The best defense against misinformation is information. As hard as it sounds, which would we rather do – educate people, or suppress them? Surprisingly of late, the calls to suppression seem to be winning out. Perhaps the consternation at Elon Musk buying Twitter serve as a recent example. It seems that, rather than girding themselves to use the platform to make sure people hear the truth, his opponents would rather just rue his buying Twitter as a threat to democracy itself. I suppose. Click-bait “fightin'” words get more press than thoughtful debate and interaction.
But I can see why. The newly emergent (yet long existing) religion of secular humanism stands in the way. It would be far too difficult to go into the deep definitions of said religion, but for the purpose of my writing this, I would focus mainly on its central theme of the triumph of the self. “Self” has conquered the need for thoughtful debate. Now that we all have our own equally valid versions of “truth,” we all have a persistent stake in “reality.” The world is no longer an orderly place that is governed by a set of laws and standards to which we can all generally appeal (and at the same time, consistently resist). Now we live in a schizophrenic world where we have to both respect the other’s reality, but also excoriate that reality when it doesn’t agree with our own.
And so, the education of minds is slipping away. We can no longer appeal to any particular version of “reality” because, for someone else, that version of reality cannot possibly exist. One can no longer safely say to some people, “After a thorough investigation, there is no credible evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.” In their reality, this does not compute because the very foundation of their beliefs is that it was. To tell them otherwise would be like telling them the sky is green and grass is blue.
Long ago, as I was reading the Bible’s book of Proverbs, I noticed a verse that struck me as foundational to the Christian way of thinking: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline. (1:7)” To the Christian, this means that everything we believe comes not from a cowering and sniveling fear, but rather, begins with a complete respect and reverence for God.
Sadly, though, under culture’s new religion, this is a meaningless statement. The belief that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” is just another version of reality that someone can believe if they wish. Culture tells us, “well, if Jesus works for you, then have at it.” But this doesn’t work. Either Jesus is, as he himself claimed, the truth, or he is not. If what Jesus said was right, then it doesn’t matter at all what one thinks is reality outside of that.
And Jesus has something going for himself in that respect.
Paul told us the foundational weakness of Christianity. Either Jesus rose from the dead, or he didn’t. If he didn’t, then Christians are to be pitied as people who are as lost as the rest of the world. But if he did, then we must treat him as he says he is. You can’t say “well, there’s a little bit right in every religion (although it would seem harmless to think so).” You can’t say “there is one mountain, but many paths to the top,” or “there is one proverbial elephant, but different ways of seeing it.” If there is one Lord and savior in Jesus Christ, and he says as much, then so it is. To believe that he’s only partly right would be to believe a madman (paraphrasing what C. S. Lewis said so well). Jesus is quite exclusive in this, and those who only want to borrow from him without going all of the way still fall short.
This is serious business to the culture in which we now live. Paul’s words at the Areopagus (you can read them in Acts chapter 17) speak to us even today: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
As a Christian, even if I were to believe that the workings of man were some kind of wild conspiracy, I would still have the understanding that God is in control of it all, and that the actions of the conspirators will ultimately come to failure. It is when we put our faith in something else that we believe those actions are destined to destroy us. Yet, the Christian knows that ultimately they cannot. As many times as it’s been tried, twisting “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father but by me” to mean so many other things falls far short of reality. He either is, or he isn’t. Know the truth.