We often hear praise for having
an open mind, but what if your mind is so open that common sense completely
falls out?
____________________________________________________________
I cannot believe this happened
to me… AGAIN!
I allowed my buddy Jerry to talk
me into going to a little hole-in-the-wall taco stand for lunch. The place has
like four tables. The last time we went there, a couple weeks before the
election, we were discussing the news. I said something like, ‘Trump is
claiming the election is rigged. I wonder whether he’ll stick to that claim if
he wins?’
Before Jerry could say anything,
a rabid Trump supporter came over to the table and began telling me how Awesome
Trump was, how He was going to Make America Great Again (It was almost as if she spoke in
capital letters). I asked her whether the recent news of Trump’s disgusting
remarks about grabbing women had changed her opinion somewhat, and she reacted like I’d
accused Trump of being an illegal alien. That recording was fake! It was
just a Hillary plot to discredit her savior Trump, etc. At this point, Jerry
and I both pointed out to her that we had no horse in this race – that we were
completely apolitical, neutral, don’t care who wins, that we wouldn’t be voting
for either candidate.
“Not voting is the same as
voting for Hillary,” she said. I don’t follow the math there – maybe it’s connected
to how a Hillary win would prove voter fraud but a Trump win would prove he was
on the side of the angels. We finally got ourselves disentangled from her –
fortunately, most people get their tacos to go at that place, and hers were getting
cold.
I swore I’d never go back.
Today, Jerry insisted we go - he loves the food and the low prices. What could go wrong? The election is over, I now
have a better understanding of the acoustics in the place. I went.
So Jerry brought up a mutual
friend who is very bright but seems to have a blind spot where it comes to ‘secret
knowledge’, conspiracy theories, etc. I said my problem with conspiracy
theories was what they all have in common – the teller of the story claims to
have acquired some insider knowledge that the majority of us don’t have. How come he has it and the rest of us don't?
“Like that fake pizza parlor story,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, you know, that story
about what’s-her-name,” (I purposely didn’t say Hillary, even though I was
speaking quietly, just in case the ONLY OTHER person in the café was a Trump
supporter) "supposedly running a sex-ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor
in Baltimore.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Totally fake story. But a
guy believed it, went in and shot up the place. The FBI got involved, proved
the story came from the computer of a high-level Trump supporter, who admitted
he made it up.”
You'll notice I accidentally used the word "Trump" out loud. Before I could finish, I was
interrupted by the ONLY OTHER patron in the place… you guessed it: Trump
supporter. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhearing. Do you mind if I join your
conversation?”
“Actually, I do mind…”
“That story was true! Just
because you read something in the New
York Times that says otherwise doesn’t make it not true! Stop being a
sheeple! Hillary is running a pedophile sex ring in Washington, and they’re
trying to cover it up!”
- To Jerry: “I am never. eating.
here. again. I don’t care how good their carne asada is.” –To the fat woman in
the leopard print stretch pants: “You are NOT welcome in this conversation. I
was talking with my friend here, NOT you. Please leave us alone.” Not that she
was inclined to, but her tacos arrived.
Jerry, of course, finds all this
hilarious.
Here’s why I find this serious
enough to write about. In a conversation between Jesus and Pilate, Jesus said ‘Everyone
who is on the side of Truth listens to me.’ Pilate sarcastically replied, “What
is truth?”
2000 years ago, there was
already a tendency to question the Truth – to at least doubt, to raise doubts
as to whether absolute truth was even knowable.
Jesus foretold that the Good
News of the Kingdom would be preached in all the inhabited earth right before
the end. (Matthew 24:14) Satan will do anything to obscure it. Since he doesn’t have much of an
imagination, he’s using the same old tool – obfuscate the truth.
In the 1960s you could tell
someone, for example, that when we die we return to dust, we become nothing, we
exist only in God’s memory… there is no “soul” that flies off to somewhere
else. To prove it, you simply cracked open your Bible (or theirs) to Ezekiel 18:4,
Ecclesiastes 9:10, and John 11:11.
They then had to choose
between two, and ONLY TWO options: either change their beliefs to harmonize
with the Bible, or live the rest of their life knowing their beliefs didn’t
match what the Bible plainly said. The Bible was considered the final authority. There even used to
be a bumper sticker that read,
“The Bible says it, I believe it, and that
settles it.”
I loved talking to people who had that bumper sticker.
Today, though, for more and more
people, the Bible doesn’t settle anything. Show them a scripture that directly
contradicts their beliefs, and they are just as likely to reply, ‘Yes, but Jung
said,’ or, ‘modern science has proven,’ or, ‘my preacher says’ or, ‘I think…’
So someone can make up a
completely false ‘news’ story about a sex ring operating out of a basement of a
pizza parlor (the place has no basement, btw), and ten million people believe
it. Two weeks later, after multiple respected national news agencies reported that the guy admitted to the FBI that he made the whole thing up, do all ten million people admit
to themselves that they were duped? No. Some do. But there are still a
few million or so who stick to the made-up story.
Jesus only said the preaching of
the Good News would be completed before the end comes. He didn’t say – but it
makes sense – that the preaching of the Good News also has another deadline: It needs to be completed before
humanity completely loses its ability to tell the difference between Truth and
lies.
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