Louis Roney: The truth and other myths

• Experts in the myriad of competing religious organizations that “spread God’s word,” have proclaimed that He reads the innermost thoughts hidden in every heart.

That fancy hasn’t made me uneasy through the years, as I was taught to respect the truth and to stick to it early in my life. Very important minds reiterated the value of truth: “To thine own self be true, and it must follow … Thou canst not then be false to any man.” — Shakespeare; “What you do stands over you and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I surely believe that there are “good” and “evil” people among us, for I have witnessed both good and evil in action up close. Aside from sharing the world with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Al Capone and other famous bad boys, I have lived close to the influence of several people whose evil actions have diluted, in my mind, even obliterated, any “good” concealed in their own characters. People, friends, and even relatives, unintentionally reveal their innermost thoughts to all of us in their daily acts. Even a country-boy opera singer like me recognizes those things in the way evil people “operate.”

Bad eggs often parade their “religion” flagrantly, a fact that must get God pretty teed-off. If they ever made me “God-for-a-day,” I’d pay great attention to something my great grandfather said: “Judge a man by the way he treats his inferiors, not his superiors.”

As God, I would hand out sizeable demerits for “cheapness and meanness” in human beings. I’d never have it in Me to be eternally patient, because the evil people among us tend to live just as long as — and sometimes even longer than — good people.

Being not as nice as God, I’d want to reverse those odds as soon as it was in My power. Evil people getting failing marks in My monthly “progress reports” would shuffle post haste off My mortal coil. This collateral benefit would be a quick solution to the problems of overpopulation.

I’d be a jollier God too if all My worldly “followers” would stop separating their recognition of Me into so many competitive groups and versions, with so many different names and procedures — each one claiming to be the only one that’s got My private ear. After all, God is the product they are all advertising. And it’s the Product, not the hype, that counts. It doesn’t matter in which “store” you buy the Product. I’d want to “keep it simple.” In My world, people in whose lives I saw Truth in action would be My children. The Truth is what we like most in the “little child.” And the Truth is what so many of us deny.

• Boston TNT Party— Boston has always been a place where singular events occur. Much of our history is built on such happenings. Recently it seems that someone has tried to blow Boston sky high. April 15, Patriots’ Day, was marked by explosions outdoing the Minutemen on Bunker Hill, leaving three present-day Bostonians dead and some 170 badly wounded.

Nowadays there are so many “nuts” running around doing things that can only be described as “terrorism” despite the reluctance of President Obama to use that word. The Wall Street Journal stated: “No matter the perpetrator or motive, no matter whether foreign or domestic, this was, and ought to be treated as, an act of terror.” At this writing, the perpetrators are from Chechnya, one of several Muslim republics in Russia’s North Caucasus. The suspects’ day of reckoning will surely come …

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)