Many of us remember former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, Gore's presentation of the global ecological challenges with which he believed human beings must deal if they hope to continue existing on the planet.  Many people liked the movie, probably just as many did not.  Ours is not to pass judgment on it here, but rather to consider how we deal with fact or, even more challenging, truth.  There are facts which most of us have no difficulty accepting, such as the conclusion that the moon moves the ocean's tides or that gravity is what holds the cosmos together.  But there are other facts which many people have more difficulty accepting, more often than not because they do not regard them as facts in the same way as those who propound them do.  One example might be the existence of God; another might be the historicity of the Qur'an.
     We might also say that there are some facts which some of us we might consider inconvenient.  These might include the possibility of a ticket if we run a stop sign; the change of losing money on an investment; the realization that if we have no money, we may not be able to buy what we need to live.  We find them inconvenient because they tell us about things we would rather not acknowledge or think about.
     From a religious standpoint, one such inconvenient fact might be the existence of God.  Why is this an inconvenient fact?  If God in fact exists, we must look at the world in a profoundly different way.  Another inconvenient fact might be the historicity of Jesus.  If Jesus really lived, died, and rose again, we must view ourselves and our lives from a very different standpoint.  Moreover, even if one does not believe these facts to be facts, one must recognize that many people do, and, to be absolutely honest with oneself and one's fellow beings, endeavor to learn why.  We owe it to ourselves not to blink at what might be facts, but, worse, the truth.