Is the truth really what we want?

Despite my best efforts, I found myself pulled into all the hubbub about Michelle Wolf's comedy routine at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last weekend. I don't want to get into the nitty gritty details here, so sufficed to say: I don't much care for Michelle Wolf's style, I often don't find her very funny, and I thought this routine was pretty mean (as roasts often are). Her style is just not my taste.

But, that aside, I also saw her as a truth teller.

I have tried to be fair in my evaluation of this, and I think I have been. One must keep in mind, of course, that she was hired to roast and make jokes. A part of her medium (comedy) is to take morsels of truth and exaggerate them to highlight how absurd the truth really is. (Finding absurdity in our current political climate is hardly a challenge, since I think our president prides himself on blowing apart precedent, though exaggerating the truth might be difficult because reality already seems to be a constant stream of superlatives!) That is what she did - she lifted out so many absurd things, things to which we have become immune because they are so constant, and hearing them rattled off one after another like that was, well, offensive. It was to me, and it was so many who watched.

But offensive is exactly what the truth can be sometimes, can't it?

That's what got Jesus and the prophets alike into trouble, after all.

A few days after this routine, I taught my confirmation class about the prophets. We defined a prophet as one who speaks God's truth to power. As a part of the class, I pulled out three well-known prophecies from three different prophets and had small groups work through them. One was Amos 5, and I gave them the translation from The Message, because the language packs a punch for obviously to a modern ear. (See below.) As I read it with them, I found myself thinking, "Man, Amos was mean." Don't get me wrong - I love me some Amos - but that's a lot easier for me to say centuries later, when he's not talking directly to me. If I had been living in the 8th century BCE, I would not love me some Amos. Because he was, indeed, mean. Harsh. He didn't mince words. And he didn't use comedy to do it. He simply spoke the truth, in a way people needed to hear it. I'm sure if he lived in the 21st century, social media would be full of degrading memes about him, undermining and discrediting his truth-telling.

I'm not saying Wolf is a prophet. But, as I thought about Amos, and about Michelle Wolf, I realized some things about the truth. In what is being called a "post-truth era" (whatever that means), we all claim that we want to know what is really the truth. But what we really mean is, we want to hear whatever truth affirms what we already believe to be true, and what truth won't challenge us too much or make us change our ways or beliefs.

Think about it - when do you get offended by something? Speaking for myself, if someone says something I absolutely know to be false, it doesn't really bother me. If it is something I know no one else will believe, it doesn't matter. When I get reactive is when I fear that something I hear that I don't like... might actually be true. Or that people might actually believe. That is, I get defensive when I feel there is a need to defend, to dispel the possibility that what I hold true, about myself or about the world, might be in danger.

So yes, we want to hear the truth. Just as long as it justifies our current beliefs, and allows us to keep on hating and fearing whom and what we already do.

I don't want to sound jaded. Some people truly do want to hear the truth to grow, to expand their horizons, to become better. This is humanity at its best. And sometimes I am there. My goal has become to spend more time there, to always take time for self-evaluation, to ask myself, when I feel the need to defend myself or my idea, "Where is this reaction coming from? What am I really defending?"

And, to be humble enough and prepared for the fact that what I'm defending... really needs to go away.

God grant us hearts ready to change, if God so chooses.

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 from The Message (contemporary translation of the Bible)

Seek God and live! You don’t want to end up
    with nothing to show for your life
But a pile of ashes, a house burned to the ground.
    For God will send just such a fire,
    and the firefighters will show up too late.

Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar
    and stomp righteousness into the mud.
…

People hate this kind of talk.
    Raw truth is never popular.
But here it is, bluntly spoken:
    Because you run roughshod over the poor
    and take the bread right out of their mouths,
You’re never going to move into
    the luxury homes you have built.
You’re never going to drink wine
    from the expensive vineyards you’ve planted.
I know precisely the extent of your violations,
    the enormity of your sins. Appalling!
You bully right-living people,
    taking bribes right and left and kicking the poor when they’re down.

Justice is a lost cause. Evil is epidemic.
    Decent people throw up their hands.
Protest and rebuke are useless,
    a waste of breath.

Seek good and not evil—
    and live!
You talk about God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
    being your best friend.
Well, live like it,
    and maybe it will happen.

 Hate evil and love good,
    then work it out in the public square.
Maybe God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
    will notice your remnant and be gracious.