I don't know who posted this, but I have a short story that can kinda start a discussion, maybe? I started to write this as a hypothetical but kinda got carried away. I know it's crap, but I think I managed to get the idea across. If you don't want to read the whole thing, then the basic idea is that the truth should never be afraid of new knowledge or scrutiny. If someone tells you that the sky is green, no matter what they say or argue, it will never change the fact that the sky is actually blue. If someone tells you that there's no god, then no matter what they say, or what you read, or what you learn, it shouldn't change the fact that there is a god, specifically the christian God. But you can't prove that there's a god, and the evidence you have for god is flimsy and fallacious at best, and child's play to rebuttal at it's worst. This is why so many christians are afraid of reading scholarly articles, or science journals, or anything that may threaten their idea of God.
You have been told all your life to never look up at the sky. For as long as you can remember, you've always kept your eyes glued to the ground. Even when you're talking to someone, your eyes are always glued to the ground. They've even made these hats to cover your head, to remove the temptation of ever looking up to the the sky and prevent any accidents.
And for most of your life, this was normal. You followed this simple rule without question. It was simple enough, no?
Now you're an adult. But even as an adult you still cling onto this simple rule. Never look up to the sky. You even have a child now, and you are teaching her the same thing that your parents taught you. "Never, under any circumstances, shall you look up to the sky."
"But why?" She asks.
A simple question, but you feel your gut twist at the sound of it. You're almost tempted to slap her for her insolence, but you don't. You're a good parent, and you calmly teach her, just as your parents calmly taught you.
"Because you're not supposed to. There are rules that people need to follow, like how you have to wait at the crosswalk before crossing the street. These rules keep us safe. If you look up, you'll be breaking these rules that me, my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and all of our other ancestors had put in place for us." You adjust the cap on your daughters head and kiss her on her nose. "Have a little faith, dear."
You feel proud. You feel as if you had made yet another contribution to your society- no, to your world. Not only had you quietly obeyed the rules you had been brought up with, but now you are bringing up yet another member of society with these same rules. You are now contributing another soul to this imperfect world.
You go to work, your eyes glued to the ground. From your peripheral you see the other adults doing the same. This is comfortable. This is normal. What isn't normal is that one man you always see on your way to work. The hopeless man. You've cruelly nicknamed him Hope. His eyes are not fixated to the ground, but are looking upward. How unnatural. How you can see his neck, his adam's apple bobbed up and down as he sang joyously, it's maddening. You lower your head further, adjusting your cap to block out Hope. Just another day on the trains, you suppose.
You're not the one to judge.
During dinner, your daughter asks you something that makes all life in your hands go numb. You drop your fork on the mashed potatoes. You'll have to clean that up later, but that's not what's important now.
"What color do you think the sky is?" Your daughter asks.
You nearly choke on your own saliva. What does that matter?
"What does it matter?" You pick your fork back up and wipe away the potatoes with a tissue. "What color the sky is or isn't has nothing to do with us," you calmly explain.
"But why? Why can't we look up at the sky?" Your daughter pleads. You can't help but chuckle. It's just a phase you think to yourself while thinking back to when you were that age. Hopelessly curious about the world.
After dinner, you sit your daughter down on your lap and tell her a story.
"Once, there was a man," you start. Your daughter's eyes are fixated on yours, fascinated. "He was a humble man. There was nothing remarkable about him, nothing aside from his pure heart and gentle soul.
One day, two entities called Sun and Moon began to fight, tired of working day in and day out with no break. The fighting went on for months, and in those months there was nothing but chaos and confusion. Sometimes, the ground would be illuminated by the Sun entity for a few minutes, only to be replaced with the darkness of the Moon entity. Sometimes it was the other way around. Other times, there would be nothing but blackness.
The fighting went on for so long, the people began to feel restless. But what could they do? Everyone was too afraid to confront the entities in their battle, all except one man, the man with a heart of gold and steel. He climbed up the highest mountain and confronted the entities on behalf of humanity, and proposed a treaty. For half a day, the Sun entity will have dominion over the earth, and for the second half, the Moon entity will have dominion.
