God spoke the universe into existence.
“Then God said ‘let there be light.”
God created an orderly universe out of nothingness merely by uttering a word. He didn’t have to do it that way. He chose to speak a word.
Amazingly, he gifted us with the power to speak. We are made in God’s image. JRR Tolkien called our storytelling an act of “sub-creation” in which we mirror God’s actions by creating something through our words. Words in that way exalted God. In a way, speaking, telling stories is a form of worship.
Our words can be used for great good. They can also be misused, to misdirect. A lie is essentially an attempt to create an alternative to truth, an alternate reality in the mind of the listener -a world separate and distinct from the one God created.
The first words recorded in the Bible by the first man, are the incredibly powerful and exalting:
“This one, at last, is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
This one shall be called ‘woman,’
Wow. That’s a pretty good start.
But then things go south quickly. It’s not long after that we see language misused pretty quickly in the Bible. The serpent lies to Eve. He misuses language and that leads the man and woman to play the blame game. Eve blames the Serpent: “The snake tricked me!!!”
And Adam bravely and curiously blames Eve and God: “The woman whom you put here with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.”
We descended pretty quickly from “this one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” to “She did it!!!!!”
This amazing power of speech can be used for great good and terrible evil.
When Jesus sought to teach us about the true nature of the world and ourselves, he told a story. We call them parables but they’re stories. Our minds are made to learn through stories. God created us in that way. He meant us to learn through stories and tell stories.
When we tell stories we say the words that point to a greater reality. The words are stitched together and create something new, something new that didn’t exist before. And if the story is true it points to something true and ancient and enduring. In short, it points to God.
We live in an age where words spread across the world faster than anyone in a previous generation could’ve ever imagined. We speak things into existence all across the world. Media personalities and news people understand the amazing power of their words. They know their reach. But the power to communicate more effectively doesn’t mean we’re also better in moral terms.
Words that have the power to reach across the globe should be carefully considered. But that is not the case. In fact, the opposite seems true.
We live in an age that doesn’t truly believe in “truth.”
As a kid I remember thinking about that question by Pilate. “What is truth?” It seemed so silly to me for a big powerful important adult to question the very nature of truth. But those are exactly the right ones who would do such a thing.
And an even greater surprise to me, that ancient question became the most crucial and important question of my age. It truly shows how timeless the Bible truly is. Much like Pilate we ask “What is truth?”
What is human life? Why is gender? Who decides in a world without truth?
In a world such as ours we must ask, what is a news organization in an age that doesn’t believe in truth? Then it is a propaganda organization. It is a “narrative” factory.
We see similar things in our art. True art seeks to exalt. The goal of propaganda, on the other hand, is to manipulate. The goal of true art is to reveal the actual nature of things. We often see a character who thinks one way until confronted by another force. That character then either changes or doesn’t depending on whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy but reality is the constant. The character must decide whether to change in the fact of reality.
The goal of the propagandist is not to follow a character’s change but to change you. The goal of the propagandist is to not change ourselves but the nature of reality.
John Keats wrote that
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Beauty is truth. Truth is beauty. When things are not true, however, they can not be beautiful. So much of our modern narratives and art do not correspond to reality, when our art seeks to manipulate rather than exalt, it can not be beautiful because it is not true. That is why modern art fails. It does not point to truth because the artist themselves don’t believe in truth.
It is the same with journalism. When I read so much that fills modern newspapers I become frustrated because what I’m reading is not truth. It’s not just mistakes I’m talking about. I’m talking about lies, distortions of reality for a cause the journalist believes to be greater than truth. The moment you supplant some goal higher than truth you’re in dangerous territory.
The one example people always give is lying to a Nazi about the whereabouts of a Jewish family. Obviously, you lie to the Nazi. “They went thataway!!!” The problem for the modern journalist is everyone seems to be a Nazi. They find most people contemptible, even their readers. You are not owed “truth” whatever that is. You must be manipulated and guided towards their way of thinking.
And the further they get from truth, the uglier normal people find the media and the arts. We shun them and distance ourselves from them. And the more we shun them, the more desperate their lies become, straying further and further from truth, which is beauty.
And to the reader or the listener or the movie-goer or the art connoisseur, the world seems to be an ugly place. And what can save it? More words, more art that tells people they must change. They only grow more insistent.
Until we accept the nature of truth our world will continue being ugly.
