John 14:6 “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
1 John 4:16 “God is love.”
Ephesians 2:14 “For he himself is our peace.”
We hear today a lot about ‘fake news,’ but this is nothing new. Fake news has often been used to mislead people for financial, political or other purposes ever since the dawn of human history. Didn’t the serpent use fake news (lies about God) in the Garden of Eden?
We are seeing today on how governments, political parties and public relations people use fake news to enhance their particular view point. Code of Ethics for professional journalists is to never “deliberately distort facts or context.” It is like Denzel Washington said: “By not reading the newspapers today we are uninformed, but reading them we are misinformed.”
We are living in a day of great deception. Holy Spirit warned us about this day when He said: “Everyone lies to his neighbor; their flattering lips speak with deception.” Psalms 12:2
President Trump just appointed a Supreme Court nominee – Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy left by Judge Scalia. But here is the problem: In the US Judicial system the president nominates the Supreme Court justice and senate must approve them. However, it is like someone said: “It means that by definition, the US justice system is politically bent from the top down. If the Supreme Court is subject to the influence of political interests, can we even expect objectivity anywhere in the judicial system?”
When we consider this, we see that ‘ego is king’ and so our personal, sectarian, financial or political interests determine the way the country is run. This is true, not only of the USA, but in every country in the world. This is human nature; this is what we call ‘recognition of evil.’ “Those who seek my life set their traps, those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they plot deception.” Psalms 38:12
Sociologists have been writing about our narcissism since the 1970s. Christopher Lasch in his book: THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM: AMERICAN LIFE IN AND AGE OF DIMINISHING EXPECTRATIONS proposes that since World War 2 “America has produced a personality-type consistent with clinical definitions of “pathological narcissism.”
We are seeing that selfishness is becoming an epidemic resulting in depression, out of control divorce rates, violence that is on the increase, substance abuse and a growing alienation from one another. We could go on and mention the political disputes, etc., but we get the point. To me one of the great verses in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 5:15 “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” The answer to self is Christ and Christ alone.
To correct the society that we live in we must do something about human nature. Didn’t Jesus tell Peter and His disciples to deny self and follow Him? Christ showed us the way when He said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
We are alienated from one another – our neighbors, our families, etc. It is not the outer space that needs to be conquered, but the hostile space that exists between one another. This can only come about through Christ. Paul told us: “He (Christ) himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”
Knowing this – what should we as followers of Christ be doing? The word that Christ gave us 2000 years ago was to go. He (Jesus) made the way and now it is up to us who follow Christ to take this message of reconciliation into the sphere that God has called us to. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-20