Living in a Post-Truth World

Wikipedia was created in 2001, which has become the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Anyone can edit or add to a page as long as the entry can be verified against a reliable published source, so its success depends on ordinary people coming together to agree on some kind of standard of truth. Some of the most edited pages on Wikpedia are for people like George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Michael Jackson, not only because new information is constantly coming out about them. People have strong opinions about who they are and what they’ve done. Of course, the list of World Wrestling Entertainment personnel comes in at #1 because we all know the most important cultural influencers: wrestlers (yes, I'm being ironic).

Fast forward 15 years to 2016, and the Oxford dictionary named ‘post-truth’ as the word of the year. In a post-truth world, people are less and less able to come together and agree on standards of truth, so we instead rely on opinions and personal beliefs. These past few weeks I found that I only had a limited ability to read or watch news about Afghanistan, not only because I am horrified by the consequences of the country returning to Taliban control. I also find it hard to understand the truth with so much screaming on all sides of American political spectrum. It’s always someone else’s fault: Biden is blamed of course, but also George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, Afghan politicians, Afghan people, etc. We're flooded with opinions about ways all of this mess could have been avoided if they didn’t screw it up. And while there are some positive actions we can take - like donating to charities working there - there is so very little we can do. Learning more truth doesn’t do us much good, because we can end up being consumed by news related to a crisis where we have almost no control. So much of the information we take in these days does little more than increase anger and anxiety.

This is very different from the truth of Jesus. Last Sunday, we explored Peter's proclamation that Jesus was 'the Messiah, the Son of the living God' (Matthew 16:16). This wasn’t just helpful information, like something you could read in a Wikipedia article about Trump or a BBC article about Afghanistan. Following Jesus isn’t like following someone on Facebook or Twitter, where we skim our feed to see news and opinions, but our lives remain pretty much the same. If we agree that Jesus is the Son of God, we must follow him and give up our lives for him. If kingdom priorities become our priorities, nothing can remain unchanged.