I’m human. Like you, I’ve told lies in the past. I don’t want to be considered a liar; I’d rather have all the self-control it takes to always be honest. I look at myself in the mirror and realize I cannot guarantee I won’t lie again. I’m human.
On the one hand, we have this tendency to raise the alarm if some bigshot preacher lies about being a Navy Seal. On the other hand, the same people who censure the preacher have no trouble swallowing the official lies by the Navy Seals. It’s their job to lie, and it’s called “operational security,” keeping secrets from those who don’t need to know the truth. We think it’s the preacher’s job to tell the truth, even when we disagree with almost everything he might say from the pulpit. This is the schizophrenia of Western Civilization.
In the vernacular, I’m a clergyman. That is, I hold an ordination certificate from a religious organization which has the legal right to issue them. If you called that organization an ordination mill, it would probably stick. I’m honest about that, since the whole business of official certificates is to satisfy a civil government which has no business getting involved in the first place. I’ve also held an ordination from a Southern Baptist church. They don’t have a central hierarchy officially, so any church can ordain anyone they like, and no other church has to honor it. I still have the certificate, and the church which issued it claims to still back it, though I’ve told them I’m no longer a Baptist.
At what point is this honorable or not? The precise fact of the matter is I’m not a pastor, though I do perform pastoral functions. I’m willing to solemnize wedding ceremonies, burials, etc. However, I distinguish between pastors and elders, and I am the latter. For most of my readers, the difference is insignificant, and I won’t bother detailing it here. I let it pass, because from what I know of my readers, they aren’t likely to care. It’s not a question of “need to know” but of civility: I’m not going to burden you with issues which don’t affect you. Sure, you come here to read, and by so doing, it’s an implied consent of some sort, but that’s not the point. My calling is to tell the truth, and I am not that important. It’s not withholding pertinent information, as if I’m keeping from you something which would affect you. The Baptist church which still backs my ordination feels they made the right decision at the time, and there’s no valid reason to rescind it. All the more so, given other Baptist churches operate on the same ethic, and aren’t likely to be fooled for long by a simple piece of paper.
We expect the government to lie even more than we expect our fellow humans to lie from time to time. The difference is we know government officials get paid to lie, and are more likely to keep back pertinent information, hiding things which do affect your life. Your fellow humans will lie for any number of other reasons, and most of the time it makes no difference.
There was a time when I used to tell a tale about surviving a terrorist attack while in the military. It was a lie. It arose from an inside joke about military training, how most US soldiers are required at some point to crawl through a sand pit with real bullets flying overhead. Stay below the barbed wire, and you are safe. Who wants to struggle to rise up through that much barbed wire, anyway? At any rate, this little thing metastasized into a lie about dodging bullets actually intended to kill me. I dropped that story some time ago. Did it make any difference? Only to my own conscience. Eventually the people to whom I told this lie would have decided for themselves whether I was flaky. It’s not hard to affirm for you now, in those days I was most certainly flaky. Whether I am now is simply a matter of opinion.
I let it pass, whatever you may think of me. If you tell me something unpleasant in the comments, it might offer some fodder for self-deprecating humor, but it won’t change the subject and thesis of what I write. I don’t matter, and nor does your response, in the grand scheme of things. What matters is being faithful to myself, in the sense of fulfilling the drive I have to write. If the hit count goes down, it won’t change the driving sense of necessity.
That driving necessity includes portraying a powerful sense of what it means to be a Christian Mystic, because I find this is the truest expression of what Jesus taught. That matters, not me. I let pass what you think of me as a person, because I know my time is limited, and I’d rather not stay here on this plane any longer than necessary to satisfy that driving sense of calling. What matters is the ultimate truth manifested in how and what I write, as a reflection of how I try to live. I call out to the world to withdraw from this plane and invest in the one above. Take it for granted your government lies, and that those around you will to a lesser degree. Take it for granted I can’t be trusted, nor necessarily my words, since they spill onto this blog from someone who admits he is broken. But if something in this speaks to you of things far beyond, and causes you to explore your own inner space to find something which belongs to that Higher Plane, my job is done.
What belongs to this level, let it pass.
