Barney Wiget's Blog, page 27

Do Cars or Pools Really Kill More People Than COVID?

“You look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about. That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody no more driving of cars.” Donald Trump 

I’ve heard this same ridiculous meme repeated on social media comparing the deadliness of the virus to car accidents but it’s a bad analogy and wildly off the mark! Anthony Fauci the leading voice on the president’s coronavirus task force called it “a false equivalency” and “totally way out.”

The number of annual deaths from car accidents in America has hovered for many years at an average of 38,000. To date we’ve surpassed that number of deaths from the virus at 65,510 with 1,124,676 active cases still pending in the U.S.

So first of all, how do we know how many people will eventually die in the pandemic? You might’ve noticed that it’s not over yet. Not by a long shot. Unlike car accidents, COVID cases grow exponentially. One car crash doesn’t lead to many others like the virus, which we saw jump from 8,000 to 50,000 in a week throughout the world!

Can anyone imagine the deaths from car accidents increasing at that same pace? If they did, I have to believe that someone would want to push for some limit to driving.

Secondly, cars and their drivers don’t infect one another like virus carriers do. Imagine this. All cars have a shared operating system that malfunctions forcing them to accelerate uncontrollably. Accidents all over the place!

Then let’s say the malfunction (like a virus) begins to jump from one car to the next, increasing the number of accidents exponentially. Don’t you think then that there would be a massive mandatory recall of cars, putting them by the millions in the shop until they could be repaired and allowed to be on the road again?

But where the analogy between cars and COVID really falters is in the span time in which we’re observing these deaths. 65,510 Americans have died of COVID-19 in the last 8 weeks compared to a much smaller number of deaths in cars over the span of an entire year! If auto deaths came at the same rate there would be something like over 320,000 in one year!

Can you imagine the strain on hospitals and their staff in such a situation? But even then, we couldn’t logically compare car deaths with the virus, since people injured in cars aren’t contagious. They wouldn’t put doctors and health-care staff at risk of injury or disease like COVID does.

Do cars really kill more people than COVID? As Fauci said, “It’s a false equivalency” and “totally way out”!

Then you have television psychologist Dr. Phil, who also claimed the car accident analogy and inflated the number of deaths on the road from 38,000 to 45,000 per year. “The fact of the matter is we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, but we don’t shut the country down for that.”  If you’re going to use an inane comparison, I say at least get your facts straight!

In citing 360,000 fatalities in pools the “good doctor” shifted from U.S. figures (which are reflected in the other two categories of car and smoking deaths) to a worldwide death rate from drowning! According to the CDC pool deaths in our country are more to the tune of 3,500. By bouncing from U.S. numbers to global the doctor’s data is inflated by over 100 times! It seems to me if you’re going to falsify the numbers at least be in the ballpark!

His way out of whack data aside, putting simple logic to his silly argument regarding drownings, unless there’s something I don’t know about swimming accidents, they’re not contagious! We don’t have drowning victims infecting one another and creating a pandemic of people dying in pools! So, stop it!

Why even make a point about these fables and fabrications regarding the Coronavirus and its lethality? First and foremost, it’s because actual lives are at stake. People watch this stuff (I had another word or two in mind instead of “stuff,” but I consented to my conscience and the Spirit to keep a clean tongue). People believe that the President of the United States, TV personalities like Dr. Phil and other famous media personalities wouldn’t lie to them, so they defy the mandate to keep their distance from one another, not only putting themselves at risk, but anyone with whom they have contact.

I also point these things out because I don’t think they, be it media celebrities or the President, should get away with lying to the public especially on such life-threatening topics.

“Save me [us], Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.” Psalm 120:2

How to Break Up With Your Conspiracy Theory

“Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.” (Romans 12:2 – The Message)

“When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man I put childish ways behind me.” (1 Corinthians 13 – NIV)

 Did you hear that they’ve finally figured out that COVID-19 comes from 5G wireless signals? Either that or the Chinese or the U.S. military developed it as a bioweapon! And did you know that our government has developed a cure or vaccine but is withholding it from the public? (FYI, it’s NOT swimming pool cleaner!)

These are just a few of the “infodemic” conspiracies stink up social media these days. We just can’t seem to live with not knowing, so we make stuff up to make ourselves sound smart. I guess. If anyone has a better explanation, I’m all ears.

