When did lies become truth?

While that question may be a very large one, this post is more narrowly defined.  When did the media stop differentiating between lies and truth, between facts and commentary?  As I said before here, I was once a news junkie.  I had a news channel on my car radio all the time, news apps on my phone, and news on the television.  I read newspapers and news magazines.  I just could not get enough of it.  Until, that is, I began to question whether I was being told the truth by the media.  Some of it soon became clear.  Lies were masquerading as truth in media from far left to far right.  Slant was presented as truth, opinion as fact, and I was being fed by those who presumed to know best what was good for me and who looked down on me as too uneducated or ignorant to know better.  I do not watch or follow much at all anymore.

Worse than the regular news media are the kind of fly-by-night operations that entice you in with a headline on social media -- only to string you on or sell you a product.  If you cannot trust the regular media for honest news, you would be a fool to presume you can trust what pops up on your feed or in the next reel.  Grow up.  The world of fact has been replaced by the creative fiction that purports to be truth but is nothing truthful at all.  I grew up at a time when you could turn on Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley or Peter Jennings and be assured that you were given unassailable truth and solid fact.  Without naming names today, I think we can all safely assume that news has become a business selling opinion as a product and the sacred character of the media within a democracy has become a distant memory.  I wish I could say it was only true of the people I did not like but it is true of virtually everyone.

Truth is in short supply today but the desire for truth is even harder to find.  Whether news or religion, we seem to prefer a packaged product to facts and a quick conclusion to a the call to think for ourselves.  Everything is designed to sell you on an outlet for the news more than on what is in the news.  While in Nebraska for a couple of weeks in February, I noticed that there was no breaking news on the media there.  At home in Tennessee, breaking news occurred at every newscast -- national, regional, or local.  It was not because nothing was happening in Nebraska (which I know some of you are snickering about) but that they still saw their jobs as informational rather than sensational.  I am sure that time will soon teach them to parrot the vocabulary and methodology of the rest of the world but it was fun while it lasted.

The Church cannot afford to get caught up in this.  Already people are sure that we got it wrong about a host of things and that Scripture does not mean what it says.  Already people are buying the snake oil from the marketers that the Bible is not reliable, that it does not say what it says, and that it does not mean what it says.  The loss of truth is a painful one especially for its impact on the one thing the Church is about -- the eternal truth that saves.  It is bad enough that we live in a world where marketers sell things other than truth in Jesus' name but it is even worse when people no longer desire the truth or care.  That is the world in which we live today, the world in which we minister.  

Parents, teach your children to love truth, even the hard truth, of God's Word.  Teach them to think for themselves not by accepting the next line that comes along but by sorting out error from truth according to God's Word.  Families need to support and encourage the life of this truth that saves so that it lives in the hearts and minds of their children and grandchildren.  Churches need to go back to telling the truth without fear and without softening up the rough edges of that Word.  We may not like what we hear in church but we must know that what is being preached from the pulpit and taught in the Sunday school room is real, true, and unchanging truth of God's Word.  People will be sorely tempted to see churches as media outlets hawking their own opinions and versions for those who like what they hear.  It is up to the churches to make sure that they are speaking faithfully and truthfully the whole counsel of God's Word.  The loss of a media we can trust is one thing but the loss of churches to speak the truth of God's Word is to usher in a time of darkness where God desires to shine His light.