I don’t think there’s ever been a year where the power of the media became such a subject of public focus. Somehow, we have always assumed — naively, perhaps — that for the most part what we saw and read was a reasonable representation of reality.
No longer.
People can blame the American election, but I think that also is naive. We are in the midst of a wave of confusion sweeping over all of western culture. We understand the role of propaganda in a totalitarian state, but we assume that the guarantees of free speech our society has been built on also guarantees an impartial media.
So what has happened to change that?
In a word — postmodernism.
Postmodernism was just gaining traction when I was at university, so it’s taken quite a while to get up a head of steam. And I hate to disappoint anyone, but there is absolutely nothing new in the ideas it offers. It denies that anyone can know objective truth, and then says that how each society operates is determined by a struggle between different groups of people and whoever comes out on top gets to impose their version of truth and set the political and social agenda.
It is completely self-contradictory. How can you say I have found the absolute truth that no one can know the truth? You don’t have to be a philosopher to figure out there’s something wrong with that. And how about making up my own version of truth and imposing it on everyone else?
And it’s nothing new. The ancient Sophists who gave Socrates so much trouble believed exactly the same thing: nobody can know the truth, so let’s make up our own truth to suit our political and social ends. Socrates asked the question how people who claimed there was no truth seemed to be so certain of so many things. It seems not much has changed.
And so we have people running around our university campuses saying that anyone who disagrees with them makes them feel “unsafe” and needs to be “cancelled.” The most prestigious newspaper in the United States has been taken over by the same crowd. Cambridge University has been forced to issue a policy statement that academics can actually speak their own mind without fear of reprisal. Why was there even any debate about that?
As Christians, we are people of the truth. We follow the One who claimed not only to know but also to represent absolute truth in his own person. That puts us right in the line of their fire. But if we respond only by using truth as a weapon to destroy them, we have missed the point of our faith.
We do need to make sure this mistaken thinking does not enter the church. We need to bring a lot more discernment to what we read in the media. But don’t get embroiled in pointless arguments. This movement will crumble away and disappear sooner than you think. In the meantime, our best weapon is to live the truth we believe. That means to love unconditionally and to be gracious in our response as we give account for the hope that is in us.
This is the culture of the kingdom. It has outlasted two thousand years of opposition.
It doesn’t cancel people, but by God’s love and power, it cancels the lies they believe in.
Engraved on the words of my old college in the University of Toronto are the words of Jesus, “The truth shall make you free.” I’m surprised the rioters haven’t tried to erase them.
But, thanks be to God, the truth will outlast them. And it will still be setting people free when cancel culture has long since been cancelled.
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