So what do I care when Christians are disproportionately fooled by conspiracy theories? I care because when my sisters and brothers swallow and regurgitate silly urban legends, it makes us all look stupid—and causes Christianity itself to look foolish. It feeds the impression that we Jesus followers live in a make-believe world and are simply unwilling or incapable of facing reality. If becoming a Christian means committing intellectual suicide, for most people, the price of admission is too high.

Do we even realize the intellectual whiplash that we cause people when we juxtapose crazy COVID conspiracies with evidence for the existence of God? It’s like saying we believe in the Easter Bunny and Jesus too! 

In the previous three posts on conspiracies we talked about how conspiracies get started, how to detect them, and why they’re so appealing. Let’s conclude by taking some serious steps toward “breaking up” with our cherished conspiracies and dumping the huckster-matchmakers that introduced us in the first place. Let’s put them to the tests of common sense, Scripture, and discernment and give them the boot before they do irreparable damage to our conscience and our Christian testimony.

Without consulting their frontal lobe (the reasoning part of the brain), starstruck souls go to the altar, say their vows, kiss the bride, and go on a honeymoon to consummate the relationship. They become one with their fictional fallacies, and with pit bulls stubbornness, refuse let go to save their lives. They recited their vows in front of all their friends and are still paying for the reception that cost more than their college education, and even when proven false they refuse to recant! Why?

Because they know that if they did ever split with their beloved fantasies there would be hell to pay. The inferno they fear is having to admit they were duped, which is something their ego just couldn’t stand. So, no matter how much actual truth debunks their beloved conspiracies they stay together until the bitter end. And believe me, the end in some cases can be quite bitter.

I speak of “conspiracies” in the plural since in my experience very few conspiracists are monogamous when it comes to their adoration for the outlandish. If you are an exception to that rule and are only dating one, good for you. However, in my view even one is one more than you need.

So, where do we start the breakup?

Make clean break!

As with any breakup it’s best to make a clean break, leaving nothing to chance that you’ll someday get back together. You’ve been lied to and made a fool of. Don’t leave it open for further heartbreak! I realize how hard it is to part ways with false narratives into which you’ve invested much time and ego, but if you don’t, you’ll be sorry later.

We believed them, loved how they made us feel, and shared them with others in hopes they would love them as much as we do. But it’s time to admit that we were suckered. The upshot of it is we were gullible and were made to look pretty silly. It’s best to confess it, get our promise ring returned, and pledge to be more careful about any future romances with fantastical explanations on how the world works.

In some cases our conspiracy breakups require us to break ranks with the one(s) who introduced us to it to begin with. Associating with reality benders is not usually a good idea and can bend or break something in us if we don’t make a clean break from them. “Bad company corrupts good character,” says Paul. So break up before the corruption becomes infected and takes over.

Sometimes having a song to break up by helps. Here are a few options you might like to give you the courage to do what you know you should:

We started out friends

It was cool, but it was all pretend

Yeah, yeah

Since you been gone (Kelly Clarkson)

The thrill is gone

It’s gone away for good (B.B. King)

“We are never ever, ever getting back together!” (Taylor Swift) This is my personal favorite!

If you don’t prefer these then write your own breakup lyrics. But for God’s sake and yours, break up with your conspiracy theories today!

Light and Lysol Injections Anyone?

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Another imbecilic improv on COVID cures

POTUS: “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it.  … [S]upposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too.  It sounds interesting. …

“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors … But … it sounds interesting to me.” 

Of all the president’s press briefings on COVID this one reminds me most of high school speech class during improv exercises. The teacher gives you a topic, and gives you 10 seconds to think about it. You come up with whatever comes to your mind and talk about it for 5 minutes. It doesn’t have to be true. It doesn’t even have to make sense. It just has to fill the entire time limit with you talking.

So, “bring(ing) some light inside the body… under the skin”… Is that a thing? Thinking about it kinda creeps me out!

Lysol makers respond…

“As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route). As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines.”

That seems reasonable to me. In my youth I used a lot of different kinds of illicit drugs, but thank heaven, shooting Lysol never occurred to me!

The presidential walk-it-back dance…

If the following isn’t the most bizarre concoction of English words strung together… Here’s where the high school improv assignment really gets cranking! Since the assignment is not about making sense but to just fill up the time with verbiage, the president aces it!

To really get the most out of this I recommend you read it out loud. If you have a talent for impressions, it’ll be even better if you do it in his voice. Feel free to use his unique gesticulation style as well.

And if anyone speaks Trumpese, please provide an interpretation of the “clarification” of his previous day’s remarks about sunlight and disinfectant. I’ll take it for my headache.