The Sun and Moon agreed to these conditions, but under the condition that no man may ever gaze upon their power. The Sun and Moon agreed that they did not need worship for their hard work, but the least Mankind could do would be to revere the promise between the gods and man. By averting your gaze, you are remembering this promise and respecting the work of the gods who work tirelessly each and every day.
The man promised this. But just to make sure the man remembers his promise, the Moon entity burned his eyes out, blinding him forever.
The man came back down from the mountain, blinded, and told humanity the news, and from that point on, no man ever dared to look up to the sky and dishonor the work of the gods."
Your daughter looks up to you, albeit a bit confused, so you elaborate further.
"This sounds like a tall tale, but I can promise you that science agrees with this. If you look up to the sky, it does something to your head," you poke your daughters head playfully. "You start to go mad, you see? Claiming things that aren't there, like, what was it that one man said?" You tap your chin, "orbs. Thousands of orbs in the darkness. Can you believe it?" You laugh, and your daughter joins in. "And if you continue to stare hard enough, your eyes will go blind, just like the man in the story."
Your daughter covers her eyes in shock. You're certain that this story would quench her curiosity. You know that it did for yourself. You give your daughter a kiss on her forehead, proud of her receptiveness, and take her to bed.
The next day, after sending your daughter to school, you start to commute to work. There are arrows and signs on the ground to help aid you, but you lose track. There's hope again, sitting on the bench, his head is turned upwards. How unnatural, you think to yourself. There's a thought that crosses your mind, albeit briefly. "It's a miracle he hasn't gone blind yet." You adjust your cap again and continue on your way to work.
"You know what my son asked me today before I sent him off?" One of your coworkers start to gossip, and you can't help but listen in. "He told me 'daddy, I think the sky is purple." He had your curiosity, but now he had your full attention. "He told me that it had to be purple, because purple is his favorite color, and it would be neat if the sky was his favorite color," he guffawed, and you scoffed at the idea.
"What did you tell him?" A female coworker asked. He shrugged and chuckled loudly. "I told him that the color of the sky doesn't matter." You nod your head in agreement. "And that there are more important things to worry about than that. You know he broke his hat? The third one this week, too."
Work was going smoothly. You look across your desk and see your other coworker. Something was bothering her. You'd never talked to her before, but you still ask her if anything was wrong.
"Nothing," she stutters. "It's just that, a lot of kids these days are asking about it, you know?"
"My daughter is the same way," you say with a humorous chuckle. "I was too. I wouldn't worry about it. They'll grow out of it eventually. The truth always wins out."
"But what if they have a point?" She asks, and you freeze. That same feeling in your gut, as if someone had punched you in the stomach and twisted your intestines. It made your heart pound, it made your head dizzy. It made you feel sick.
"Aren't you a bit too old to be asking these sort of things? Children, understandable. They're still learning. But you?" You scoff, and your coworker sinks into her chair.
"Why can't we look up to the sky?" She asks.
"Because it's not good for you?" You reply plainly.
"Says who?"
You stop typing away at your computer."The old stories, recent stories of people going mad, scientists."
Your coworker laughed. "How can I trust a scientist who knows so much about the sky, and yet has never looked up to the sky in his life?"
You freeze. You think about that question for a while, although you try to dismiss it. As you walk to your train to get back home, you feel a few drops land on your head. It was raining. On your way back you come across a Pizzeria. It's the same Pizzeria that you'd come across a thousand times.
Say you wanted to tell someone to try a pizza. You try to explain to them the taste, and the texture of pizza, but you'd never had pizza before in your life. How can you explain something you'd never tasted? How can you explain something you'd never seen.
On the way back you see Hope, sitting on his usual bench, looking up to the sky.
