may say there is a long wet item (the truck), and another large flat area that flaps (the ear.) They are right, but without enough perspective or wisdom to know the whole that they have encountered. A fourth person may enter and feeling a bit of this and that may well say there is an elephant in the room. And he would be right.
But if another person comes in and says there is a nice sand beach to run ones toes through the sand and feel the sun on ones nose: Well that’s just not true.
And if the person threatens you because you see a large flat area, that’s not just not true; it’s a malicious lie.
I’ve never before run into a person who so consistently cannot accept responsibility for what he does, and must always assign responsibility for his own mistakes and sins to someone else.
It is scary that so much of what he said is so far beyond what one would be able to discern reality from that it is … scary (for him, how can he not know reality) and sad (is this what he lives with, a nearly total inability to know what is and is not happening around him?!
But
Perspective is important. One can take the broad view and not see far.
Or a bit closer and notice the content of Bread and Wine poured forth.
To as close a view as possible.
And then to change the focus to see, instead of the foreground of Wine and Bread, to see beyond to the world God created.
And I did it again and it’s fun to see the differences:
Broad
Closer
Yet Closer
As Close as Possible
Closest with a change of focus to see,
Well, all along we have seen
the wonders of creation and our place in it.