“When I was asking a sarcastic — a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside, but it does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands and that would make things much better. That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to a reporter.”

In case you were wondering if anyone truly thought he was being sarcastic, our good friends at Breitbart (now that’s sarcasm!) thought so. Is anyone surprised?

But wait, there’s more…

“To look into whether or not sun — and disinfectant on the hands — but whether or not sun can help us. Because, I mean he came in yesterday and he said they’ve done a big study. This is a study. This isn’t where he hasn’t done it. This is where they’ve come in with a final report that sun has a massive impact negatively on this virus. In other words, it does not live well with humidity and it doesn’t live well with sun, sunlight, heat. It doesn’t live well with heat and sun and and disinfectant. And that’s what I brought up, and I thought that was clear.”

Was that clear to you? My head is throbbing too much to know.

Jeff Mason [Reuters journalist]: “Just to follow up on the comments from yesterday you said you were being sarcastic, but some people may have misunderstood you. Do you want to just clarify?”

POTUS: “I wish they […]”

Jeff Mason: “Do you want to clarify to Americans if you don’t want people to think that?”

Here’s where you’ll need all your interpretive skills to be in working order. Prepare yourself for some crazy talk…

POTUS: “Yes. I do think that disinfectant on the hands could have a very good effect. Now, Bill is going back to check that in the laboratory. You know, it’s an amazing laboratory, by the way. It’s amazing the work they do. So, he’s going to check because a hard surface. This is a hard surface I guess maybe depending on whose hand you’re talking about, right? But this is a hard surface and disinfectant, disinfectant has an unbelievable — it wipes it out. You saw it? Sun and heat, and humidity and you wipe it out. And this is from tests — they’ve been doing these tests for a number of months. And the result — so then I said, ‘Well, how do we do it inside the body or even outside the body with the hands and disinfectant I think would work.’ He thinks it would work. When you use it when you’re doing your hands. I guess that’s one of the reasons they say wash your hands, but whether it’s washing hands or disinfectant on your hands, it’s very good. So, they’re going to start looking at that. And there is a way of, you know, if light — if sun, sun itself that sun has a tremendous impact on or kills it like in one — it goes from what was it? Hours to like one minute instead.”

So, instead of hours, this new miracle cure works in one minute? And “Bill” is going back to the lab to check it out? I hope he does it on his own time and not on the taxpayers’ dime! Even if he does “think it would work.”

And what’s the deal about “hard surfaces” only being hard depending on whose hand is on it? Are there hands out there that when they touch hard surfaces they become soft? I guess that would be handy (no pun intended) for street fighters and rock climbers.

Is your brain sufficiently rested for another string of non-sequiturs?

“So, I said you got to go back and look, but I’d like them now to look as it pertains to the human body. Not just sitting on a railing or sitting on a wall. I’d like to look as it pertains because maybe there’s something there. They have to work with — I’m not a doctor. They have to work with their doctors. But maybe there is something to light, and the human body, and helping people that are dying.”

Isn’t this a little like the captain of the Titanic saying to his terrified passengers? “I’ve heard that sharks really don’t bite after all. In fact, there’s one theory that if you get on their backs, they’ll carry you to shore.”

Jeff Mason: “Just to clarify: You’re not encouraging Americans to inject disinfectant?”

POTUS: “No. Of course not… It was said sarcastically. It was put in the form of a question to a group of extraordinary hostile people. Namely, the fake news media.”

Watch the clip and tell me if there’s any logical way one could chock his comments up to sarcasm.

Thankfully, that’s the end of the president’s indecipherable claims of COVID cures, but I had to include this last bit of back-and-forth between the him and a couple of reporters. If you’re not laughing hysterically by the end, get your funny bone checked. I’ve heard that sunlight and disinfectant injections can cure that!

Jeff Mason: “Some doctors felt you needed to clarify that after your comments.”

POTUS: “Of course, all they had to do was see just — you know the way it was asked. I was looking at you.”

Jeff Mason: No you weren’t sir. I wasn’t there yesterday.

Weijia Jiang: You were looking at Dr. Birx.

POTUS: What’s that?

Weijia Jiang: You were looking at Dr. Birx.

POTUS: I was looking at Bill. I was looking at the doctor. I was looking at some of the reporters. I don’t know if you were there. Were you there?

Weijia Jiang: I was there and I watched you ask her.

POTUS: You were there. You were there. You I never forget.

