You Are Fake News
IT was the opening line of the best street sermon I ever heard: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to talk to you about fake news.” It certainly got people’s attention. And why wouldn’t it? The eloquent phrase has long passed into meme lore. There is no doubt that the media is a stronghold on the American people. Social media is even more powerful, putting strangleholds on us. Censorship and removal of political enemies is everything we pretend not to stand for in this country, and yet here we are. It seems to me the office was taken long ago; President Cancel Culture now reigns supreme.
I read this in a history book today: “Western people in the Middle Ages were not particularly gullible” (Bernard Hamilton, The Christian World of the Middle Ages). This testimony is true. It’s today’s Western people we need to worry about. Yes, us. We are astonishingly gullible. Medieval people believed in a good many things that were not seen or heard. The world was, to them, still full of wonder, and of evil. But not to us. We know everything. We’ve got it all at our fingertips (thumbtips). If evil was afoot, we would all know about it, because the unbiased media would tell us! One wonders if there are any Calvinists left.
Well, there’s a worse fake news than your favorite mainstream media outlet: your own heart. Our hearts lie to us every day. Sure, you believe in God. But you don’t need to take him very seriously. You can get right with him before the end. Or maybe you’re one of the brave ones! You’re not worried about dying at all. “I’ll see what happens,” you say, nonchalantly, “when I get there.” This is fake news that has the power to forfeit your soul forever, for death will come upon you like a sudden and inescapable nightmare. So next time your heart tells you that you’ll be OK without Jesus, or quite differently, but equally dangerous, that he could never forgive you, you know what to say. Go ahead, I’ll say it with you: