Really Not About Politics
A few months ago America was in the midst of the pre-election, presidential and political campaign season. While some lesser races may have been seen as being far too close to call and ultimately too unpredictable for any political pundit to stake their reputation on seeking to predict, when it came to the White House there seemed to be no such mystery. There was no doubt about it. It was going to be a “slam-dunk” for the first female president in American History. All of the polls pointed to it. The majority of the pundits predicted it. So many of the millions of megabytes’ worth of information out there – from radio talk shows, to newspaper columns, to television news, to the internet and back through again – was abuzz with information initially highlighting Hillary’s upcoming landslide ride right straight into the heart of the Oval Office.
Popular television personalities boldly, comically, caustically and continually referred to Donald Trump’s campaign as a “joke.” The ridicule was rampant and the sarcasm saturation level was beyond epidemic. News of him and his campaign’s absolute, ultimate, and guaranteed demise was pretty much anywhere and everywhere one searched for their news and information. In fact, such predictions were inescapable even if one wasn’t looking for political news or information; it seemed to permeate every corner of our electronic media (See for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahkMA6JPOHU). Why, even several of the more powerful political figures in his own party bought into the agenda-driven, miserably-misguided, personal wishful-thinking mountains of media-distorted, provided, and perverted misinformation and calculation, as they deserted, denounced, and distanced themselves from him in the weeks immediately preceding the election… of our new, now, President Donald Trump.
Now, before I go any further, please understand that this article IS DEFINITELY NOT about former Secretary of State Clinton, or President Trump. If you walk away from this article thinking that its main point has anything to do with politics or political figures as any more than a pertinent illustration to be used for far more important purposes than mere earthly politics, then you have completely missed the point and need to go back and re-read it. Clear? Good.
So just what is the point of the previously utilized political illustration? Simply this. As New Testament Christians living and seeking to expand our Lord’s kingdom in this age of instantaneously-available, electronic mass-media and the mountain of biblical misinformation available at the touch of a button to everyone in the world on a limitless and infinite scale, there’s a few things we must come to understand. People today just don’t feel the need to listen to the biblical, black and white, “book, chapter, and verse” truth we have to share. We are seen as just one more, infinitesimally tiny voice amongst the millions of worldly sources, resources, and websites for their spiritual answers. People today are being raised and programmed to ask, trust, and put their faith more in “Siri’s” answers than in the Spirit’s. It’s becoming more natural to “google” the answer to their religious questions than to take the time to actually seek and study God’s answers from His eternally-settled in heaven truth (Ps. 119:89). But here’s the thing: In so doing – just like with the campaign illustration earlier – the vast majority of the internet information they will access, will tragically refute, ridicule, pervert and contradict the truth more than proving and providing it. One can find anything, ANYTHING – any ungodly practice justified; any Satanic sin glorified; and any God-given scripture twisted, tortured, and perverted to the point of “proving” just exactly the opposite of what God intended – on any number of so-called ‘religious’ websites. The fact is that no matter how high-tech and lightning-fast the internet becomes, it is still only a man-made, bible-bending, agenda-pushing, consumer-driven, word of God warping, “garbage in garbage out,” wishful-thinking instead of spiritually sound and speaking, humanly-produced resource.
So how do we deal with that? Easy. Remember; we have something to offer the hopeless and hurting people all around us that electronics still cannot. Warmth. Compassion. Community. Fellowship. Friendship. Caring. Love. Acceptance. In other words, the soul-satisfying human touch of spiritual kindness, tenderness, belonging and Christ-likeness, that old, bold, cold-voiced Siri and her computer-generated counterparts simply cannot. Let us be a real friend who truly cares for the lost world around us first. And then, when they have biblical and spiritual questions, just maybe they’ll come to us and actually get God’s truth spoken in love instead of e-error (Eph. 4:11-16; Ro. 3:4).
The morning after the November Presidential election, millions of mis-informed Americans who had placed their faith totally in the fallible numbers and fabricated man-made information found at electronic mass-media outlets woke up miserable. But unlike those who are willing to trust the internet for their spiritual information without question, these Americans’ misery will only likely last eight years at best, instead of for eternity.