In these days of tremendous technology advances, artificial intelligence, and 24-7 bombardment of media, it is very difficult to discern the truth from lies. And often a small bit of truth makes are far better lie. The news media, which at a time in the distant past, prided itself on getting the facts right and distinguishing between news reporting and editorializing, cannot be depended upon for truth. There is always a slant whether it’s the most far left mouthpiece of statism or the conservative voice of freedom. They write it from the content of their hearts with little consideration of what is fact and how it relates to truth. Remember Christ’s words in John 8:32, “the truth will make you free.” But what of it?
Truth these days is not so much knowing the Word of God and then knowing truth. Truth has become what is right in each individual’s eyes. You can read to someone the very documentation, the original documentation of an event and they will say, “I don’t believe that.” People believe what they want to believe and the truth matters very little as a little truth makes their belief stronger. Fact is defined as something that has actual existence. Truth is the body of real things, events and facts. Truth is, therefore, proving a fact. For example, a fact may be that a person is lying dead on a floor. The truth would encompass why he is dead on the floor. Did he die of natural causes, an accident, or foul play? That would be finding the truth. Recently, we witness political campaigns and the news media interpreting words and facts at the expense of truth.
For example, in Ohio, Associated Press wrote a story about Republican Senate Candidate Bernie Moreno saying that he used an online dating site to solicit male sex. His primary opponent used the story in a campaign ad. While the entire episode was swiftly proven untrue, the damage already had been done. Another example is Donald Trump’s use of the word “bloodbath” in context that it would be an economic disaster (as defined by Merriam-Webster) to American workers if China was allowed by the Biden Administration to sell cheap cars in the US built in Mexico. Biden used Trump’s statement in a campaign ad, tying it to political violence of January 6 and Trump describing white supremacists in Charlotte being “good people”—also falsely taken out of context. The ad was wrapped in extremism with images of violence and Nazis.
Facts are Trump did say those things. Truth is that he didn’t remotely mean how the media and Biden interpreted them. These two examples indicate how campaigns and the media, especially if the media is opposed to a certain candidate, twist the facts to create a new truth, a better lie. And once the better lie is in the public, there is no taking it back no matter how many stories refute it. People will believe what they want to believe. This is why being grounded in the Word of God and understanding how to discern is so very important in this day and age. In the months ahead, anyone that would believe a political ad and the subsequent media frenzy around it without investigating or discerning the truth is practicing, say it with me…Stupidocrisy.
