It’s important to know the difference between a person who is trying to live authentically and a person who is a fully willing fraud, peddling in lies that masquerade as truth.
The Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) knew a thing or two about freaks, fakers, and fools. Her stories are filled with false prophets claiming to know the truth with a capital T and what comes of our encounters with them. Such fakers claim to know God and bring salvation to the spiritually needy. (Of course, salvation only ever comes with a hefty dollar fee.)
O’Connor’s 1952 novel, Wise Blood, features many fakers. One of them is Asa Hawks, a blind preacher who turns out not to be blind at all. Hawks spends his time preaching the Gospel as he sees it (no pun intended), all the while knowing that he is a con artist. Hawks doesn’t have any redeeming qualities because he’s willingly perpetuating fraudulent spirituality, and treating salvation as some kind of brand to be sold for a good price.
Hazel Motes, on the other hand, is not necessarily a fraud or a false prophet. He’s troubled by Hawks and is generally dissatisfied with the world. He’s an odd creature, as are most of O’Connor’s characters. Haze is convinced there is a better way to live than what Jesus offers, and resolves to start “The Church Without Christ.”
Understandably, Haze can’t stand the hypocrisy he sees every day. But his approach to curing it needs to be refined or altogether changed. Haze’s dissatisfaction with the culture and religion (the two are inseparable in O’Connor’s South) goes beyond occasional annoyances with the people. He doesn’t like Jesus personally. Speaking to a woman on the train, Haze asks “Do you think I believe in Jesus? . . . Well, I wouldn’t even if He existed. Even if He was on this train.”
For most of the novel, we witness this interplay between Hazel Motes and “the world,” as one after another absurdly comical event happens. Hazel Motes and Asa Hawks are both disordered, but the difference is that Asa is an immoral fraud, while Hazel is authentically seeking.
Being witness to authenticity and inauthenticity is part of the human condition. There will always be “false prophets” in some form or other. Today, religion is no longer part of the popular culture. God is deemed invisible or a mere “accidental tourist,” occasionally observing the sheer madness and stupidity of human beings.
Our false prophets are the fakers, frauds, and fools in media who prey on people’s need for trust, peace, and knowledge. Occasionally, they are guilty of accidental journalism but rarely do we get anything other than spin. The fearmongering comes from pundits and writers on both the Left and Right. An apocalypse is observed almost daily, yet somehow the world recovers—at least long enough for another destruction to occur.
Flannery O’Connor a/k/a “Good old flapjack.”