Today's Scripture Reading (December 18, 2022): Ecclesiastes 9
In "Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and Human
Experience," Steve Maraboli writes, "It has been noted that actions speak louder than words.
The truth is, I have found that during many situations in life, words are just
noise... and actions are the ONLY things that speak." I live in a very noisy culture, and social media only seems to have increased the volume. The
problem is, while we are hearing a lot of things yelled at us, so much of what
we hear is, at best, white noise and, at worst, outright lies. I frequently have various
conversations with people, and it is unnerving how often what people believe is
true can best be summed up as a conspiracy theory that is filled with untruths.
A post on this blog about the murder of kids at Sandy Hook Elementary School
several years ago was greeted by a group of Alex Jones disciples directing me
to videos on YouTube that "proved" that Sandy Hook never happened. (I watched some of
the videos, but they provided little proof.) I recently had a discussion with a gentleman who argued that God had decreed
that Donald Trump would win re-election in 2024, ushering in a golden age for
the Christian Church. And people in my orbit remind me of this "Promise of God" frequently. (So I guess there is little
reason for anyone to get out and vote in 2024, God has apparently placed his
hand on the scale.) I am skeptical; I am one of those conservatives praying for someone else to run under the Republican
banner in 2024. The noise informs me that the world is flat, the moon landing
never happened, and Joe Biden lost the 2020 election. Maybe there is nothing unusual about these beliefs except that now there are so many people who are
willing to accept these opinions and others as facts rather than, at the very least, critically examining the claims to see if they might be true or
false.
Yet, the shouts are
increasing. The noise is almost unbearable, and we are challenged to believe in everything that we are being
told. During Barak Obama's reign as President of the United States, a well-meaning Christian sent me an email with a
picture of Barak Obama taking the Oath of Office. But the message was that
President Obama was a satanist, or at the very least that he had
never been sworn into office. The proof in the email was that, in the picture, the new President had his right hand on the Bible
and his left hand raised to take the oath. The Constitution specifies that the
President-elect will place his left hand on the Bible, and his right hand is to be raised to take the oath. And a note in the email included a comment that if you think this is
photoshopped, it isn't,
and the proof was that President Obama's wedding ring was on his left hand, the one that was raised to take
the oath, as it should be.
A picture is worth a thousand
words. And this one was definitely worth that. What amused me about this unphotoshopped picture is that, apparently, all the generals got up that morning and placed
their medals on the wrong side of their uniforms. Someone had changed the hand displaying the President's ring but had forgotten to change the medals of the generals in the background, who were still wearing their medals on the wrong side of their
uniforms.
We hear a lot of things in
our Media driven society. And not all of the noise is trying to sell us
something, but we need to be careful. If it sounds beyond belief, then it probably is. I agree that the political views of the
reporter influence all media. None of us are as objective as we wish that we
were. Whatever the noise is, we need to examine it. And amid the noise of our
society, we need to remember the voice of the wise is often very softly spoken.
If we aren't listening
for it, we will likely miss the very voices we need to hear and be dominated by the noise that isn't worth hearing.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading:
Ecclesiastes 10
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