Don’t be deceived

The mainstream media is becoming an increasingly untrustworthy source of news. More and more, they too often serve as mouthpieces of the State, parroting the line from Washington, London, or Berlin, and compiling “facts” that fit the narrative, while omitting other inconvenient facts that don’t. Many “news” stories are so one-sided they could be more properly called editorials.

This should not come as a surprise to us. Western culture has been becoming increasingly secular and hostile to Christian values for the best part of 100 years now. To expect that secular news organizations in secular countries are going to take a principled stand for the truth would be naïve to say the least.

So how do we discern what is and isn’t the truth? Are there ways we can discern what is really happening? Is it even important that we do, or should we just settle for being utterly cynical about everything we hear?

In this article, I want to lay out a few principles for telling truth from falsehood. This is certainly not an exhaustive or fool-proof guide for truth discernment, but I hope it might provide something of a starting point for anyone wanting to take a more discerning look at what is going on in the world right now.

1. We can’t know everything

The first point that must be acknowledged is that we are not omniscient, and there are not enough hours in the day to research all information available about every important subject. We must realize that there are things we will never find out, and there is also the near certainty that some news we believe to be true will turn out to be false.

There is a certain type of person who wants to establish the truth with certainty so much that they end up devoting hours and hours, researching every conspiracy theory under the sun. This isn’t healthy. At the end of the day, God is far less interested in whether we finally uncover what really went on in Benghazi or who “really” shot JFK, than whether we are loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves.

2. We should take reasonable steps to find out the truth

That being said, there is a balance to be had, and we should make reasonable attempts to establish what is really going on. For two reasons:

First, we are called to “buy the truth and sell it not” (Proverbs 23:23). We might ordinarily think of this in terms of the Gospel and God’s Word, yet the principle applies to all areas of life. If God is a God of truth—and He is—and if He is Lord of everything—which He is—then we should have a desire not only to know the Ultimate Truth, but also a desire to see truth established on Earth as it is in Heaven. This will require finding out what is really going on.

Second, failure to make reasonable attempts to find out what is really going on gives our ungodly rulers carte blanche to carry on doing whatsoever they wish. Blithely accepting what we are told from the likes of CNN and the BBC makes us nothing more than putty in the hands of tyrants—easily fooled, easily manipulated, and easily controlled. Christians have often fallen to playing this role, and we shouldn’t continue making this mistake.

3. Understand the overarching narrative of the world

The starting point for discerning truth is to discern The Truth. Think about this for a moment from a faith perspective. How do you know that God is? I am guessing that you have at some point—whether consciously or sub-consciously—made some sort of rational assumptions based on the data you see all around you and in your own heart.

You know that a universe exists; you know that it is full of complexity; you see a world steeped in sin; you know that your own heart is full of iniquity; you know that the things of this world—in and of themselves—never give you ultimate fulfillment; yet you know that you have an unquenchable desire to find fulfillment and purpose; you know that right and wrong exist; you feel guilty when you do something wrong; you have a yearning for justice, but you rarely see it being carried out by men. You know all of this, and you search for something that explains it all. Nothing fits until Jesus Christ comes into your life, and then you know you have found the answers you were looking for. He is the overarching narrative, and with this knowledge you have the key to explaining life, the universe, and everything.

4. Understand the overarching narrative of a news story

In the same way that we might look at the issues of life through the lens of the overarching cosmic narrative, so too we can begin to discern the truth of what we are being told by looking at the “facts” we are given, through an overarching narrative. So we look at the trajectory of, say, the U.S. government and its foreign policy. What are its aims? Who is driving it? Once we know the answers to those types of questions, if it turns out that the U.S. government had been trying to cover up the events surrounding the deaths of four men in Benghazi because there was a far bigger scandal standing behind these deaths, would we be surprised? Not if we have been reading the overarching narrative correctly. That narrative has been on a very specific trajectory under several presidents, and if we correctly discern what that trajectory is, it won’t then come as any surprise to us when we find out that they have been involved in some extremely shady dealings.

5. Don’t fall into the “good guy/bad guy” trap

One of the perennial temptations we have is to identify “good guys” who we always consider enlightened and wise in their dealings, and “bad guys” who we always think act because of evil motives. Sometimes this may be the case, but most of the time the world is much more complex than that. As any marriage counselor will tell you, there are usually three sides to the story: his, hers, and the truth.

Coming at a news item with the assumption that President A is good and therefore everything he does must be good, while President B is bad and therefore everything he does must be bad, is likely to lead us to miss the truth of what is going on. Remember, President A is a sinner and is unlikely to always be acting out of pure motives, and President B is the recipient of God’s common grace and in a particular instance may be acting righteously. It is natural for us to want to evaluate what we hear based on this “good guy/bad guy” approach, because it can relieve us of doing research and analysis, but it can lead to ignoring or excusing the actions of the “good guy,” while reacting with cynicism to everything done by the “bad guy.” Such an approach can set us up for choking on gnats and swallowing camels.

6. Learn to sniff out bias

There are some news items where there really would be no reason for a news organization to do anything other than report the facts. There are other news pieces where they might have every reason to distort the facts. We should learn to discern between these by asking whether there might be some vested interest within the news organization presenting a skewed picture. Some general questions we should ask might be: Who is doing the reporting? What is the institutional bias of the news organization? Might they have a reason for distorting or omitting certain facts? Has their report clearly sought to explain the points of view of both sides? Answers to these types of questions will help us to sniff out whether we should believe what they have told us, or if we should hold off reaching conclusions until we have verified their “facts.”

7. Look up alternative news sources

While major news organizations are increasingly biased and untrustworthy, God has graciously given us other sources of information which often challenge the versions of events pumped out by mainstream organizations. One of the most interesting exercises one can do is to read a report from the likes of CNN or the BBC, and then look up what some of the new English-speaking foreign news organizations are saying about the same issue. Often, you find a completely different set of facts, which cast the narrative in a very different light.

In the West, we have often been quite smug and complacent about this, assuming that the propaganda is all one way. Much of this attitude goes back to the days of the Soviet Union, which was undoubtedly a propaganda machine. Yet, those days are long gone, and we are now in no position to claim the moral high ground. If we don’t understand that the major news organizations in the West are pumping out propaganda every day, then we are in for a rude awakening when we find out how badly we have been misled.

Of course, these alternative media sources may also be selling us propaganda and distorted facts, but we now have more means at our disposal than ever before to crosscheck facts and try to piece together what is really happening in the world. But coming back to the first point, when you crosscheck the “facts” you are being told, be careful not to let your time searching out more facts crowd out other essential ways of loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. 

Rob Slane lives with his wife and five home-educated children in Salisbury, England. He is the author of The God Reality: A Critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, contributes to the Canadian magazine Reformed Perspective, and blogs on cultural issues from a Biblical perspective at www.theblogmire.com.