Hard Reality

          Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed. (Proverbs 3:13-18) 

           We live in an era in which some people want us to believe that reality is a malleable construct of the imagination. I’m not sure whose imagination is supposed to have constructed it, but apparently, it is not mine. In this supposed construct, if a person decides or discovers that he/she identifies as a woman, he/she is a woman. If as a man, he/she is a man. If as a cat, he/she is a cat. Society seems to have the responsibility to accommodate those identities, unless the identity goes beyond what is considered socially acceptable. Someone who identifies as a sexual partner for a three-year-old is still not accepted (a fact for which we should all be grateful.)
          Of course, this accommodation is limited. Men who believe they are women should be treated as women, but men or women who believe that treating someone whose genetic makeup is male as a woman because he decides he’s a woman is foolish or wrong are condemned. There are places where you can be fined or fired for insisting on calling someone by gender-tags that offend that person. 
          This is a case of some people being “more equal” than others. Some self-identities, and some views of reality are permitted…but those permitted views are very specifically detached from what might be called hard-reality. For those whose identity is found in Scripture, this creates a problem because Scripture is all about hard-reality. Wisdom, as described by Scripture, is all about hard-reality.
         Wisdom is working within the confines of hard-reality. That’s why the paths of wisdom are peace, because peace involved accepting and working within hard-reality. In this era in which people want reality to bend to them, wisdom is in danger of becoming even more rare than it has been in previous generations. 
          I am not suggesting that we should be hateful toward those who hatefully demand that we bow to their beliefs in a malleable reality that does not stretch so far as to include ours. We should be patient with them and treat them as gently as we can without bowing. I have no more right to dictate their reality than they do to dictate mine. But whenever one’s reality differs from hard-reality, the wise thing to do is to accept the hard-reality. Living within it enriches a life. Declaring oneself the emperor of one’s own reality tends to result in the emperor getting “new clothes” over and over.