Monday, April 24, 2017
545 - Post-Truth Paralysis
Spirituality
Column No. 545
April 25, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Post-Truth Paralysis
By Bob Walters
April 25, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Post-Truth Paralysis
By Bob Walters
“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living
thing can go against it.” – G.K. Chesterton, The
Everlasting Man, 1925
Last November
the Oxford Dictionaries selected “post-truth” as 2016’s “Word of the Year,”
it’s relevance hastened by political surprises with Brexit and the U.S.
election.
Upon first
hearing the phrase, I wrongly assumed it was anti-religious in nature. “Post-truth” instead intones the expiration of
the validity of facts and the ascension of emotion as the foundations of
influencing public opinion. Absent lucid
elitist explanation, these seemingly impossible-to-grasp political developments
– Brexit and Donald Trump – were snootily decreed “post-truth” anomalies; the stubborn
masses just would not listen to “reasonable” and “factual” and “right” reporting
and commentary.
The masses ignored the “truth,”
in other words.
To shroud the
possibility that the media was wrong and the people got it right, the subtle
semantic subversion of “post-truth” is that it is a calming explanatory escape
hatch for establishment elites. Rather
than admit the possibility that media, academics and politicians lie, “post-truth”
implies that people are too dumb to know the difference. “If no truth exists, our opinion can’t be wrong.”
Sigh.
Sigh.
“Post-truth”
is a highbrow pejorative leveled against the obstinate, non-theoretical
pragmatism of regular folks. Whenever I hear
the word “truth” in any context, I think of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Humans have opinions all day long on every subject,
but I’ve settled in my mind that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are free of and
immune from opinions; they are the locus and sum total of truth in the
cosmos. A post-truth maven’s likely
response? That’s just your opinion.
Similarly
“post-modern” describes the absence of truth, the myth of objective good and
the charade of virtue. It is a philosopher’s
stew of divinely vacant and self-absorbed inanities proudly serving rather as an
atheist’s comfort food. There is no God.
And so it
goes. “Truth” in secular society today
is merely a free-floating and bereft intellectual construct of cultural and
political fashion rather than both the ultimate expression of God’s love and
glory and our ultimate moral purpose as human beings.
But here is
why I bring all this up.
The Apostle
Paul spends 13 books in the Bible’s New Testament explaining in many ways the
truth that we are dead in our sin and life only truly exists in Jesus. That was a tough sell 2,000 years ago and
remains so today because we still can’t really see the problem any more than the solution. Each of us feels alive, sure – we breathe,
eat, navigate the currents of each day, succeed, fail, emote, etc. But culture’s daily comings and goings
regularly flow away from God; not toward Jesus and life’s supreme truth.
Jesus gives
us the strength, courage and purpose to go against the stream of errant but
popular thought. Our life’s freedom is
in swimming upstream toward God – frantically, if necessary – not idly floating
downstream toward despair and oblivion.
Better to
be energized by God’s truth than paralyzed by culture’s failings.
0 comments:
Post a Comment