Truth And Perception
I’d like to post some simple reflections on an issue that’s been on my mind this year.
I believe in truth, that there are unalterable facts which will always be an accurate representation of reality. I believe it’s our duty to seek truth, and I believe that the ultimate representation of truth is found in God. Having said that, I want to talk a little bit about perceptions and the different beliefs we hold to having a strong affect on the way we interpret the world around us. Bear with me as I jump to a seemingly unrelated issue:
Pride is something I struggle with a lot. In recent months God has allowed me to identify a lot of areas in my life where my thoughts and actions are heavily determined by a proud spirit. It’s natural to admit to being wrong when it’s revealed to you without a shadow of doubt that you were, but it takes humility to acknowledge the possibility of being wrong based on another’s assessment of the issue at hand.
To tie the last two paragraphs together, I believe in unshakable truths we can bet our lives on, while at the same time realising we can only grow in faith and knowledge by having an accurate assessment of how much we really know and who we are! One of the things I’ve come to see is that we can ignore the fact that much of what we hold to is more our interpretation of what we see around us rather than universal and unalterable truth.
Finding a balance between what we can hold to as truth, and what we must acknowledge as simply being our perspective is a difficult endeavor. On the one hand there’s the danger of a post-modern worldview denying the existence of any universal truth, or at least the ability to confidently identify it. On the other, we can fall into the trap of allowing our pride to label everything we believe in as universal truth that everyone else must hold to.
I will leave you with this video which I found quite fascinating as both a demonstration of the power of perception, and an insight into how confident we can be in our perceptions. Many people have seen this video and flat out refused to believe anyone could see the girl spinning in a different direction than the one they saw her spinning in, check out the video and let me know what you see.
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I got her to spin in both directions. When focusing on her upper body it is to me at least obvious she could only be spinning clockwise. When I looked at her shadow I noticed it was moving counter clockwise and then so did the figure appear to move counter clockwise. Very interesting.
As for your article, I know that perception is something I muse on quite a bit. After all our life experiences, our faith helps mold our world view and how we perceive things..
For the Christian without a solid grasp of the scriptures we won’t see things like God wants us to see them.
I hope you expand on your article a bit more. I perceive :) that you are talking more than just our perception of doctrine, would you care to elaborate?
Hi Farid,
Church history is an interesting study of how our understanding of doctrine can develop even though that doctrine is settled by scripture. No wonder Peter tells us to ‘grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ’. I also would interested in you developing this thread.
Well Farid , couldn’t this clip be purposely done so that the dancer alternates betwwen turning clockwise and anticlockwise?
That is what I perceived anyway.
I purposely wrote in a fairly generic sense, this is something I’m still pondering and becoming aware of. I didn’t feel confident enough to publicly share in a more practical sense although I plan to in the future.