Dressing Up

 

“What are you doing?”  I asked my beautiful wife.  She was seated at the computer and a couple of our children were standing nearby.

“The children are having a dress up day at school,” Elaine told me.  “We are trying to figure out what they will dress up as.  I think Victoria will go as Madeline.”

“Fun,” I said.  “Maybe Vincent can go as Julius Caesar.  We are coming up on the Ides of March, you know.”

No one seemed to think my idea was all that great.  “I think Vincent should go as Dark Vader!”  Elise told me seriously.

“Dark Vader?”  I asked.  “I think I know his brother Darth.  I’m guessing he was twins?”

“No, Dad, DARK Vader!”  Elise told me firmly.  “He dresses in black because his name is DARK.”

I am not sure how Elise knows anything about Darth (or Dark) Vader.  What cannot be denied is that she was certain of her knowledge about his name.  She argued with me for a while about it and eventually I dropped it.  I may have been right about Dark Vader’s real name, but getting a four year old to believe that I knew what I was talking about was a mountain I couldn’t climb.

Mark Twain, a long time ago, wrote, “"It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”

Of course, being in the medical field, I see this a lot.  Many of my patients know a lot more than I do and not only that, but they have access to Google.  Unfortunately, they still need someone to write them the prescriptions that they are sure that they need.

I think of Jeremiah, the prophet in the Old Testament.  He was called to speak truth to the people and tell them to turn from their wicked ways or else God would judge their land.

The problem was that there was an abundance of false prophets who prophesied peace, prosperity, and victory over the enemy nation of Babylon.  Jeremiah told the Jews, “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail.” (Jeremiah 7:8 ESV)

Given a choice between Jeremiah’s words, which required life change and the false prophets’ words which promised God’s blessing with minimal effort, there was no question as to which words the people wanted to trust.  So it was that city of Jerusalem fell in 586 BC amidst great slaughter and devastation.

A huge number of opinions does not equal a fact.  Truth is not achieved simply by polling the people.

Our goal should be to find truth and, on the way, we must listen to voices that challenge our opinions and even words that make us feel uncomfortable.  Our goal is not to reinforce our beliefs, but to learn.

Otherwise, we might end up in the sad state of a four year old girl arguing with her dad about the real name of  “Dark Vader.”