If I were to have business
cards printed with the presidential seal embossed in the background announcing
me as the President of these United States, rode around in a black limousine,
and waved at everyone when I got on and off airplanes, would that make me the
President of these United States? If I were to rent office space in the
Huntington Building in downtown Columbus, Ohio and put a sign on the door that
said “President”, would that in fact make me the president of Huntington Bank?
(Move over, Steve Steinour!)
The answer to both of these questions is, of course,
a resounding NO, and the obvious reason that it is NO, is that I don’t do
anything other than the above described window dressings that would remotely
imply that I’m the president of anything! My problem would be that there is no
substance or truth in my window dressings. I not only wouldn’t fool very many
people with my delusions of grandeur, most people would probably think I’d lost
my mind!
Or would they?
Occasionally in our administrative meetings,
depending upon the topic of the moment, a friend and colleague of mine has been
known to say something like, “That may be true, Rob, but remember that
perception is reality.” I really hate it when he says that, but in a marketing
sense of the word, I understand what he means . . . but in Realville,
perception is NOT reality! Perception is merely someone’s idea of reality, but
not necessarily reality itself. For example, take that convex mirror hanging on
your vehicle door that says, “OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.”
The verbose Hartman translation of that little warning is, “Be careful, doofus,
that semi you’re about to cut off may appear to be 100 yards behind you, but in
reality it’s right on your bumper, so watch out!”
Not only
is perception not reality, in this case perception can be downright lethal. But
then again, how many of us ignore the etched warning and pull over anyway, only
to hear that piercing air horn blast fear into our very souls? What’s even
worse, most of the time we get mad at the professional truck driver for blasting
the air horn and possibly saving our life.
I fear that somehow we’ve become a people driven more
by our emotions, by the-way-we’ve-always-done-it, by anger, by jealousy, by prejudice,
or by any other number of provocations that create perceptions in our hearts
and minds, instead of any strong desire for truth or reality. It reminds me of
the story found in the Bible in John chapter 9.
A man,
blind from his birth, was clearly healed by Jesus (in a rather unorthodox
manner, I might add, even for Jesus . . . you’ve just got to read that story)
yet scores of people refused to believe it! Those that did believe it either
didn’t want to believe it, or were too afraid of crossing the conventional
wisdom of the moment to admit it, yet there he was, standing right there in
front of them.
After a
rather lengthy back and forth between the poor guy and the skeptics, they ended
up throwing him out of their religious club. Why? Because he was brave enough
to give them a reality check and tell them the truth.
Amazing!
Later,
Jesus drove the truth even more deeply home when he told the religious bigots
that they were, in fact, more blind that the guy he had healed. You can imagine
how well these people, all caught up in their own perception of reality, took
that!
Wait a
minute. WE DO KNOW!
They
crucified him.
What do
you do when Jesus messes with your private reality?
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