NOT ONLY IN AMERICA

Someone sent me one of those humorous messages the other day. I wish I could remember whom, but I deleted the email after copying it. The message was titled “Only in America ” and went on to report some idiosyncrasies that seem particularly and perhaps peculiarly American. For instance: only in America do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes up front. Only in America do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a diet Coke. Well, maybe not only in America , but at least we can – and must – laugh about our foibles, which is easy to do.

   We also can – and must – admit to our failures. But that is not always easy. One of the drawbacks about becoming successful and powerful comes the belief that because we must have done something right to get where we are, what we do is thus also and always right. This sense of entitlement is true both as a person and as a people. But power, even right, does not entitle one to foist his or her or our beliefs upon another.

   If what we believe is right, others will come to believe because of the way we live, not because we are bigger or stronger or richer or even wiser. We can never impose our beliefs on another. Oh, we try, sometimes try with all our might. And what happens? The other, with all his might rejects our imposition. Remember, Jesus never, ever imposed himself on anyone. He simply modeled what he believed. His life was the most powerful witness, the most powerful force in teaching others.

   Did he win over everyone? Hardly. What was worse is that some of those who did indeed get his message were the very ones who persecuted him the most. Truth always has its enemies because truth almost always demands change in the life of the one who hears the truth. We know how resistant to change we human beings are. We also know that in the end and in its own time and on its own truth finally conquers, but not before.

   What we do, not what we say or what we say we believe, tells the truth about us both individually and as a group, no matter how large or small that group of people. We know that. We also know how long it takes for truth to take hold. As a result, and again, we are so often tempted to try to impose our beliefs on another in what we deem is the quickest and easiest way possible, whatever that way may happen to be. It doesn’t work. It never works that way.

   Children, for instance, only seem to grasp the truth of what their parents have been teaching long after they have rejected it and suffered the consequences. Children reject the truth because they are children, because their perception of reality is different from that of their elders. But they often also do so because they see those elders living a lie, failing to live out in their own lives the very truths they try to teach.

   We elders are no different. We desire to know the truth but we are also called to teach the truth. Truth is caught and taught only as it is lived, not only in America , but everywhere. How we teach the truth determines how, or if, it is caught.

                                                            WJP