Get beyond perceptions, seek the truth of Jesus

In recent months, I’ve heard comments made in private conversations, speeches and the media about the “dumbing-down of America.” While this column risks adding to that notion, I want to suggest one positive step toward the “smarting-up of America.”

That step would be to challenge yourself to stop repeating this oft-repeated cliché: “Perception is everything.” If you stop repeating it, you might begin to believe that while perception is something, it definitely isn’t “everything.”

Think about that phrase, dear readers. If you believe that perception is everything, you are saying you believe that reality is only skin-deep, that your deepest values are based on appearances only. And from what you have told me in person and in written notes, you are much more thoughtful than that.

The Rev. Dr. Halford Luccock wrote for The Christian Century for 12 years. His recurring alter ego was the pastor of St. John’s- by-the-Gas- Station Church. One Sunday morning, a parishioner complained to the pastor, “You’re preaching over my head.” To which the pastor replied, “Then raise your head.”

Whether you listen to a preacher, politician or a friend over coffee, don’t just settle for what they say or what you hear. If they don’t challenge you to raise your head toward a deeper understanding, challenge yourself to reflect and research on your own, then make your decisions.

Don’t let a one-dimensional perception make your decision for you.

Some years ago, Jerry Falwell publicly debated another nationally-known preacher, William Sloan Coffin. I definitely agreed more often with Coffin than I did with Falwell, so Coffin’s later evaluation of Falwell fit my own perception: “Deep down, he’s shallow.”

I struggle to disbelieve “perception is everything.” I want to believe there was much more to Jerry Falwell than his public persona. But it is hard for me to get beyond the perception of him as a religious bigot and the founder of a dangerous theocratic movement called The Moral Majority.

So I preach to myself as well as to you. I can’t shut down my own bias that’s bouncing around in my mind and soul like a pinball run amok.

I am convinced that one of the strong factors in our country’s cultural distresses and economic disasters is our foolish willingness to believe that perception is everything.

Political candidates prey on that belief, folks. Manufacturers base their advertising dollars on that belief.

The message relentlessly pursues us everywhere we go. Soon we buy the message because “if everyone believes it, it must be true.” Well, I for one don’t buy that reality is only a water-skipper perception.

If I did buy it, I would settle for a watered-down version of Christianity that suggests all is well if we only have Jesus in our hearts. Just asking: if we don’t “feel Jesus in our hearts,” does that mean that Jesus went on vacation? I don’t think so. Don’t be tyrannized by your own feelings.

Beneath this incomplete perception, my Christian friends, is a dangerous assumption that feeling Jesus in you is all that God requires of those who would follow God’s Son.

Feed the poor! Clothe the naked! Visit the sick! Protect the vulnerable! Don’t confuse allegiance to Jesus with allegiance to a political party.

These kinds of actions – and so many others – must validate our emotional responses to the Jesus messages we hear.

If our actions are absent, we too easily fall victim to only those perceptions of Jesus that we want to believe. The truths of Jesus are far deeper than the perceptions we settle for. Regardless of our faith systems, the truths of life are deeper than the perceptions we too easily settle for.

Perceptions are something, but they aren’t everything. Raise your heads! You can see more from that angle.