COMMENTARY: Losing Touch With Reality

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) President Bush’s opponents find his denial of reality in Iraq both appalling and an opportunity. Appalling, because his dismissive attitude toward the Iraq Study Group’s findings means more squandering of life and resources, as they see it. Opportunity, because it plays into their political hands for 2008. None of […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) President Bush’s opponents find his denial of reality in Iraq both appalling and an opportunity.

Appalling, because his dismissive attitude toward the Iraq Study Group’s findings means more squandering of life and resources, as they see it. Opportunity, because it plays into their political hands for 2008.


None of us, however, should be so quick to cast blame on someone else’s denial. One could argue that denial is a widely preferred strategy for dealing with reality.

Consider what we eat, and how much, despite bulging consequences. Consider the hours we escape into television, despite TV’s well-documented damage to minds and fitness. Consider the 21 percent of Americans who still smoke cigarettes, despite warnings on every package. Or the addictions _ from alcohol to gambling to sex _ that depend on denial to continue.

We drive inefficient cars to far-away workplaces, as if dependence on foreign oil weren’t shaping our disastrous foreign policy. We underfund our schools, as if quality of education didn’t matter. We look the other way when politicians sell out to lobbyists and when corporate executives overpay themselves, as if corruption among leaders wouldn’t undermine societal ethics.

Students blame their teachers for low grades, rather than admit their own inadequate effort. Helicopter parents refuse to see the corrosive impact of living through their children. Denial crops up at every turn, from unprotected sex in the age of HIV/AIDS to ozone depletion to over-extending on credit.

Meanwhile, America’s religious communities argue incessantly, as if their rancor wouldn’t turn away future believers. They deny responsibility when extremists in their ranks try to bomb shopping malls or abortion clinics, or when they act out hatred toward Jews, immigrants or gays, or when intolerance opens the door to unsavory political alliances _ as if preaching hatred wouldn’t produce hatred, as if stoking hyper-righteousness wouldn’t turn ugly, as always happens.

Grief therapists say that denial is a standard first-stage response to unwelcome news. But what happens when we get stuck in denial and don’t move on to accepting reality? We are finding out now in what appears to be a “perfect storm” of unintended consequences, from a quagmire war to global warming to epidemic obesity, from hatred running amok to hangovers after office parties.

Christians need to become advocates of accepting reality, even at the expense of market share. Our own Christmas story would be a good place to begin.


We could unswaddle the Incarnation and see it, as the Gospels did, as God’s insistence on addressing reality.

Luke and Matthew located the birth of Jesus in oppression and violence. The details _ unwed teenage mother, forced travel, stable, shepherds _ have taken on a friendly patina, but their original message was shocking: this wasn’t a king like other kings, this was God intervening in human history and using outcasts to do it.

The coming of Gentile wise men shattered tribal assumptions about God. The outcome _ slaughter of innocent children _ revealed the powerful as self-serving bullies. The holy family’s exile in Egypt presaged Jesus’ ministry as a homeless rabbi.

It is understandable that we make Christmas a children’s festival; the child seeking love lives in all of us. But we must not lose touch with the story’s larger message: that God is making all things new, that hope will be found in reality and not in the apparent safety and sweetness of delusion.

That is far better news than a sanitized stable occupied by cheerful animals.

KRE/JL END EHRICH

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

To obtain a photo of this columnist, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.


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