Our older son’s best friend always had wanted to be a news broadcaster. From the time we knew him in his high school days, it was his clear goal. He enrolled in a university known for its media program and began his studies.
Two years later, he came over to our house on a spring or summer break, and I asked him how things were going at school, only to hear that he had changed majors. Shocked, I asked what had happened to make him abandon his dream.
In a nutshell, he had become totally disillusioned with the way the media business was being run. He realized, even as a sophomore in college, that he would not be allowed to tell the unvarnished truth, but would be constantly monitored and judged according to a set of standards in which he did not believe.
His willingness to scrap his plans and redirect his career path reflected more than just the death of an idealistic young person’s dream. He was, and is, a person who pursues truth wherever it takes him. His integrity would never allow him to squash a story or leave out key details as he was being asked to do.
My fear is that many in our nation have no such grid with which to filter the “news” that’s out there today. They seem to take it all in without questioning the sources, based upon what they already believe.
It’s called “confirmation bias,” meaning that all of the story that fits your preconceived idea gets through, but you filter out anything that might disrupt your ideas, make you uncomfortable, or prove you wrong.
That’s not new, of course. It was the Pharisee’s confirmation bias that led them to treat John the Baptist as just another crazy prophet, and Jesus as being energized by Satan.
Bias of any sort, whether racial, nationalistic, or age-based, is only one more symptom of fallen human nature. In ourselves, we tend to choose to believe and repeat what advances our cause, even at the expense of truth. But Jesus calls us to a higher standard.
So how is your truth grid? There are many opinions out there, and we will not judge correctly 100 percent of the time. But we must try. We don’t want to be good but gullible.
“You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky.
How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?”
Luke 12:56–57