Jeff Mason: I wasn’t there yesterday.

POTUS: You were not?

Jeff Mason: No sir.

POTUS: Yeah. I didn’t think you were there.

I’m so confused. Am I here? More to the point, were you there? I didn’t think so.

Lastly, at the off chance someone drops by who believes Donald Trump is the “very stable genius” in science he claims to be, you might want to hide all your Lysol.

LIBERATE AMERICA!

“Their life was taken away from them…They want their life back!”

This is what the president says about the protestors demanding the reopening of the businesses in their states. “Their life was taken away from them.”

What an insult to those who actually lost their lives to the virus and the families grieving them! They’re the ones whose lives have been taken. And those lives are not coming back ever––not in a month or a year. Not to mention the danger to thousands of others who could lose their lives as a result of going back to work too soon.

“They’re good people,” Mr. Trump says of the protestors, though some of them have made death threats to at least three governors of their states because they won’t lift the lockdown as soon as they want. (Sounds a lot like what he said after Charlottesville when a woman was murdered while white supremacist marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us!”––”There are good people on both sides.”)

Just last week the President had punted the ball back to the governors to make the decisions for their own states regarding the lockdown and then promptly ranted on Twitter: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA… LIBERATE MICHIGAN… LIBERATE VIRGINIA!” which some of his less mentally grounded fans took as a call to arms! What else might such unhinged folks surmise, since for good measure he added to the “LIBERATE VIRGINIA” tweet a reference to firearms: “And save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” One wonders if he was actually baiting them to a violent response. Otherwise, why include it in his already incendiary blast?

These are the kinds of things that make Donald Trump the most dangerous president in my lifetime. At one of the most crucial moments in our country’s history, instead of bringing people together, he foments fear and anger, a skill for which he has had a particular aptitude all along.

We simply cannot put up with this for another four years!

LIBERATE AMERICA!*

*Not a call to arms, but a call to vote.

Does God Drink Milk?

Russian Orthodox monk, Anthony Bloom tells a story found in Hebrew folklore about Moses who finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends the day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes, and at the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk he has into a bowl, which he places on a flat stone some distance away. So Moses asks him what it is for, and the shepherd replies, “This is God’s milk.” Moses is puzzled and asks him what he means.

The shepherd says, “I always take the best milk I possess, and I bring it as an offering to God.”

Moses, who is far more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naive faith, asks, “And does God drink it?”

“Yes,” replies the shepherd, “he does.” Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd and he explains that God, being pure spirit, does not drink milk. Yet the shepherd is sure that he does, and so they have a short argument, which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether in fact God does come to drink the milk.

Moses then goes out to pray in the desert. The shepherd hides, the night comes and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert, looks right, looks left and heads straight toward the milk, which he laps up, and disappears into the desert again.

The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast. “What’s the matter?” he asks.

The shepherd says “You were right. God is pure spirit, and he doesn’t want my milk.” Moses is surprised. He says, “You should be happy. You know more about God than you did before.”

“Yes, I do,” says the shepherd, “but the only thing I could do to express my love for him has been taken away from me.”

Moses sees the point. He retires into the desert and prays hard. In the night, in a vision, God speaks to him and says, “Moses, you were wrong. It is true that I am pure spirit. Nevertheless, I always accepted with gratitude the milk which the shepherd offered me as the expression of his love, but since, being pure spirit, I do not need the milk, I shared it with this little fox, who is very fond of milk.”

 

Gullibility Is Not A Spiritual Gift!

“Do not lose courage or be afraid because of the rumors you hear. Every year a different rumor spreads.” (Jeremiah 51:46 Good News Translation)

I suppose you’ve noticed the bumper crop of conspiracies that have been attached to the Coronavirus crisis. I particularly love the one (in a satirical sense) that the vaccine being developed will be the “Mark of the Beast”!  Ed Stetzer was right about gullibility not being a Spiritual Gift!

In my two previous posts: We talked about where conspiracy theories often originate and then how to recognize and refute them.

I use the phrase, “conspiracy theories” but theories might be too complimentary for most made up beyond-the-pale narratives. Fables or myths or fairytales might be more a more accurate descriptor. Maybe the best term is “conspiracism,” which is conspiracy without any actual theory attached to it, just a bunch of make-believe bunk.

I’ve always been fascinated by conspiracists and their fact-free claims. I mean how do they come up with some of these reality-bending tropes and, even more shocking is how in the world do they get any traction?

