I think it’s in how we socialize and train our children.
From a very young age, we train them in right and wrong using behavior modification that is psychologically sound and tested to work on mice and dogs, in addition to people. We use threats of punishment and bribes of rewards as the fundamental motivators for the children to do what is right.
In school, we ask the children questions, but if they give us an honest answer, we laugh at them, scold them, or put a negative mark on their Permanent Record. When we ask them a question, it is understood – and they will learn usually sooner than later – that the question really isn’t what they believe, but what we expect them to say. Not only that, but they had better look like they agree with what they are saying. If we ask them, “is this statement true or false,” and they honestly believe it is true, but know we want them to say “false,” and they say, “false” and quickly glance to heaven for affirmation or in apology, then OH BOY! Rolling your eyes at us? Now we have a major problem with a little wiseacre.
When we were learning subtraction in grade school from a nun who knew very little about math, I put down -1 as the answer on a test question, 2 - 3 = ? I knew the answer because my dad had told me how to do negative numbers while I was in kindergarten. I got it marked wrong and asked why. Yes, I was that socially innocent, or clueless if you prefer. Sister said, “you can’t take a bigger number from a smaller one. The correct answer is you cannot do it. It makes no sense.”
I sensed the teacher actually knew there was a way, but didn’t want to confuse the class with it at this time, so I asked, “can we agree that there is a way to do it, but we just haven’t learned us yet?” Then she got very angry and demanded, “IF I ONLY HAVE TWO APPLES, HOW CAN I GIVE YOU THREE?” I was scared and confused. I thought, could it be that she honestly doesn’t know about negative numbers? It was telling the honest truth as I saw it, against lying to save my skin. Lying didn’t even occur to me at that age, so I stammered, “well, I suppose you could owe me one.” BAM! Straight to the principal’s office – again.
So not only do we require kids to learn to say what is literally the “right” answer, but the “right” answer is objectively whatever the Dominant Thinking in the classroom would think … the challenge is for me to know what kind of lameness goes for truth around here and how to smile and recite what I’m supposed to say.
I think this is one of the reasons I have such a hard time getting even my friends to speak from their own mind and heart. I’ll ask a friend, “what do you think about this situation, personally?” He says, “well St. so-and-so wrote this, and Father so-and-so wrote that, so I think it’s probably a Good Thing, what it is you’re saying, that is.” I ask, “I think what the saints say are very enlightening, but still, how do you feel about it? What is your honest opinion?” He said, “I don’t really have one; I was always told that the only thing that matters is what the Church teaches.”
Also, when we argue in academic settings, we might use body language to try to set the tone of the discussion, but the record of that disagreement will only show who prevailed in a literal sense, not whether the person who won was the bigger jack*ss. That part of it goes unrecorded.
That, to me, is one place where we fail to get value from the Bible. To me, the literal sense of the Bible is the least important one, in terms of how God’s Word can heal and transform us. It was not until I learned to access the deeper meanings, as first introduced to me by my spiritual director, that I started getting benefit from the Bible other than spouting off what I think we were supposed to say is literally right.
This has been going on since the dawn of civilization, from the way I imagine it. It was a problem that Jesus had to work through – he often did it by using shock value or confusion momentarily disturb their value systems so they couldn’t even give a straight answer to a simple question like, “Tell me, was John’s baptism of heavenly or of human origin?” They didn’t even consider which choice was actually true. They considered what would happen to them if they answered this way or that.
Alan
