Do Better To Demand The Truth, & To Be Truthful To All
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘This is what the Lord Almighty said: ”Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”’ (Zechariah 7:9); ‘Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.’ (Ephesians 4:25)
Intellectualism works by allowing opposing thoughts to be discussed, considered, and allow for dissent among consensus. Instead we typically find in our news, our schools, and our politics that opposing thoughts, especially Christian conservative thought in today’s secular, liberal climate, are suppressed, ignored, and dissent shouted down. This is intellectual ignorance, not enlightenment, being highlighted in our secular society.
We as Christians must also take our share of the blame in this, as years ago we mistook consideration and dissent to mean tolerance. When Christians became tolerant, we allowed the banning of prayer in schools, the acceptance of deviant behaviors, and the politics of changing the morals of America without any debate. We were disingenuous to our selves in our tolerance, and we now have a country where there are wide moral variances, debate became ‘shout-downs and shut-ups’, and now the narrative is what was wrong is now right, intelligent and enlightened, and what is right is now socially considered deplorable and idiotic.
In our nation today, we have journalists and newscasters would unfortunately are neither ‘fair’ or ‘balanced’ but instead provide their opinion when giving the latest news report to the public. Every one has an opinion, and those in the media are not exempt from this most human of traits. However, as we see in our secular society is a form of disingenuous, self-decreed intellectualism that is thrusted upon others. It is a version given by perception and feelings that is biased, not facts and evidence that would make it more balanced.
The answers on how the news should be reported are in the Bible, and how we should treat opposing ideas and viewpoints. The prophet Zechariah in chapter 7 of his book is dealing with how the exiled Israelites, who performed mourning rituals during the 70-year exile in Babylon, were inquiring if they should continue to do these rituals upon their resettlement of Jerusalem. God did not necessarily need the people of Israel to do these ceremonies, and called them out as needing to do these rituals for their own edification. Instead, God wanted them (as he wants us to do) is to not show favoritism, bias, or hatred to others but be compassionate to everyone.
This compassion needs to be even keel, and without reservation on who receives it. We do have our biases, and while we may favor certain traits over others, we must not let that be discriminating on how or who we show God’s love upon. Likewise, we must also not tolerate sinful behavior by those who we consider friends. We need to speak the Truth, in firmness but without malice, just the facts based in Truth and without feelings. It is a disservice when we tolerate sinful actions or allow our Christian voices to be muted; do not fear to speak up and let those, like journalists, to give us facts, not opinions or slants based on feelings.