What’s the appeal of conspiracies?

Someone said, “Conspiracy theories aren’t fueled by facts. They are fueled by attention.” That is they spread like a virus because a lot of people are just waiting for something outrageous to believe and to convince others to join them in their delusion. Their minds contain shelves upon shelves to store them and their tongues can’t help but spew them in every direction.

Conspiracies stoke unfounded fear and inappropriate anger––­­not thought. Actual evidence doesn’t enter the equation to conspiracists and their fact-averse followers. Whatever feeds their ambitious egos comes first.

For the seasoned conspiracist, watching the world through the lens of fables fosters an intoxicating sense of power. Believing them creates an adrenalin rush to the ego, a feeling of superiority over those not privy to their special knowledge. Paul spoke to this dynamic: “I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret… They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are.” (Colossians 2:4, 18 – The Message Bible)

While not all conspiracisms are perpetrated or perpetuated by a certain politician from Queens, now living in D.C., and who golfs most weeks in Florida when he’s not busy at home tweeting out rumors, a bunch of them are. If not him, it’s cable news, shock jock radio talk show hosts, or untethered bloggers (not me of course) that are guilty of spreading outrageous machinations.

As promised, here are a few more choice wacky tales derived and/or disseminated by this person’s Twitter feed, along with his favorite “news” outlet, otherwise known as Conspiracy Central:

Obama tapped Donald Trump’s phone
The Democrats inflated the death toll from the Puerto Rico Hurricane from under 20 to 3,000
The noise from windmills causes cancer
The Clintons had Jeffrey Epstein killed
Ukraine may be hiding Hillary Clinton’s missing emails
The caravans of Central American migrants are bringing small pox and leprosy
Heat kills the Coronavirus

While all conspiracism is an attempt to construct a reality all of its own, when it comes from the highest office in the land, it has the ability to impose that reality on millions of trusting citizens.

Especially at the beginning of the pandemic “Individual One” appeared to be floating in his own world of happy talk and self-congratulation. In his campaign rally / press briefings he insists on creating his own data about the non-virulence of the virus, as well as the availability of tests and masks and vaccines, whereby he magically assumes the role of hero of every story.

My advice is when a gang of ugly facts attacks your conspiracy theory, don’t defend the conspiracy, make a clean break with it and let the facts take their course. That takes a certain amount of discernment.

A little discernment, please…

“The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly.” (Proverbs 15:14) 

“Wisdom reposes in the heart of the discerning and even among fools she lets herself be known.” (Proverbs 14:33)

In spite of Solomon’s advice, there are those who claim things that everyone with half a microbe of discernment knows is unmitigated malarkey. Yet some people are so gullible they can’t help themselves from being taken in by the loudest and stormiest voice.

People treat truth these days as though everyone just gets to make up his or her own version of it. Did you know that the Oxford Dictionary declared “post-truth” as the 2016 word of the year? Our national narrative is such a fact-free zone it has become a petri dish for conspiracy theories. The epitaph on this season of U.S. history might well be: “Tellin’ It Like It Isn’t”!

Tripe talk is how our national leader gets a crowd, keeps the crowd, and whips the crowd into a fury. Irrespective of how imaginary the outrageous drivel, he just keeps repeating it until it magically becomes “true” (that is to the undiscerning)! Peter Sagal said that our Conspiracist-in-Chief “is to lying what Charles Lindbergh was to flying. Nobody else would dare go that far!”

When he was asked for evidence supporting his claim that a protester at one of his rallies had ties to the Islamic State, he actually said, “All I know is what’s on the Internet.” Maybe we give a pass to a pre-teen blogger whose theories are taken by the public with a grain of salt. But the leader of the free world should probably not pass along theories with national security implications based on “the Internet” as his source!

We all have the right to make up our own mind but not make up our own facts. Reality is not what you can get away with. The world some people want us to embrace is a world of make believe, one wherein they try to make us believe what’s not there and un-believe what is!

We need to spend more time in God’s Word and less time being influenced by social media trolls and clickbait!

“Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.” (1 Corinthians 14:20)

Finally, next time I’ll make a plea to those who are in love with their favorite conspiracy theories to “break up” with them before going through with the wedding!

If It Walks Like a Duck… (How to Recognize Conspiracies)

“GOD spoke strongly to me… ‘Don’t be like this people, always afraid somebody is plotting against them. Don’t fear what they fear. Don’t take on their worries. If you’re going to worry, worry about The Holy.’” (Isaiah 8:12 – The Message Bible)

In my last post on conspiracy theories I began talking about where they begin?

