United Church of God

Pastor's Corner - November 15th, 2019

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A Congregation of the United Church of God

Pastor's Corner - November 15th, 2019

We live in an era of falsehood.

We are surrounded by a society which promulgates scams, frauds, hoaxes, and false news stories. They are getting increasingly more difficult to spot, and have become a very real problem, and unfortunately, sometimes, inadvertently we help spread these falsehoods by not doing our due diligence to prove their veracity.

It's not entirely our fault... we are living in a time which has been referred to as, 'post-truth'. Largely focused in the world of politics, post-truth references the propensity of a group to respond to emotion or personal belief. This is very common into today's political landscape, and is committed by both sides of the aisle, but what has complicated things is it has become very hard to know who is being truthful and who is spinning the story to their advantage.

It used to be that we could say, 'Trust what you see, not what you hear...', however recently, even that has become increasingly difficult as well. A couple months back, a video went around on social media which showed how sophisticated 'deep fake' videos have become. A deep fake is a video that takes an existing media clip, and edits it using sophisticated graphic editing to make the videosay something else, and it is reaching a point that it is starting to become seamless, and if you're not looking at it and sifting it for truth, it is easy to be faked.

Social media speeds the spread of these falsehoods, often because people don't take the time to verify something as true before it is shared. 

Just this week alone in my social media feeds, I saw a video shared of an assault robot which was being demonstrated, that showed it being armed with a pistol and despite being pushed around to be off balance, it was still able to shoot the targets dead on with every trigger pull. The moral of the video was - "Look out, these death robots are coming." But when examined closer - it was shown to be a forgery as a result of a lack of shadow or dust being kicked up when the robot fell. This week a scam went around on Facebook regarding Costco coupons (which required Costco to come out and say, "This is a scam."), another was a free case of Bud Light if you share XY or Z, another was a doctored photo and story which was shared as an anti-vaccination meme. (Which a fact-check group proved to be demonstrably false for a variety of reasons) It could have been political, social, spiritual, or the like - it just happened to be related to vaccinations... the point is, the unfortunate reality is - it is becoming easier and easier for all of us to be taken by scams and frauds if we are not on guard.

It requires that all of us have a healthy dose of skepticism for everything that we see, and everything that we read in this modern era. The old adage of, "If it seems to good to be true, then it probably is..." often applies in these situations, but it puts us in a difficult place. The world didn't used to be like this - it used to be a place when you could trust the news, the things you heard and read, it used to be a place where people didn't attempt to dupe people intentionally to the degree they do now.

In some ways, the world has changed so quickly that we're unprepared to combat it. 

Scripture is clear on the need for us to be honest and truthful in all of our communications.

Ephesians 4:25 reminds us to put off falsehood and speak the truth with our neighbors, Colossians 3:9 that we mustn't lie to one another, Proverbs 14:15 encourages us to be an honest witness, not a false witness - spreading falsehood. Lastly, Philippians 4:8-9, that we should focus on that which is true, pure, noble, and right.

Consider these things as you go through your day and hear, read or see various things - is it true? Can you prove it is true? If not... then you might rethink sharing it. There is a lot of falsehood out there these days, some of which are impossible to prove. Is it worth sharing something that is false? Being a part of the spread of falsehoods and lies inadvertently? 

Our God is a God of Truth. He is a God of right. He does not delight in lies, He doesn't delight in falsehoods. Inadvertent or not. Satan, on the other hand is the father of lies, and delights in the era of post-truth and falsehoods in which we live. We have a responsibility to help maintain truth and right, and share those things which are true, pure, noble and right.