Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Monty Python on Reality
I remember a Monty Python piece . . .
A grubby industrial city in the north (Leeds, as I recall) had hired a magician to help put up new public housing. One Python, dressed as a magician, was standing in front of a screen on which a film-clip of an apartment-building demolition was played backwards. As the magician waved his wand, a pile of rubble lying on the ground leaped into the air, and formed itself into a tall apartment-building.
In the skit that followed, a resident was being interviewed in his apartment. He extolled the amenities of the magical building, and how much he enjoyed living in Leeds.
The interviewer asked (quoting from memory), "Where did you live before ?"
The resident mentions off-handedly that he formerly lived in the manor-house at his estate in Devon.
"But", says the puzzled interviewer, "Wasn't that much nicer than a one-bedroom apartment in a public-housing block ?"
A quizzical look crosses the resident's face, and the light of thought begins to show in his visage.
"Well, yes," he says, as he seems to suddenly awaken, "Yes, that was ever so much nicer."
Camera-work makes the walls of the apartment seem to slowly lean to the right, slightly out-of-plumb at first, but at a greater and greater angle as the resident comes to his realization, and an ominous loud creaking grows.
The resident and interviewer both rush to the opposite wall, and throw their weight against it.
"NO, NO !" cries the resident, "I like it here much better !" The wall begins to reverse itself toward plumb.
"It's much nicer here ! Much nicer." And the wall returns to vertical.
It's a pointed parable for our time. Reality stands by itself. False realities, peddled by all varieties of con-men, collapse when the victim wakes up and stops believing in them.
The con-man's guiding adage was always that "you can't cheat an honest man."
Today's political landscape of "alternative realities" probably says a lot about the honesty of most people's political thinking.
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But it’s probably not scripture-twisting to think of honesty as part of…or even roughly equivalent to…”integrity.” "Honest" may even be the general attitude and practice that scripture means by “righteousness.”
I have to think too of “honesty” as a response to Truth; which makes it specifically an orientation toward Christ. That “lies” are the contrary spirit and the contrary response seems to bear that out.
In Jesus’ parable, an “honest and good heart” is the only soil in which God’s word takes root and grows. I understand our interpretations of what God “speaks”…Truth/Jesus, scripture, reality…to be some of the “fruits” that grow from our heart-orientation: and honest and good interpretations only from an “honest and good heart.”
Certainly LACK of honesty seems the common characteristic of those who “cherry-pick” facts, or try to live in an echo-chamber of their own making, or block dissenting comments from their blogs. In all those instances, the individual's purpose is clearly to “validate” his own alternative "reality" against the reality God perfectly (in Hebrew, "completely") speaks.
I have to think those who choose to interpret the facts of reality dishonestly ultimately seek to deny God’s sovereignty: and in dishonest hubris, substitute their own.