The Word of the Year: Post-Truth

I love playing and using words.  I guess when you are called upon to preach and teach you desire to master the use of words. Words are an essential part of our communication process.  Most of the time we simply use words without really giving those words a lot of thought.  But there are those times when words take on a new purpose.  They become special words.  I woke up this morning and while reading my morning newspaper - yes, I still get a newspaper - I read an article about the 2016 "word of the year." 


According to the Oxford Dictionaries organization, the 2016 international word of the year is "post-truth" which is defined as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."  According to the article, published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and first published by Jennifer Schuessler in the New York Times, "The term, whose first known usage in this sense was in a 1992 essay in the Nation magazine, does not represent an entirely new concept.  But it does, Martin (Katherine Connor Martin, the head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press) said, reflect a step past 'truthiness,' the Stephen Colbert coinage that Merriam-Webster and the American Dialect Society chose as word of the year a decade ago.  'Truthiness is a humorous way of discussing a quality of specific claims,' she said.  'Post-truth is an adjective that is describing a much bigger thing.  It's saying that the truth is being regarded as mostly irrelevant.'"


Emotions and personal opinions now take precedent over truth.  But we see this over and over.  Let's just take a recent example.  Following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, the President of the University of Virginia sent a letter to students and other campus leaders in which he quoted from Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the University.  That letter sent many who received it into an angry spirit.  Several hundred signed a petition asking the President to rescind that letter omitting the quote from Thomas Jefferson.  Their rationale: Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, thus making what he had said offensive.  Emotions and personal opinions taking precedent over historical truth. 


History cannot be erased.  What happened did in fact happen.  You cannot go back and undo history.  (I think we all would like to go back and rewind the clock and make some changes even in our own history, but we can't).  The facts of history may not agree with my personal opinions today or even with the way that I am feeling today.  Slavery was part of our nation's past.  Yes, it left a stain that is still felt today.  But, removing the statues of Robert E Lee of Nathan Bedford Forrest or Jefferson Davis will not remove that stain.  The same can be said of any truth statement that we do not like - we simply cannot erase it.  Truth is truth.  If it is not truth, then it is mere opinion and mere opinion can provide no foundation for anyone else to build upon except the person with the opinion.  I will respect your opinion but not necessarily make those opinions my own.  But truth is both yours and mine. 


So, how does a Christian live in a "post truth" world?  First, we need to reaffirm that the Bible is God's Word - it is inerrant; it is inspired; it is the final authority for faith and life.  You should be able to answer this question: Why do I believe the Bible is God's Word? 


Second, we need to know what the Bible has to say.  If it truly is God's Word, then, don't you think it is important enough that we should at least read it and probably should spend some time studying it so that we know what it teaches?  And this begins with knowing the stories within the Bible - those of Adam and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph and Egypt, of Moses and the return of the Israelites, of Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, the prophets, the disciples and the stories of Jesus.  These stories contain truth statements God desires for us to know. 


Third, we are to live out that truth before others.  Knowing the Word of God is not some academic experience.  We describe college as being an academic experience, but, truth be told, that experience only becomes realized when a person begins to work in that field for which he/she has trained.  So it is with our experience in the Word of God.  That experience becomes realized only when we begin to live out those truths in our own lives and before others.  Then we do we being to live with incarnational truth. 


The world has declared that truth is not as relevant in the public square as it once was.  Perhaps it is not relevant at all.  But a culture cannot exist on the beliefs only in emotions and personal opinions.  So, friends, let's cling tightly to truth - God's truth.