I regret to report that instead of being immune to conspiracy theories, Christians are often the most vulnerable to them. Remember before Jesus even went back to heaven the disciples spread the rumor, based on their slapdash hearing of Jesus’ words about John the Beloved? They concocted a story that John was never going to die (John 21:23)! A first, but unfortunately not the last Christian-generated conspiracies.

There are a number of other examples of conspiratorial lies identified in Scripture:

I find it particularly disturbing that many who identify as Christ followers these days seem to be unaffected by the truth decay instigated by pervasive political bunk wrapped in spiritual language. Their willingness to rationalize the behavior of preachers, pundits, and politicians is a mystery to me especially after they’re caught in lie upon lie. Of all people, shouldn’t we who claim to follow the One who identifies himself as “The Truth” be first in line to tell the truth about lies? Shouldn’t we be less susceptible to post-truth religion and politics, and the moral danger that tears into the fabric of our culture? Shouldn’t we be those least likely to buy what the conspiracy merchants are selling?

Advice from the sages (Moses, Solomon, Job, etc)

Moses was hip to the human inclination toward potentially dangerous conspiracies and offered this advice:

If you hear it said about one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you to live in that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. (Deuteronomy 13:12-14)

“If it appears on your Twitter feed or your Facebook page, or you hear it on a podcast, view it on Fox or CNN or MSNBC, or read it in a blog (except for Barney’s); before receiving, retweeting, or repeating it, confirm it with an actual reputable source or two or three or ten.” (Wiget’s Free Translation)

“Inquire, probe, and investigate it thoroughly.” i.e., Get the facts!

Yes, Virginia, facts are still a thing! And sometimes the actual facts have to be sussed out of the morass of false narratives.

And for God’s sake, don’t pass the latest and greatest “alternative facts” on as fact until you have the actual facts! “Even fools are thought wise, if they keep silent, and discerning and hold their tongues,” muses wise Solomon (Proverbs 17:28). In other words, think before gobbling up and gabbing on about what you don’t actually know to be true.

I fear that a lot of Christians have succumbed to “Twitter-sized thinking.” They can’t seem to think in terms of larger than bite-sized memes. Having lost the art of critical thinking they are, in many cases, what we might call lazy thinkers. Someone said, “The lazy mind is fertile soil for bogus ideas to take root.”

Why is this true of many believers today? Maybe they reason that since they were made for another world they don’t have to invest any effort into this one? Could it be that they’re afraid to think too deeply about the world in which they live lest they lose their spiritual bearings, as though God and his Word aren’t able to stand up to honest examination?

I fear that some people have never thought much about thinking at all. Maybe thinking is too hard for them. Maybe it gives them a headache. Tolstoy said, “People have a tendency to stop thinking when it becomes difficult, but it is at that point that thinking becomes fruitful.”

There’s also the impatience factor. Because it’s so difficult to wade through the ocean of information at our fingertips these days, many don’t take the time to carefully read someone’s argument before rushing to rebuttal on social media.

Job asked his rumormonger friends: “Is it not the task of the ear to discriminate between [wise and unwise] words, just as the mouth distinguishes [between desirable and undesirable] food?” (Job 12:11)

When you’re offered some untested morsel, before wolfing it down, if you’re smart you’ll take a small bite first. You’ll give it a taste test. If it seems worthy of consumption, you chew it and swallow. If it’s not, you fake a cough and spit it out into your napkin. (I’ve had some experience along these lines in restaurants and at peoples’ houses.) Before gobbling up every bite of news, we should apply the same strategy. Take a tiny bite first to see if it is edible; i.e., use a little discernment.

Lazy thinkers are suckers for an alternate universe built on its very own “alternative facts.” The more outlandish the data the better. Even though we’re entitled to our own opinion, we’re not entitled to our own facts. Fear-mongering claims fill the media like sewage, and undiscerning Christians swallow it up. (Yuck! Sorry about the image.)

Brothers and sisters, I urge you to be literate in both cultural and spiritual realities. If you’ll read the news discerningly and your Bibles deeply you’ll be better equipped to tell the difference between the real and the made up.

Next time we’ll talk about why conspiracies have such an appeal and the role of discernment in avoiding them.

