The 2016 chosen Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionary was "Post-truth."
Oxford Dictionary defined it as "... relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."
Yes, we've entered the era of Post-truth, where emotional feelings and one's personal beliefs carry more weight and influence than actual truth itself. And this is a tradegy!
An article in The Economist magazine ("Art of the Lie," Sept., 2016) explains that in today's post-truth society, truth is "of secondary importance..." left to die on the vine; while "lies, rumour and gossip spread with alarming speed."
It was seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus the Christ that the prophet Isaiah bemoaned the fact that his beloved people had fallen into a post-truth era. He wrote, "Judgment is turned away BACKWARD, justice standeth afar off: FOR TRUTH IS FALLEN IN THE STREET, and equity [fair and righteous decisions] CANNOT ENTER."
Can you see the parallels to our modern-day experience?
We are living in a world where the news media outlets have a level of trust by the public as low as that of politicians; and that's mighty low! We have had political candidates who think nothing of tweeking the facts to meet their agenda, and even worse, seem to have no conscience in telling outright lies to their constituents and the general public.
As if this "fall" of the truth within the political arena and among news reporters wasn't bad enough, we find this very same spirit of mishandling of the facts among ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ!
Many of these ministers KNOW the TRUTH of the Scriptures, but hold back on faithfully preaching it.
Numerous are the reasons for their "holding the truth in unrighteousness," and their failure to powerfully, and plainly proclaim it, but I submit just a few:
1) Many ministers are afraid that if the word of God is preached in its plainness, some will leave the church; therefore, messages are prepared to make the hearers feel good about themselves.
2) Some are just too lazy to do the work of gathering and organizing the truths of God, in a way in which the message of the Bible will be practically received and applied by the hearers, to their benefit.
3) In their attempt to be "relevant" and "non-offensive," they inadvertently water down gospel truths (which, if preached in their fullness, are able to set the obedient free from all types of temptations, vices, sins and strangleholds of life) to the point that true victory in the Christian life is unrealized by the vast majority of professing Christians.
"Yea, TRUTH FAILETH," continued Isaiah the prophet, "and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey...". (Isaiah 59:14-15)
Isaiah witnessed that those few who dared to turned from error and embrace truth, became victims to those who despised it. They were lied about, misrepresented, threatened, and in some cases physically attacked! Why? Because they rejected the lies, and chose, rather, to embrace the truth.
Yes indeed. TRUTH IS FALLEN IN THE STREETS. It behooves us all, to cleave to the God of the Bible (not the god of our feelings and emotions), and dig deep into the treasures of His Word to discover the truth (Proverbs 2:4-5; 3:1-3), lest we find ourselves an active participant of this Post-truth era.
-Written by David Cosma
