The Truth Might Not Set Everyone Free

at least not until other conditions are me

We are in a strange timeline, filled with too much information and certainly too much conflicting information. We are watching loved ones fall for conspiracy theories and alternative facts. And we are slowly realizing that truth and accurate information is not very compelling.

Which is unfortunately not just something that happens outside of our faith communities, but often right in them.

And for Unitarian Universalists, who value reason, the scientific method, and a practical approach, it’s especially hard and confusing, especially when this way of being is such a balm to so many of us.

But whether inside or outside our faith, we have beloveds who have fallen down some frankly terrifying rabbit holes that surface harmful conspiracy theories about transfolk, climate justice, anti-oppression work, and even governance of our denominations and associations. And despite our protestations, our factual evidence, our attempts to combat misinformation with truth, we can’t seem to break through.

I am thinking about this because of an article by journalist Jesselyn Cook where she talks about her conversations with QAnon followers. She talks about college educated, capable, loving people who slide down that slippery slope and soon are posting “the truth” about baby-eating politicians, chemtrails, and how vaccinations are mind control.

What she realizes, and what led me to write about this today, is that no amount of factual evidence will convince them if they don’t feel a sense of value or purpose. For nearly every person she spoke with, there was a cause: unmet emotional needs. Cook writes

Our innate need for things such as meaning and belonging is superseded only by what the body requires for subsistence, and not by any thirst for accuracy or truth. When these needs go unmet, we can become desperate to satisfy them by whatever means necessary. And the conditions that leave people deprived of what they need and susceptible to irrational conspiracy theories are common — and commonly overlooked.

I think about our aging members, especially - people who gave years of service to our congregations, but as they begin to leave leadership they are also losing a key sense of purpose. Their ‘third place’ - which for many became their second place - now isn’t filling those needs for belonging, value, and purpose.

This happens for others too who aren’t elders, but I suspect that like Cook, if we asked our beloveds about their lives, we’d find out that something happened to take away their purpose or agency, and the lure of a mystery and the need to know can easily lead to following the wrong god home and missing our star.¹ And before you know it, we are hearing ideas that seem fantastical at best and hateful at worst - from those we know to be our people.

What are we doing to value those who have lost their value? What are we doing to instill a sense of purpose in those whose purpose has been lost? How can we love them back into the kind of belonging that helps them let go of misinformation and embrace the responsible search for truth and meaning we so highly prize?

Last year I wrote a lot about belonging. That still matters. Maybe we need to add a focus on value and purpose into that endeavor.

1. If you don’t know William Stafford’s poem “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” please read it. I had to memorize it in seminary, and for a long time didn’t quite get it, until I did, and now it’s one of my favorite poems because it speaks so much truth.