I approach this topic with trepidation because I know how easily I can be misunderstood. But I was thinking, what is the greatest challenge to my own joy? Is the fact that I have cancer and it can return any day? Is it the fact that my life most likely has been shorten? Is it the fact that I don’t feel well anymore and can’t imagine a day where I did? Is it that I’m loosing my brother as I speak?
While all of those are factors, the real challenging to me living in the moment, enjoying this world world God has made, is my disappointment in how lies dominate this world.
Now here is where I want to be clear. I do not want to give the impression that I have the reins to all truth and look down at others who don’t. As a matter of fact, I spent a good period of my early life with a very false narrative about the real world. I know now that I make mistakes in what I believe and what I tell myself.
I’ve said before that if you read the Bible honestly, you will see that God’s greatest desire is for truth. Not a particular dogma, but factual truth. He also calls Satan the father of lies.The historical Jesus didn’t go around preaching against abortion (that’s another topic for discussion), gay marriage, politics, but about the problem of lies. Most notably were the lies that performance religion was true religion and that money brings happiness.
I mentioned recently about how lies are the basis of all evil. All wars start with lies. All murders start with lies. But then there are things like at least 100,000 of the COVID deaths (out of the 165,000) could have been prevented if it were not for lies. This really upsets me. I hate reckless suffering and death.
I had the nativity at one point that lies were an issue of education. Like for me, it took a decade of study, mostly history and science, to realize where I had gone so wrong. But its not.
I wake up every morning to a flood of misinformation, mostly on FaceBook. In my naivety, I used to think, all I had to do was to show that person factual information and they will say, “Oh, thank you for correcting me.” I would expect the same as I have shared misinformation myself (although I try very hard not to).
Now, I’m not talking about opinion. Here is an opinion, “America will function better as a country with very low taxes and services Vs American will function better with high taxes and more services (like in Scandinavia). You can argue those points and good people should be able to without hostilities.
But I see this long list of statements such as, “Hillary Clinton was arrested at age 16 for molesting children while she was baby sitting.” That is a total lie and can easily be refuted with facts. To be fair, I will throw one out from the other side, “Donald Trump paid to have his daughter Tiffany aborted.” No evidence of that.
But this is what saddens me. When I say to the person that it is not factually true that Hillary Clinton was arrested at age 16 for molesting children, they say, “You’re just a libtard. You’ve been brainwashed by the liberal media and your head is in the sand.”
This is what saddens me with the world and total dis-interest in facts and lack of curiosity.
Somehow I must realize that I can’t fix this mess. I can’t un-racist the racist by educating them. I can’t rid the hate by telling people the hateful bullshit they are reading and sharing is not true.
I have been “unfriending” people who habitually share this kind of mis-information. I’ve always kept my friend list small. I had joined a group that was “Christians Against Trump” to spare my sanity because I was surrounded by evangelical Trump supporters, which makes no sense to me. I will say again, Donald Trump is 180 degrees opposite of the historical Jesus. However, before long, I noticed that people in that group were also habitual liars and haters (of Trump in that case) and had to get out.
My mother said when I was a small child, “You are different from other kids. You feel things very deeply.” She didn’t say it as a compliment. But I do. It is from this place of deep passion that I try to draw from as a writer. But it tears at your heart at times.
There has to be a balance where we focus on knowing truth ourselves, but not so much of the rest of world, yet, not giving up on the world. But with the thought that it is up to me to save the world, when I can’t, is not a place of peace. I have to let it go. But still, as we are told in Ephesians 4:15, to speak the truth (factual truth) in love.
J. Michael Jones 