COMMENTARY: Reality, In the Eye of the Beholder

c. 2007 Religion News Service HELSINKI, Finland _ Seen from a car on the umpteenth consecutive day of rain, this city is easy to imagine as my host describes it _ a place of sadness and depression, where many workers shut down emotionally during the long gray months. By afternoon, however, the sun came out, […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

HELSINKI, Finland _ Seen from a car on the umpteenth consecutive day of rain, this city is easy to imagine as my host describes it _ a place of sadness and depression, where many workers shut down emotionally during the long gray months.

By afternoon, however, the sun came out, downtown cobblestone streets filled with smiling walkers and shoppers _ carrying umbrellas, just in case _ and I could imagine why the United Nations ranks Finland as the sixth happiest nation. (Denmark is first, the U.S. 23rd.)


Or does this happiness rating have anything to do with sunshine? Maybe it reflects a preponderance of blondes _ assuming “blondes have more fun.” Maybe it is Finland’s well-balanced prosperity (11th in the world), or its determination, born of awful years after the Bolshevik Revolution and then World War II, to remain neutral and at peace. Or its highly democratic welfare state.

When you enter into someone else’s reality, you never quite know what you are seeing.

The girl next to me at the Cafe Java, for example, uses her knife to push salad onto her fork. That’s different from the way I eat. Is it a “Finnish way”? Does it mean anything? The teenagers with bright green and magenta hair resemble people I’d see back in New York, but are they similar?

In a weekend of wandering through Helsinki’s handsome and stately downtown, prior to starting my consulting assignment, I catalog the superficials, noting similarities and differences, trying to decipher what I see. But am I seeing anything?

Probably not. Reality can’t be grasped that easily. As I step away from my home country for a week and get an ocean farther away from overwrought church meetings like the Episcopal Church’s dance of death-by-right-opinion in New Orleans, I realize that one should enter another’s world with respect, interest, and an attitude of discernment, not judgment.

Too many people look at a changing and challenging world, bristle in discomfort, and then search for ways to judge, pigeonhole and distance what is different. Some find Bible passages that aid the judging. Some claim high moral principle.

Their aim, it seems to me, is merely to deal with someone else’s reality by naming it as wrong. That wins a momentary reprieve. But the reality doesn’t go away, and now the dark cloud of judgment has made it harder to see, and the shouting of righteousness has made it harder to hear.


I suspect that Finland’s unique charism is a determination to be tolerant. Centuries of being under Sweden’s thumb and then under Russia’s seem to have left the Finns eager to wage peace by embracing the new and different and not carrying a big stick.

That first impression could be dead wrong. Though we constantly deny it, the fact remains that we don’t know as much as we think we know.

We can process a lot of information quickly, but it takes longer to discern meaning. It takes an open mind to know anything deeply. Whenever we reach a conclusion, we need to keep checking it out. Wisdom isn’t conferred by firm and fixed opinions, but by listening and learning.

My hope for the Christian enterprise is that, at long last, we will turn our attention to listening, learning, discerning, exploring _ and away from dogma, brandishing of Scriptures, and fervent views that are clearly nothing more than prejudices clothed with sanctimony.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

KRE/LF END EHRICH600 words

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