From the book Obsidian Butterfly Laurell K Hamilton makes an observation that is so true. "She was lying to herself, and thus she could not see a lie in someone else. She didn't understand what the truth was, so she couldn't recognize that either."
Those who live a lie cannot recognize a lie. Those who are unwilling to change their perceptions of who they are become unable to see what is happening before their eyes. To live for God, to live in truth one has to be willing to give up everything, every conception, every belief to examination. One has to step forward in faith that no matter what preconceptions may fall, God is faithful still.
The truth will set us free, but that doesn't mean that the truth will make us happy. One of the things I had to do to get out of depression was to look at the truth of who I was. And it was different from what I had imagined. I did not feel guilt over my mother's death as some people tried to tell me that I did or should. I am not a man who should ever marry a woman, though I love many women I will never love a woman in the same fashion as husband and wife should. Now depression is not the same thing as telling yourself lies about who you are, but the way out is the same. And that is to be willing to accept the truth whereever it may lead. And that is to be willing to tear down all of what you believe about yourself in order to see who you really are.
Awhile back I was writing a book called "To be as God created us to be" And it was one of my preliminary efforts and it would have made a decent paper, but not a book. yet that title remains good. We are to be, not as we think ourselves to be, but as God created us to be. We are not to impose our ideas of what is natural on ourselves, but to see ourselves as we really are.
And this is where fundamentalism of any sort - right or left, liberal or conservative, fascist, communist, feminist, christian, and more - goes wrong. Fundamentalism tries to protect faith by making precepts more important than truth. Because a fundamentalist cannot question, they cannot see the truth set before them. And the frustration is not because they're wrong, but because they are so close to being right and they stop before the final step. It is not enough to say you have the truth, what must happen is a continual examination to see if you have the truth.
Without a willingness to give all that we are and all that we believe, the truth will elude us no matter how nice, no matter how many rules we follow, the truth will continue to escape us until we make it more important than any precept that we claim to be truth.
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