A MOUNTAIN VIEW: Transparent see

By LIZA FIELD/Columnist

While writing these columns on “the invisible world” (human thought, inspiration, motives, memory, the soul, the divine, in fact most of this earth and universe), an old-fashioned word came to mind.
Transparency. Remember that notion, from bygone years? If it’s been obscured by this age of professionalized duplicity, I’ll explain that “transparency” once had ethical implications, and was seen to provide an advantage in business, personal and spiritual life—rather than a liability.
Old-school Christians believed that a person’s interior motives ought to shine clearly through his actions, like light radiates through lamp-glass.
If his motives weren’t the greatest, and involved—say—greed, lust-for-power, hatred or guile, all covered up with some pretense of serving the bigger picture, “transparency” held that the person would undergo self-examination, see and confess this falsity—“one to another.”
That’s right. One wanted to be clear, unburdened and free—to get things “out there,” in the light and cold oxygen of exposure, rather than keeping them (and everyone else) in the dark, where the false motive could fester and grow, corroding personal integrity as well as public understanding.
These days, when we’re taught to value money more than integrity, personal success more than community, and being-right more than seeking the larger truth—transparency has almost vanished from politics, commerce, “journalism,” communications, even a few faith organizations set up or used by those with false motives.
I know that lack of transparency is an old human story, not new. (Adam and Eve were almost immediately “hiding” from God at the dawn of creation.)
But aside from the last stages of the Roman Empire, when people were forced into a fake, external religion more about ceremony, power and money than mercy and love, there surely hasn’t existed a civilization in this world so condoning of duplicity than our own.
These days, duplicity fuels entire industries—consulting, PR, marketing, political strategy, even numbers of “non-profit” orgs set up to promote the interests of their industry creators.
These interest groups likewise “use” (by mutual agreement) certain “news” organizations and talk-show hosts to manipulate public opinion in their clients’ favor. Genuine investigative journalism, a major “transparency” doorway in earlier American decades, has all but closed shop, one famous old journalist remarked last week. Corporate money and power have replaced it.
It most bothers me in the realm of Christian-organizing, the market former Christian-Coalition-creator Ralph Reed continues using to promote the interests of his private clients (big coal, oil, gas, communications, entertainment, gambling, health-care interest groups, and various political campaigns). —All in the name of Jesus and “American freedoms”; never in the name of what-it-is: personal profit.
It troubles me because transparency is one of the key elements that originally differentiated Christianity from “business as usual” in this world. Valuing truth and humble, joyful service over self-preservation, Christianity posed a bizarre, counter-culture alternative to the hackworn, violent, uncreative, might-makes-right, grab-what-you-can bondage that has plagued this world through the ages.
Transparency also refined the Old Testament “law” from an external, visible code to obey, into an invisible, interior transformation—the law of love. No longer was it a matter of jumping through external hoops, “for show,” in order win approval, save one’s skin or avoid getting stoned.
Rather, Jesus’ idea, following on Isaiah’s, was that God would “write his law on their hearts.”
A person would actually want, deep inside, the best for his neighbor, to forgive his brother and avoid using other people—not because an outer commandment ordered it, but because the inner law of love honored others and felt flooded with gratitude over being, oneself, forgiven by God.
Life would be revered (even beyond nine months), not just because an external code said “thou shalt not kill,” or because it would garner more votes politically—but because God created life and the interior spirit recognized it as sacred.
There is no way to obey an invisible, interior law of love aside from transparency. Take, for instance, certain media’s current trend publicly to deride those deemed political or interest-group opponents. The Hebrew book of Proverbs called it “scoffing,” and repeatedly rebuked the practice.
But Jesus took it a step further inward: “Whoever says in his heart, ‘You fool,‘ is liable to the fires of hell.” Pretty strict? Yes—but it called us to observe our interior reality, seek mercy and give mercy. It invited liberation from self-deceit, from an inner/outer personality-split.
I think it’s one reason Jesus said the truth would set people free—free of the crusty, difficult bondage of feeling anxious, bitter and unhappy on the inside, while forced into political-correctness and superiority on the outside.
More on this transparent freedom, next time.
Contact Liza Field at .