Seeing What We Want To See

Many psychological experiments have  been conducted that show that people see what they want to see.  We have an extraordinary ability, or maybe it’s a disability, to blot out things we don’t understand in favor of what we expect.  We are quite happy to accept without question the routine, normal things that happen all the time—things that don’t surprise us when they happen because they fit in with our experience, our expectations, or even our belief system—our faith.  When we do question our own eyes, it’s because we reject what we are seeing.  “It’s unbelievable, I don’t believe my own eyes, it can’t be true.”  It’s how conspiracy theories work, because once we have accepted the basic premise of who shot Kennedy, or whether UFOs exist, we manipulate all seemingly contradictory possibilities until they fit in with our first and now firmly held theory.  And let’s face it, we might not be wrong either, so there’s always that tantalizing possibility that “our” truth really is the right one.

Tricksters use this phenomenon to get us to believe what they want us to believe.  Whether they’re simple magicians at a children’s birthday party or criminals pushing counterfeit currency, they rely on our basic instinct to accept at face value what is happening or what seems to be happening.  Meanwhile, we become their victims.

We wonder how people today can be so gullible as to believe that abortion is anything other than infanticide, or that the 2020 election was fairly and squarely won by a senile old puppet who never came out of his basement without tripping on the stairs on the way up.  It amazes us, perhaps because we have fallen into that old trap of ignoring the lessons of history.  For time after time, naïve men and women have been fooled into accepting lies and ignoring truth.

Our Lord points this out in today’s Gospel.  “What went ye out into the wilderness to see?” he asks.  You’ve heard about John the Baptist?  What did you expect to see?  “A reed shaken with the wind?  A man clothed with soft raiment?”  The message is clear—don’t obsess with what you thought you’d see, how the man would act, what he would say.  Empty your mind of your idle expectations, and open them to the truth.  What is John the Baptist saying?  “Behold him who doth make the blind to receive their sight, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, and the lepers to be cleansed… Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.”  John the Baptist is no trickster, what you see and hear is what you get.  He is a prophet, and he is prophesying that the Christ is he that should come, the Messiah, the Saviour.

There were many who listened to what our Lord had to say, and who believed.  There were many too who did not believe, who would deny his teachings and ignore his miracles.  In short, they would reject the Man to whom the Prophet John the Baptist pointed.  They would stick to their ancient traditions that had become obsessions, to the letter of the law that no longer held its original spirit of charity.  But they would choose to reject the prophecies concerning the Messiah that our blessed Lord so obviously fulfilled.  They were the Chosen People and that was that.  End of story.  No need for a Messiah who claimed to fulfill all they believed in when here he was, preaching against them.  Their beliefs were so instilled as to be intransigent, and thus they were able to reject what they could see with their own eyes if it went against that blindly held belief system.

We need to watch out that our own conspiracy theories do not go beyond the evidence.  Conspiracies certainly exist because people have been conspiring together since Adam and Eve sought to hide from God after biting the apple.  We all have our own theories about President Trump and the war against him, about Covid and the vaccines, about global warming, about the assassination of President Kennedy, UFOs and 9-11.  What is important is that our beliefs do not become so intransigent like those of the Pharisees, that if evidence to the contrary is presented we don’t dismiss it out of hand.  That we remain open to what is indisputably the truth, not immutably wedded to what we want to be true.

Pontius Pilate asked our Lord “What is truth?”  His cynicism was founded on the familiar human error of distorting truth into something subjective rather than objective, that “my truth isn’t necessarily your truth.”  However, two contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time.  And so what is Truth?  Pontius Pilate was looking the Truth right in the face when he asked this question, “what is truth?”.  For our blessed Lord said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And our way to heaven is only by and through this Truth who is Christ.

So this Advent, let’s remember it doesn’t matter so much what we think is true, it only matters what we know is true.  Let’s refocus our minds on what we know is true.  Let’s forget for a while all the things we think might be true, all our pet theories about what’s fake news and what isn’t.  Such things may amuse us from time to time if we wish, but they should not be the center of our lives.  That place is reserved for the Christ Child whose birthday we will celebrate in a couple of weeks.  The story of our Redemption contained in the Holy Scriptures, this is Truth revealed by God who can neither deceive nor be deceived.  It is a Truth that gives us certainty in our doubts and hope in our despair, peace in our conflicts and patience in our sufferings.  It is a Truth that has consequences, all of which, if we believe in that Truth, are good, wholesome and helpful in the important things of life.  If only we can stop believing in things we just want to believe, and believe in things instead that are certainly true, we stand a chance of having a blessed and peaceful Christmas, and certainly, our lives will be the better for it.