But that's wrong. For the worst form of faithlessness is the fear that the truth will be bad. The worst kind of faithlessness is the belief that there be monsters here, when what there is instead is our failure to see, to understand, to assimilate the nuances of difference into ourselves and our world. Sometimes I look at our world as a kind of masked ball. Or like playing ostrich, refusing to see beyond very simplistic terms, shrinking our world, and turning it into a fantastic video game between heroes and monsters, winners and losers.
Ostriches hide their heads in the sand, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of denial.
But when they do, they are vulnerable to everything they can't see, and so are we. The game was played most directly, perhaps by the Irish adults of 150 years ago. This is the message of hate-groups, too, who are also playing masked roles. When we're wearing the masks, we easily become the roles, and think that our simple certainties are letting us see more clearly. Really the masks are blinders, narrowing our field of vision, burying our heads deeper in the sand.