c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com.)

UNDATED _”You’ve got to be more political,”a friend once counseled me.”You’ve got to manage perceptions.” I bristled, but he was right. Whether the venue is partisan politics, a corporation, a church or a family, it is self-destructive to ignore how one is being perceived.

As long as people treat their perceptions as reality, a consultant once told me,”the message received is the message sent.” But my adviser was also wrong in the sense that perceptions aren’t necessarily real, any more than shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave were real. It takes energy and boldness to step away from shadows and dig out reality. Clinging to perceptions might be nothing more than laziness.

Many in public life are counting on us to be lazy. Rather than deal with issues, they manage perceptions.

Take Food Lion, for example. When ABC-TV alleged that the Salisbury, N.C., grocery company was repackaging tainted meat and ignoring unsanitary conditions, the company had a choice: address a possible health problem or take control of perceptions. They chose to file suit against ABC, shift the spotlight to invasive media, and smite the out-of-state bully.

The reality beneath the perceptions, however, remains the same: Can the meat be trusted?

Similarly, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. is stalking a whistle-blower who revealed that tobacco companies know their product is addictive and deliberately induce a high level of the addictive ingredient in order to retain customers who, it seems, want to quit.

Response: Sue the whistle-blower and intimidate any future truth-tellers.

Managing perceptions has come to be seen as wisdom. Look at the difference between the breezy and optimistic annual report sent to shareholders versus the more candid documents filed with the government versus the real story told behind closed doors. Shareholders don’t want too much truth, of course, because the value of their stock is itself based on perceptions.

Look, also, at the credit card industry, which prospers by encouraging a self-perception of prosperity, then pounces with the reality factor of a dinner-hour call demanding payment.

The issue isn’t callous corporations or politicians.

The issue is our limited appetite for reality. Perceptions are the great enabler. That’s why alcoholics cling to their jobs: not just to pay for booze, but to maintain the illusion everything is fine. Without that self-perception, continued drinking would be intolerable. The heart of any intervention is simply to state reality and to discourage escape into perceptions.

Perceptions, in fact, may be the addiction within addiction. We seem reluctant to accept being who we are. We are addicted to being something else. We think it will be less painful to be an illusion. So we pretend.

The most serene and liberated people I know are those who have simply accepted being who they are. No dyeing of hair, no pretending to be another age, no burnishing of image via car or clothing, no house that”makes a statement,”no escape into the tangled web of managing perceptions.

I don’t expect politicians, corporations or hair salons suddenly to discover the virtues of truth-telling.

I do expect it of organized religion, for that is religion’s business: to cut through illusion, to help people see truth, to bless reality rather than hide from it. Seeing truth on Sabbath makes us less willing to pretend on Monday.

Religion has many truths to tell, but two seem especially needed. One is the reality of suffering. If we can be honest about our own pain, maybe we can see the world’s pain. Despite the pharmaceutical industry’s claim, pain isn’t a mistake to be masked or escaped, but a part of being alive which draws us close to God.

The second truth is that God made us, God loves us, and God declares us worthy. That is a radical message to the many who rely on exclusion to create safety, addictions to escape pain, lust to escape loneliness, and blame to evade accountability.

Religion’s call is to help people see beyond perceptions. For a life based on perceptions and the management of perceptions is empty, a fraud, a hellish prison in which one can never be young or thin enough.

MJP END EHRICH