Jack Nicholson’s line in “A Few Good Men” sums it up: “you can’t handle the truth”.  I believe that.  I can’t handle the truth.  I’m glad I really don’t know what the truth is.  Other people know what is true, but I don’t.  Are you afraid of the truth?  If you are normal, you are.  What? “you don’t know me!  How can you say that?”  Here’s how.  Truth is full disclosure.  About everything.  No deference or evasion.  I suspect few people ever want that.  We want trust, security, satisfaction, bliss, good will, and fun, but in our short lives, truth is not desired above these things.

“Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing”.  Why?  It is possible in this life for bad things to be dressed up as good things in order to fool me into being eaten up by bad things.  Is that true?  Religion is based on the answer being “yes”.  For if I do not have to beware, then I don’t need to worry.  If I don’t need to worry, then everything is fine.  If everything is fine, then I don’t need religion.  If I don’t need religion, do I still need to beware?  Yes, if…

.. a person wishes to reduce the odds of suffering a loss, then beware.  To minimize the possibility of pain, then beware.  To protect what you value, then beware.  To avoid being bested by an adversary, then beware.  To escape embarrassment, then beware.

This is what I suspect to be true:  If a person were to sit on the moon and with a magical telescope, look at the earth for one week, being able to zoom in and out, assuming what they observed would be called a true view of life on this planet, they could not handle the truth.  They would deny the truth.  They would be miserable.  Or, they would stop at the nearest Mall when they got back to buy a sheep costume.