Yesterday I finally got round to having my second Covid jab. It was as fast and efficient as a McDonalds drive through.
When I got to the Fish Hoek civic centre earlier, I was dismayed to see that vaccinations had moved to the False Bay hospital, until I realized this hospital is actually in Fish Hoek.
When I asked the library assistant if it was in walking distance she confidently and cheerfully said yes. Forty minutes later, with a tight morning schedule, I mused that walking distance is a relative thing. Cairo is, theoretically, within walking distance.
I should have got a second opinion, like from those ladies next to me at the Kalk Bay Dale Brook café, where I noticed that morning that the clientele and the servers belonged to strictly distinct demographics. The pair in question looked like they’d stepped out of a Beryl Cook painting and they would have given me an alternative perspective (“Heaven’s no, dearie, it’s more than two blocks; take your car!”).
It reminds me of what CS Lewis wrote in “The Magician’s nephew”: “‘[W]hat you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.”
Perceived distance is affected by whether you regularly have to wake up at four to walk some distance to the nearest public transport in order to catch a crowded taxi (Covid or not) versus take your second car to work.
Besides distance, many other perceptions and beliefs (that inhabit our consciousness, form our worldview, and inform our behaviour) are affected by our personal and social contexts (“affected” not determined by– hard or extreme postmodernism is irrational and unsustainable. God and truth and morality are not social constructs, however much it may suit some people and groups for them to be).
Therefore, truth and wisdom cannot be simplistically discerned by or allocated to any individual or group. Only God is perfect in perception and knowledge, and fully pure in motive.
That is why the Bible insists that every matter must be established by two or three witnesses (Deut 19:15; Mat 18:16; 2 Cor 13:1), urges us to examine our hearts and motives (Ps 139:23-24; 2 Cor 13:5), and encourages us to seek success and victory through many advisers (Pro 11:14; 15:22; 24:6).
“Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them.” (Proverbs 26:12)
God, help me to be less of a fool every day.
