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The Stubbornness of My Falsehoods
We live in a time where many of us simply will not give up believing things that are not true. We have often decided that believing what we want to be true is better than allowing ourselves to be challenged by the actual truth. And this stubbornness of holding on to falsehoods finds its way into every type of person, every corner of our world.
To be sure, with strongly held beliefs, it can be hard to change when confronted with a challenge to those beliefs. Psychology has a word for this type of thinking concerning psychological research. Probabilistic Expectations. In other words, we tend to see what it is we want to see.
I think there is a version of this occurring in the gospel today. After four days, people witnessed the raising of Lazarus, and their response is to kill Jesus. It is very likely they have never seen anything like this ever before, and yet they are willing to dismiss it in holding on too their previous beliefs that left no room for faith in Jesus.
At the heart of Christianity is the belief that we are called to a relationship with the truth. But for us, the Truth is a person. Jesus tells us that he is the way, the truth and the life. And so if we really believe in Jesus, as the Son of God, then we need to commit to follow wherever Jesus leads us.
The same is true for the Pharisees. They should have committed to wherever God would take them. But they could not. They could not leave the stubbornness of their falsehoods. They were more committed to the black and white life that allowed for no exceptions. They were committed to killing one person, rather than consider that they were being called to something better.
For all of us, to follow the truth means to accept God’s gift of courage, a virtue. For it takes courage to follow Jesus. It takes courage to pursue Jesus, the Truth, in every aspect of our lives. It takes courage to leave our falsehoods behind.
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