truth Archives • The Domestic Hermit

Endure persecution for the sake of justice (Matthew 5:10). (RB 4. 33)

Brace yourself. To endure implies time, maybe a long time. Persecution is not a one-off, an insult from a passing stranger, a violation of a specific right on a particular occasion. Persecution involves systematic, sustained, deliberate attack, targeting you. So we’re talking about a long ordeal with no end in sight.

In such a time, when there’s nothing to see but darkness, we fix our eyes on our purpose, the thing we love more, the justice without which we’d have no reason to keep going even if things were easy. This is justice in the large sense. That is to say, righteousness. Righteousness simply means doing the right thing. If everyone did the right thing, justice would flourish everywhere. There are many opportunities to exercise it, in any human life. It’s the thing you do because it’s right, before you realize you’ll be punished for it.

Perhaps you speak out honestly, and the person in authority doesn’t want to hear it. Someone pulls you aside, talks down to you, and gives you to understand that you are not at the level of those who have interesting contributions to make. You are at the level of those who shut up and listen. Fall in line, and maybe you’ll get somewhere.

So you try. And you fail. You have no knack for nonsense phrases. You keep searching for a way to express the truth that will get someone to listen. But there is none, not where you are.

For example, when you walk through the door, no one sees you. You greet them, but they don’t remember having met you. They don’t seem to hear you when you speak. You don’t exist for them, and nonexistence is a terrible strain. It melts your whole sense of self.

What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just get along? What is it that prevents you from fitting in?

It’s the element of righteousness within your character. The justice of God is embodied in you. It’s the stuff you’re made of.

And so you pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” because now you realize there’s a difference. Tension between earth and heaven is heating up. Where on earth is God’s will being done?

Within you.

God is truth, and the Spirit of Truth cannot abide lies, nor dwell within the liar. So you feel sick and sicker at hollow words you can no longer repeat. You can’t collude with what repels you.

But when the heat is on, and the blows are hammering, something within you glows to life. Most surprisingly, the thing that should break you actually strengthens you. Your whole substance responds and alters. You don’t recognize yourself anymore, and neither do the people who know you. Sparks fly. You lose friends.

It should not be so painful to do right. Hold out for the way things should be. Something in you does not belong in this world. Glow brighter. The darkness is very dark, and what you don’t see is that the only light in the room is emanating from you.

You take the plunge to escape, because that’s the only path forward. When the steam clears, you’re still in one piece, but you feel defeated. You do have a future ahead of you, but it’s not the one you had planned. Not only your shape but your elemental structure has changed. Impurities are gone. Alloys are added. There’s no going back to what you were before. Not now, not ever.

The One who is forging your character knows what he means to make of you, and your story isn’t over yet. Some day the form of you will find its function. You may still have further refinements to undergo. God will make your suffering count for justice.

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When my first child asked me if Santa Claus was real, I told her quite frankly: “No.” She didn’t believe me. She argued with me. On Christmas morning she rebuked me: “See, Mommy! Look at all these presents. Where do you think these presents came from, if Santa isn’t real?”

With my second child, I patiently explained that Santa is based on a real person, Saint Nicolas, who lived a long time ago and started the custom of giving presents to poor children at Christmas. Then I got a phone call from my mother: “Do you realize that Anthony is going around telling people that Santa Claus is dead?”

With the third child, I decided to let my husband handle this issue. Shamelessly he played along with the whole charade. Not only Santa but the Tooth Fairy was real. He snuck presents under the tree and put absurd amounts of money under her pillow, inflating the value of teeth and provoking competition.

With the fourth child I avoided the whole problem. I agreed that it was too bad the Tooth Fairy didn’t show up, but she might try selling her tooth to her dad instead. I told her to ask her siblings about Santa.

I recognize that there’s a vast chasm of difference between enjoyable fictions that everyone participates in and, on the other hand, corrupt systems in which the innocent are manipulated by the selfish. It’s one thing to let Santa live on in everyone’s imagination. It’s another thing to lie to your children in order to induce them to do what you want, quickly and without protest.

There is a place in a child’s life for a teller of tall tales. The tall-tale-teller wants the children to grow up knowing how to distinguish truth from falsehood. Nothing tickles a tale-teller so much as the efforts of a knee-high pipsqueak to put one over on him. And sometimes the pipsqueak wins this game, to everyone’s delight. It’s a game that sharpens the wits, just as tossing balls in the back yard develops athletic skills.

But then there are adults who hate to see the children maturing, because they no longer believe the little white lies we tell them. How nasty these teenagers are, and how sweet they used to be, back when they still believed everything we said. We used to monitor them electronically. Now they know more about technology than we do, and we can’t even figure out how they’re evading our surveillance. We still track their phones, but they never take our calls, so in the end we don’t know what’s going on in their lives, because they don’t want to talk to us.

The thing is, if your children can’t trust you to tell the truth about an inane character like the Tooth Fairy, how can they trust you on more important topics?

If you actually do care about your children, no doubt eventually trust will return. Terminal deceit, from which there is no return is the pretense of love on the part of a parent who is essentially selfish. The friendly father who abandons his family is hollow. The effusive mother who neglects her children is hollow. There’s no need to wonder whose façade is fake. When the perfect-looking marriage collapses, and the hollow family splays out in the open, you’ll wish you didn’t get that sickening glimpse inside.

The opposite of hollow is to be truly, through and through, what you claim to be. It means actually taking care of your children, and part of that job is to teach them the truth. Fiction can play a role in this, because truth is complex. But your teenagers won’t confide in you if they’ve learned that you rate your immediate convenience above their ultimate good. They’ll have learned your deceptive strategies and will apply them back to you. So consider which sort of parent you’re going to be.

In the short term, manipulation gets results. But in the long run, integrity stands.

(Rule of Saint Benedict 4. 24-28)

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