If You Hear Footsteps, Assume It’s Horses, Not Zebras (Trouble With Conspiracies)

“Don’t call everything a conspiracy, like they do, and don’t live in dread of what frightens them.” (Isaiah 8:12 – NLT)

Have you heard? Paul McCartney is dead, Elvis isn’t, and Stevie Wonder can see after all? Scientists at “Area 51” do alien surgeries, the moonwalk is a hoax, and Michelle Obama is a lesbian! The holocaust was made up and Jimmy Hoffa is buried beneath Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Must I go on?

While these, with the exception of the one about Elvis, are pretty harmless, others can be quite destructive. One individual particularly notorious for either starting or assisting trainloads of toxic balderdashes is the duly elected occupant of the Oval Office. (Before anyone rushes to his defense with: “Every politician throws out a conspiracy from time to time,” the operative phrase there would be, “from time to time,” unlike our Conspiracist-in-Chief’s continuous flow of fabricated fantasies.)

Not wanting to overwhelm the reader, I offer but a tiny first installment of his large collection of creepy political fairytales. Others appear in the following post or two:

Climate change is a communist plot invented by China
Obama was born in Africa
The world is run by a satanic cabal of elites and pedophiles led by Hillary Clinton
Russia didn’t have anything to do with undermining our 2016 election
Ted Cruz’s father had something to do with the Kennedy assassination
Vaccines cause autism
The voice on the Access Hollywood tape was dubbed
Crowdstrike framed Russia for election interference

FYI, I don’t believe that the perpetrator of these ego-assisting and politically motivated fringe fables actually believes most of them himself. He––and he’s not alone in this––has ulterior motives to spread these salacious stories. He and his most avid fans put the “con” in conspiracy!

How do conspiracies get started?

Here is an epic example of how a conspiracy theory begins. Early on in the Coronavirus pandemic, on FOX News and the president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr. said that the media (that is the media other than FOX of course) were overreacting. “It makes you wonder if there’s a political reason for that. … Impeachment didn’t work. And the Mueller Report didn’t work. And Article 25 didn’t work, so maybe now this is their next — their next attempt to get Trump.”

Okay, so the virus is made up by the Democrats! As ridiculous as that is, check out what he said next:

“I had the owner of a restaurant ask me last night, he said do you remember the North Korean leader promised a Christmas present? For America. Back in December. Could it be they got together with China and this is that present? I don’t know, but it really is something strange going on.” So, if it’s not the socialistic liberals here in this county it might well be the socialistic Koreans and Chinese!

So, some guy that owns a restaurant in Virginia speculates that the virus could be some sort of biological weapon released by foreign powers, and despite having zero evidence that it is anything more than a ridiculous conspiracy theory, Falwell thought it was a good idea to repeat it on national TV! Though he didn’t actually say it was true, he knows that millions of unwary Americans hang on his every word, so when he says, “Hmm, I wonder if such and such is true,” a Walmart warehouse-full of them will wonder too. What he did is the equivalent of yelling “Bomb!” in a crowded airport. It’s irresponsible and dangerous.

This is how conspiracies start. Some restaurant owner says something way above his own pay grade to an ideologue who loves using wacky theories to push his politically motivated ideology and who happens to have a very big microphone, and we’re off to the races!

(You’ve probably heard that, given his “conviction” that the virus was nothing but a made up crisis Mr. Falwell refused to close down the university’s in person classes, a decision that 4000 students petitioned to be changed. Though he walked that back a bit later, they were out of step with all the other universities in the country as well as with the community where Liberty is located.)

Sadly, another producer of industrial grade unsubstantiated deductions are the pulpits of some of our proud American churches. Megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne for instance, a regular font of fables, claims that the CIA trains ISIS fighters in the United States, that vaccines are part of a secret plot to sterilize people, and that there was a secret assassination attempt on President Trump. He has also promoted wild theories about the coronavirus and was the first pastor to be arrested for holding Sunday services while refusing to comply with the rule to avoid gatherings of more than ten people.

And then of course you have your television news outlets and radio shock jocks that are more loyal to their party line than to the truth, and anyone with a keyboard or a microphone with an agenda. Alex Jones, for example, whose absurdities are well documented and often repeated by the person occupying our country’s highest office. Here are a few of his choice hoaxes.

The Free Masons control the world.
The Sandy Hook massacre was a giant hoax.
The injuries and deaths of the Boston Marathon bombing were staged. If those aren’t weird enough for you, check these out:
The government has “weather weapons” to control the weather to wreak havoc on citizens.
The government is using chemicals in order to turn people gay, using a mysterious “gay bomb” devised by the Pentagon.

