Embracing Diversity as a Family Blog #8: Chapter 6. Accurate Information?

Posted August 31, 2024

The Holy Bible, the Word of God, is the lens through which Christians should view their lives and the culture that they live in. God’s Word is immutable, unchanging, and unerring, regardless of what societies promote as legitimate lifestyles or pass into laws. Since the beginning of God’s Creation, the enemy, satan, has used distorted truth to confuse and corrupt humankind, ultimately targeting God’s people. Instead of being image-bearers of His truth, we are tempted by this evil adversary to deceive, disregard, lie, manipulate, and twist the truth of God’s Word in and for our selfish benefit. When we do this, it is a victory for the enemy, so he keeps at it day-after-day, year-after-year, throughout all time on earth, his domain. Thankfully, Christians who confess their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as God’s Son and their Savior, are spared the fires of hell that are our just reward for sin in eternity beyond this earthly life.

From the beginning of ancient history, the evil one has seduced mankind away from God. After Adam and Eve fell into sin in the Garden of Eden by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil — the one and only thing forbidden by God in their paradise — the evil one went after their children. He created sibling rivalry and jealousy between Cain and Abel. Chapter 4 of Genesis recounts the brothers’ relationship and eventual tragic murder by Cain of Abel. Verse 9 recounts the lie — the inaccurate and manipulated information — that Cain replied to God’s query, Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” And so the lies and manipulation passed from the parent to the child, and they continue today throughout our global society.

In recent history, notably evil foreign regimes have made truth into lies and lies into “truth” broadcast through government-controlled — or at least manipulated — press. Lies were constantly blasted by Radio Hanoi to undermine US troop morale until their withdrawal in 1973 from South Vietnam, with “Hanoi Hannah”, the female mouthpiece of the North Vietnamese Army. Also in the 20th century, the propaganda of men like Adolph Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Ferdinand Marcos, and Joseph Stalin quickly come to mind as leaders who twisted truth for their own gain and their own people’s demise.

Sadly, this drive for control over truth still goes on worldwide. Speech is being censored across all platforms including social media. Print papers and broadcast outlets are controlled by elected tyrants or ‘lapdog’ corporate influencers. Laws that were originally meant to reign in evil, instead unleash it and abolish Christian proselytizing (Gospel sharing in word and deed) and lawful civil protests against injustice. Lies are promulgated at the expense of truth. Contemporary examples of this “lie becomes truth” false information include the US Democratic party’s attempt to prevent their fellow Democratic party member Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s testimony at a congressional hearing on the very topic of censorship. And in Hanoi, the Vietnamese government plans to restart their loudspeaker broadcasts by 2025.

The late, honorable man of God, theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer, was from a hardworking, patriotic German family. One day, he realized that Adolph Hitler was lying about his beliefs and intentions to have Germany dominate as the world’s greatest power through taking over the Nazi Party. Der Fuhrer was manipulating truth to secure his quest by exterminating the weak, the malformed, the homosexuals, the Jews and Gypsies, and any others he considered to be less than the perfect Aryan race. Additionally, Hitler was arresting then murdering his political enemies and naysayers. Bonhoffer resisted, eventually giving up his own life for the cause of righteous truth. As history seems to be repeating itself in this century, will we as Christians stand for “biblical truth” against the lies of “manufactured truth”?

In the USA, our elected officials lie to us more than ever before. They manipulate the truth to their advantage for what is their version supposedly “for our own good”. After all, we are deplorable if we convey the truth when we call them out regarding their lies. Revered founding fathers such as Washington and Jefferson lived by and presented the truth when they helped to create a free nation, under God, indivisible. Yet, because they were slaveholders, many Americans now disparage and disrespect their biblically-based motives for creating a nation where “We the People” should be individually and collectively valued, able to express and enjoy inalienable rights bestowed on each of us by the Creator. The founders’ sin of slavery was not acceptable, but we cannot throw out all of the good things they did alongside the bad into the burning trash heap. Our Constitution was worth dying for in the late 1700s and remains so today; it should not be changed with the times but revered for all time.

[Chapter continues in the book.]

Here is the Amazon link for Embracing Diversity as a Family: Preparing the Next Generation to Flourish.

sharimcminn

Shari Howard McMinn is an author, editor, farmer, writer, and most importantly Mom to 11 children. Widowed very unexpectedly on June 2, 2013, Shari continued the direction of her life built with her late husband, Cary, and launched her public speaking and writing business which he had often encouraged her to do. Drawing from her 'over the top' life, she writes non-fiction and presents PowerPoint talks on issues related to family life, including adoption, childhood nutrition, family economics, homeschooling, and proactive parenting. She is available for broadcast interviews and presentations in Colorado and surrounding states, as well as Florida and Georgia. A dynamic speaker, Shari engages the audience with her true-life storytelling and practical advice based on experience and biblical wisdom.