"Tell me," you say to Hope, your eyes are glued to the floor, just as you'd been taught. "What does it look like?" You ask. You see his feet shift, his toes pointed towards you.
"Why does it matter to you?" He asked. Why did it matter? It was wrong, morally, physically, emotionally wrong. You shouldn't have asked. You walk away, your heart beating against your chest, the feeling of guilt coming over you for committing such a taboo. It's sickening.
All her life she'd been taught a single truth: it's forbidden to look up to the sky. There were always answers to her questions, and those answers seemed to evolve as she grew older. When the tall tales of the blind man with the good heart didn't cut it, her parents exposed her to the science. When the science didn't seem to make sense, she'd been taught logic and philosophy.
What is the sky but a flame that you cannot touch?
If she looked up to the sky, she would get hurt. It would blind her, if not physically, then mentally. Mentally blind her to the reality that she'd been brought up in.
If this was the truth, then why had you been discouraged from looking further? Why had you been taught to keep your eyes glued to the ground?
You remember asking your parents if the sky had a color. They were probably just as shocked as you were when your own child asked you the same question. You understood that now.
"Orange," your mother replied passively, but was immediately hushed by her husband, your father, before he sat you down and explained the story, the science, and the sickness of those who disobey.
But as you thought about it, things stopped making sense. Who was Sun and Moon, and why did they not like it when they were seen? Why did they fight? Who was the man whose heart was made of gold, and why did Sun and Moon blind him? How was he able to talk to these gods anyway?
You sat in your study and jotted these questions down. Maybe by writing them you'll have answers, but you didn't. What about what your coworker said about science? That didn't make sense either. Nothing was making sense.
You called your parents, your teachers, your closest friends. But no one could give you a straight answer. "That's just how it is, it's better to be safe than sorry, why does it matter?"
But why?
After kissing your daughter goodbye for school you walked over to the train station for your daily commute. Your eyes glued to the floor, just as it always was. You then see Hope standing by his usual bench in your peripheral, and he's talking to some officers.
"You're causing a ruckus, sir," one of them said.
"Can you please look up somewhere else, where you're not bother the other passengers?"
You walk over to the scene.
"He's not doing anything wrong," you tell the officer. "If he wants to blind himself, that's his business."
"I'm sorry, but this doesn't concern you," the officer tells you. Nothing seems to concern you.
Hope looks down and raised his hands in defeat. "There," he said with a chuckle. "It's no problem. I don't want to cause any trouble."
"What color is it?" You ask him. "Please, for my daughter. She's been curious."
"That has nothing to do with you."
"It has everything to do with me." You reply. "I want to know the truth. I want to know if looking up will truly make me go mad, or blind, or both, but I'm afraid. What if I'm wrong and I do go mad? I have a daughter to take care of, I have a house to maintain, and a job to go to. If I'm wrong, I could lose everything."
"Do you think I'm mad?" Hope asked.
"A little." You reply.
"I think it is maddening, going against what everyone tells you. Going against what you'd been taught as truth, and being told everyday how blind you are, how deluded you are. How at first it's your mind, and next thing you know, whether it may be today, tomorrow, or after, your eyes will be next. It's maddening, I tell you, how a large group of people had been told all their lives that the sky, something as natural as the grass you step on and the air you breathe, is dangerous to your mind, body, and soul, and everyone believes it without question. Because questions lead to doubts, and doubts lead to isolation from the rest of the pact, and no one wants to be isolated." The man sighed and looked up once again.
"If you'd been told all your life that something is true, then the truth should not be afraid of questions and scrutiny. If I told you that grass you walk on is blue, then no matter what mental acrobatics I pull, or whatever arguments I make, it would never change the fact that grass is green."
You can feel the Bright hit against your neck, burning. You can't even imagine what it would do to your eyes if you looked up, but you need to know the truth. You need to know whether or not everything you'd been taught had been a lie.
So you take your cap off, and you look up to the forbidden sky.
It's blue.
and reply there.