In the next few posts we’ll talk about what the Bible says about conspiracies, why they appeal to so many people, and the desperate need for discernment and sound thinking in the Church. Lastly, I’ll make a plea to those who are in love with their favorite conspiracy theories to “break up” with them before they wed them.

The Civility of the Meek

You may have noticed that disparate sociopolitical viewpoints are treated with less courtesy than they used to be, even among the sons and daughters of God. A lot of people seem to prefer to silence their opponents than to engage with them for the purpose of influencing their neighbors toward the way they believe is best for the common good.

I place no blame at the feet of those in high political office for the lack of civility in our national conversation. But from where I sit the present administration has exposed a number of malignancies in our culture, including many in the Christian community. Like the storm that unearthed a landfill, this political tsunami uncovered decades of decay in America and in the Body of Christ. Certain politicians, along with their fawning courtiers didn’t dump the trash there; they just excavated it.

Jesus modeled and taught us a new social order and then bequeathed it to our care to model and teach others. Even those outside his kingdom can benefit from a world in which his kingdom comes to rest.

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

“You will have to give an account for every careless word you utter.” (Matthew 12:36)

In case you’ve forgotten the inconsistency of the president’s claims regarding the danger of the Coronavirus, the following is a compilation of his own words complete with links to the times and places he said said them. (I’m indebted to the work of another who put the quotes and links together.)

“The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We have it totally under control. I’m not concerned at all. It’s one person coming in from China. We pretty much shut it down. It will all work out well. We’re in great shape. Doesn’t spread widely at all in the United States because of the early actions that myself and my administration took. There’s a chance it won’t spread. It’s something that we have tremendous control over.”

—————

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear. Just stay calm. It will go away. The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. This is their new hoax.”

—————

“Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared. Totally ready. We’re rated number one for being prepared. We are so prepared like we never have been prepared. Taking early intense action, we have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States. We’re very much ahead of everything.”

—————

This is a flu. I didn’t know people died from the flu. Here, we’re talking about a much smaller range. It is very mild. Some people will have this at a very light level. Some of them go to work.

—————

“The mortality rate is much, much better. In my opinion it’s way, way down. I think it’s substantially below 1 percent. A fraction of 1 percent. I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along. This is just my hunch.”

—————

“We have very little problem in this country. We only have five people. We only have 11 cases. Out of billions of people, 15 people. They’re getting better, and soon they’re all going to be better, hopefully. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”

—————

“The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point. To this point, and because we have had a very strong border policy, we have had 40 deaths. As of this moment, we have 50 deaths. I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be.”

—————

“Frankly, the testing has been going very smooth. The tests are all perfect. Anybody that wants a test can get a test. The tests are beautiful. We have a tremendous testing setup.”

—————

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. We are very close to a vaccine. A matter of months. You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact? Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. Based on very strong evidence.”

—————

“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter. No way I’m going to cancel the convention. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

—————

“We’re the ones that gave the great response. I’d rate it a 10. We’ve done a fantastic job. I think they should be appreciative. Gallup just gave us the highest rating. The highest on record.”

—————

“I like this stuff. I really get it. Maybe I have a natural ability. We think it’s going to have a very good ending. We’re going to win faster than people think. I hope.”

—————

“This blindsided the world! Who could have ever predicted a thing like this? This was something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country.”

—————

“I’ve always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously.”

—————

“If you’re talking about the virus, no, that’s not under control for anyplace in the world. I was talking about what we’re doing is under control, but I’m not talking about the virus. I didn’t say Easter. It was just an aspiration. I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE.”

—————

“So you’re talking about 2.2 million deaths. If we could hold that down…between 100,000 and 200,000, and we all together have done a very good job. START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!! FORD, GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!!!! Invoke “P”. I want our life back again.”

—————

“It was nobody’s fault. No, just things that happened. I don’t take responsibility at all.”

“You will have to give an account for every careless word you utter.” (Matthew 12:36)

To those who give him a mulligan for not knowing all the facts in an unfolding situation I say that he didn’t have to make up his own “alternative facts.” As the facts were unfolding he could’ve repeated what his experts were telling him, things like: “The facts aren’t all in yet, but we’re monitoring this very closely. In the meantime, it is advisable for you to…” As you can see from his very words, that’s not even close to what he did and in some cases continues to do.

The crisis isn’t his fault but, by fiddling while America burns, he and his apple-polishing media fans bear some responsibility for increasing its severity.