In Pursuit of Truth
Truth is becoming a rarity. It is being destroyed in an unstable world of fake news, propaganda, censorship, gaslighting, and just plain lying. Pursuing truth is honorable in that the person seeking truth must be humble enough to admit when they are wrong and courageous enough to embrace things that may be unpopular.
Many of our children have been educated in a system that teaches them what to think instead of how to think. From kindergarten to grad school our young people have not been taught to identify the dangers of propaganda but in many cases have been the victims of it. Since about 1962 all traces of the Bible, prayer and morality have been barred from the classroom while the secular religion of atheistic evolution has been openly proclaimed in every school in the land. Teaching about any other worldview is considered social heresy.
Truth holds societies together. It is the cement of every institution. Marriages, families, jobs, churches, friendships, businesses and more depend on truth to function properly. When the pursuit of truth is abandoned all of these human connections begin to break apart and fail. The evidence of that failure is all around us.
The biggest culprit in this debacle may be our churches and their leaders. We have abandoned church life, which is a search for truth in favor of gatherings for entertainment, and top-down bloviating from one person while others agree. We are tickling peoples’ ears instead of reaching their hearts.
At the center of the gatherings of the body of Christ should be this attitude described by Paul:
. . . speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — -from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (Eph 4;15, 16).
So, it is in the atmosphere of truth that the body of Christ grows spiritually as each member of the body does its God-inspired part.
Paul uses one Greek word for “speaking the truth.” The word is a verb form of “truth” and could be translated as “truthing.” He is referring to more than just telling the truth but living it out in our lives and relationships — being truthful in all things results in spiritual growth for all who take part.
The church gathering should be a context for pursuing and discovering truth. To the Thessalonians Paul wrote:
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good (! Thess 5:19–21).
This passage is a simple encouragement about how to find truth in the process of fellowship. Prophecy is speaking forth what the Spirit puts in our hearts. We despise or disrespect the Spirit when we hold back from sharing what He puts in our hearts because prophecy is for the edification, exhortation and comfort of all (1 Cor 14:3). And Paul says that we can all prophecy one by one (1 Cor 14:30, 31).
But we are encouraged not to merely accept everything without testing it against God’s word so we know what to hold fast to. This advances truth in our thinking and acting.
During Paul’s ministry, the people in Berea had this attitude. After Paul shared a message “. . . they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Interestingly Luke shared in the same passage that the Bereans “. . . were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica.” They were considered “fair-minded” because they examined what Paul shared in the light of scripture and found it to be true. They were truth seekers.
Truth is not just for gatherings of the church. Truth should permeate our lives and as truth seekers, we should apply this testing process to everything we do, see and hear including politics. Many Christians have the mistaken notion that believers are to stay out of politics but voting is a classic opportunity to apply the process of pursuing truth. Effective voting demands that we know how to find truth through this scriptural method of seeking and testing.
One mistake some Christians make is judging the morality of the candidates, as a basis for voting. Paul tells us to judge immorality in the church but cautions us against judging people on the outside who are not believers (1 Cor 10–13). People outside of the body of Christ are in God’s hands regarding judgment. This includes politicians, many of whom may not be Christians. We should judge them instead on the basis of the morality of the policies they embrace which affect the lives of citizens.
This requires we follow the procedure of truth seeking to understand how the candidates believe on the issues facing the country. Don’t pay attention to emotion or empty rhetoric and promises a candidate cannot legally fulfill. That’s like the candidate for 8th-grade president who appeals to his popularity and good looks. Then he promises to do things that students do not have the authority to do. Thirteen-year-old students fall for this tactic but we adults should not be so gullible.
I believe the world is in a place similar to August of 1939 just before Hitler invaded Poland to start World War III. He had successfully gaslighted the German people to the point where they didn’t know what to believe. Gaslighting takes its name from a play of 1938 and later 1944 movie Gaslight where the term became part of our vocabulary. The movie indirectly exposed the tactics Hitler used to dupe the German people and much of the world. A month later the Allied forces invaded Normandy and began an assault that eventually brought the war to an end. Unfortunately, much of the damage was done and Europe paid a heavy price for their failure to reject the lies of Hitler.
So, how did gaslighting work for Hitler, who invented the tactic?
1. He openly denied what were obvious truthful events and facts making it hard to discern truth from a lie creating confusion and doubt so he could shape public perception to his liking.
2. He made false promises he did not intend to fulfill and later denied he had made them.
3. He gained control of the German media and used massive propaganda to further shape public opinion about issues that mattered. He manipulated facts and events to allow his aggressive policies to be enacted while the media fully supported him. Joseph Goebbels was his minister of propaganda who did a masterful job of flooding Germany with Hitler’s version of truth.
4. He was able to do this because he had gained control of the educational establishment and used the schools as indoctrination centers changing the hearts and minds of a generation of Germans.
5. He changed historical events by manipulating the facts in his favor making truth hard to uncover especially for people who didn’t know how to think for themselves. He was able to justify his evil actions by rewriting history in the minds of the people.
6. He unleashed racism on the German people accusing the Jewish people to the point that people believed that Jews were responsible for the conditions he used as an excuse for military aggression and eventually the murder of at least six million Jews.
7. He constantly accused his opponents of doing what he was doing covertly to redirect the media’s eye onto his adversaries instead of him.
8. He silenced his opponents through censorship of information so his version of every story was the only one seen by the public.
I wish you well in your commitment to be an informed voter who is not susceptible to propaganda but considers the policies of the candidates and how they line up with what your due research has revealed. If you haven’t done the research but have already decided how you will vote you may have the wrong strategy. It is the pursuit of truth through honest assessment of the candidate’s policy commitments that will lead to voting success.
As a final comment, I will not tell you who I am voting for but will explain how I vote. I encourage you to do the same. So this is how I will vote this election year.
1. I will vote for the candidate who listens to the people and clearly explains his/her stand on each issue the country faces so I can make up my own mind: immigration, foreign wars, abortion, the economy, election interference, the nation’s debt problem, inflation, LGBT issues, education, gun control, relationship with NATO, Israel and the Middle East, racism issues, patriotism, federal spending, crime, healthcare, welfare/social security, energy, urban renewal, climate change balance, social unity
2. I will vote for the candidate and his/her vice president choice who openly expresses to the American people their stand on the above issues.
3. I will vote for the candidate who knows and accepts that this nation is a representative republic, not a strict democracy.
4. I will vote for the candidate who agrees we need elections free of fraud and interference.
5. I will vote for the candidate whose stand on the issues agrees with what I believe about basic morality.
6. I will vote for the candidate who knows that the Constitution is the expressed law of this nation.
7. I will vote for the candidate who may not be popular with the media and whose journalists have been trained in our failing educational system.
Now prepare yourself to vote remembering that the truth will set you free. Avoid the propaganda techniques and pay attention to what your research uncovers. May God be with you.
