Right or Not?

When I lived in the south there were poisonous snakes unheard of in my area of upstate New York. Kentucky and Tennessee have a venomous species known as copperheads. It was rumored that they smelled like cucumbers. If you sensed that odor while walking in the woods, you were warned to be careful where you placed your feet.

A little further south they have two snakes of a different kind. The names are not so important as the knowledge that the black, red, and yellow broad bands are arranged in repeating patterns around their bodies. The bright colors make them quite hard to miss, actually.

There was a rule of thumb that contained an absolute truth. It stated that red on yellow would kill a fellow; red on black, venom lack. These were brief  but concise descriptions of the differences in the patterns on the snakes. One species would do you no harm, the other gave you no chance of survival.

Today, truth evades understanding. There are so many opinions out there that one is more apt to consider what sounds good at any given moment, rather than to take the time to discern from research what is fact. How dangerous that can be! Often times what is first brought to our attention is the farthest thing from the truth. Even the scientific community disagrees about certain subjects, depending upon the assumptions from which they start. But, as is the case with the snakes, one color combination is right, or not dangerous, the other is wrong, or deadly.

In an article I read, the phrase radical right was used to describe a group of people who believe that there are absolute truths. It struck me as ironic that you can be anymore than just right. I can understand being slightly wrong, or even radically wrong, i.e., running from the snake that had red on black. But, then, you would be completely safe if you made such a decision. You could also have been radically incorrect if you had failed to remember the truth and not run from the snake colored with red on yellow. Even that error has a chance that you would still survive if the snake was unwilling to pursue you, which is what makes those errors so dangerous. You start to believe the wrong thing. However, if you were right, then that settles it.

Where do we learn truth? Who do we trust to inform us? Which way do we go?

For over four thousand years the three major religions of the world, Judaism, Islam and Christianity used the same reference, the books of the Old Testament in the Holy Bible. Deuteronomy 5 quotes from God a list of well known rules for living. It says, amongst other things, "Thou shalt not kill." This list of statements holds absolute truths. The New Testament gives the Christian community its foundation. In John 14:6 Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life..." It is when we stray from the absoluteness of these truths that we become endangered.

Our country's forefathers understood these truths. They were well educated, but practical. When they wrote the constitution which gives us our freedom, they simply wrote the least restrictive document they could in order that Americans could always rely on the truth to set them free. The absolute truth, anything other than that, they knew, and America would fall into a society torn apart at the seams.

The next time you read about something that is radically right, stop and think about it. Could they just be right, and the commentator be the one who is "only slightly wrong?"