Truth

 "And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" - John 8:32

I have found the concept of truth to be a difficult one to live and I have found it to be a difficult one to teach my children. As a child, concepts like "honesty is the best policy" gave me a sense of direction where I felt none before. I would confess myself because I believed that being honest was the most meaningful way to live ones life. I found as I got older that this idea came with caveats. Truth has consequences. 

The first time I felt those consequences was when I was in kindergarten. I am little bit older and I grew up when chalk boards were a big part of the school experience. Chalk boards were everywhere and so to were chalk brushes. On one particular occasion the teacher left the class and a number of us grabbed the chalk brushes and beat them together. The resulting mess was quite dramatic or at least it was dramatic for her. She returned to class and demanded that we confess who did it. I confessed myself immediately while some of my other classmates stayed quiet. She was from a generation that believed in corporal punishment so she lined us up and smacked each of our hands with a ruler, myself included. I had difficulty contending with the idea that I, the honest, received the same punishment as the dishonest. My parents shared my difficulty and made it known as only adults can. I learnt the effects of truth do not always produce positive results. In her case I understood that she was mad and it didn't really matter that I was being honest because she wanted her anger satisfied. I concluded from experiences like this that it was emotions opposed truth.

As I got older I was more exposed to more Christian faith. It suited me perfectly to believe that a moral God held moral responsibility to all, even post humus responsibility. The moral dictates seemed plainly evident and so as I believed in gravity I also believe in Christ. Yet it was in the deepest places of my spiritual childhood I had an encounter with a friend. As someone who sits on the autistic spectrum, many of my friends were girls because they tended to be a little more tolerant of my unique traits. One person in particular befriended me when my Dad died. She shared her experience when her mom passed away and I became quite attached to her. She was deeply committed to her faith and I admired that greatly and so we attended the same church and had the same friend group. Our church had a prayer meeting once a week at 6am. I had seen her there at one or two, but she had missed several. I asked her why and she informed me, "God doesn't want me to go." She came to this conclusion that in the past when she came she simply woke up at the time. She said she didnt feel compelled to put in her own effort by setting an alarm. It was deeply disheartening to me that she would cloak her own desire in a spiritual dress. She didnt want to get up at 6 am and leave the house. That was the truth. She clearly had an agenda and, whether she knew it or not, was framing her faith to suit her desires.  It was then, perhaps, that I realised how often emotions can drive the car of faith. I sought an education to counter balance the prevailing winds of a deeply emotional world. 

In the process of education I encountered titans of intellectual prowess. Men who held a seemingly effortless ability to tug on the threads of complicated ideas to unravel them at their leisure. I listened, admired and argued with many. While the lessons I learned did not translate into a career, they have shaped how I handle my life and how I think about it. They may yet serve me economically, but they have most certainly carried me through many personal struggles. In my path I met a friend who shared many of the same values as me. He cared about people, he valued truth and the truth of faith. I had great affection for this man. He informed me sometime ago that he had abandon his Christianity. His fundamental reason came from disillusion with Christians. People who held in high regard failed to listen and show compassion and love. His disillusion came, not as the result of personal examination, but out of his emotions. He surrounded himself with enough people who were alien to Christianity that, in a form of spiritual osmosis, he became exactly like them. I don't fault him. I have found an absence of community and an unwillingness to claim ownership of other peoples problems and by extension the people themselves. I cannot fault anyone for turning from this reality.

I have come to realise that emotions are not the enemy. I got sent a video recently where someone said parents shouldn't get angry. I have been admonished to limit my anger. In reflecting on my experiences of parenting and being parented, I have concluded that a parent is a role you play as well as retaining your own individuality. I realised that kids respond to both. They respond to the rules you attempt to put in place and the lessons you teach as well as how you interact in the world around you. A parenting adage that I heard from my grandparents was, "do as I say and not as I do." This was silly and they knew it. They knew kids would do what they did and that is why they needed to say it. You are a lesson as a parent. Perhaps the main one. So when you show yourself weak, both in keeping and communicating boundaries, they react. I cannot change the fact that my kids reaction to my intensity is well founded. I wish it wasn't the case, but there is a fairly big gap between my demeanour when I am wound up about something and my disposition at large. 

Unfortunately, there is an incompleteness to life that I just always find vexing. You cant parent perfectly, you have to settle for your best. You cant love perfectly, you have to settle for your best. Having said that, language is also a tricky thing. I am trying "my best" implies that it is impossible for me to do better, after all how can I do better than "my best." I suppose my intention is to express that "my best" refers to the quality of my effort, but even that falls short sometimes. I'd be disingenuous if I didn't confess that sometimes I would do anything to be away from my kids. Of course I love them, I am also a selfish and lazy creature. After all, it's "the truth."