The word of the year is "Post-Truth"???

“Truthiness: the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.”  Stephen Colbert

  One of my favorite apps on my smart phone is a dictionary program. When we go on vacation, if there’s a strong possibility we won’t have cell service so I can’t access it, I’ll pack a dictionary.

  Oxford Dictionaries recently announced The Word of the Year for 2016. It’s “POST-TRUTH.” Talk about a “huh?” moment.

  “Post-truth” is defined as “an adjective relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Sadly, post-truth is not new. This concept has been in existence for some time. It’s just that Oxford Dictionaries have seen a spike in frequency of questions regarding post-truth this past year with the political situations in Britain and the U.S.A. It’s an outcome of postmodernism and relativism. Words devolve so that eventually they have little definable meaning.

  This compound word, post-truth, exemplifies an expansion in the meaning of the prefix “post” that’s become increasingly prominent in recent years. Instead of simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event, as in post-war or post-match, the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like “belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant.”

  Post-truth appears to have been first used in a 1992 essay by late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich lamented that “we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world.” A book, The Post-truth Era, by Ralph Keyes appeared in 2004. Comedian Stephen Colbert, has popularized an informal word related to post-truth, truthiness, defined as “the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.”

  Rather than wringing our hands or clucking our tongues, a post-truth world presents opportunities as well as challenges for the Church. Ours is a skeptical, cynical age where truth is increasingly in short supply.

  Be honest. Who do you really trust? Cynicism begins to creep into our hearts, contaminating our outlook on life. It’s not the way God wants us to live. His will is for us to choose to focus on the truth (Philippians 4:8). Polls show we don’t trust that our leaders, political or corporate are telling us the truth. If we listen to someone in the media with a different worldview than ours, we listen cynically, even questioning their integrity and commitment to truth. We’ve reached a sad point where we expect lawyers, lobbyists, journalists, talk-show hosts, politicians and anyone else on the public stage to spin truth in a self-serving way. Truth is devalued and sometimes totally lost. Lloyd Steffen insightfully observed, “Honesty now looks like a dubious virtue if not an actual vice. It is studied and examined as a stratagem rather than as a hallmark of character.”

  We can make a difference! Truth is not optional for the Church. God commands us, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). Honesty is the first rule of all relationships. The New Testament further unpacks this, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (Ephesians 4:25). In a culture where words are increasing exponentially and truth is cheap, believers are to always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For the Christ-follower, “truthiness” or “post-truth” are never options.

  Yet, commitment to truth is a choice. Scripture warns us that our hearts are deceptive (Jeremiah 17:9). Lying is easy, even “natural” because of sin. It’s all-consuming. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal how greatly entrenched deception is in our hearts. I question if it’s possible to persuade someone who is dishonest to be truthful. Instead, they must first be confronted with the truth of God’s Word. It’s the revelation of God’s Word and holiness which dispels deception and reveals our sinfulness.

  We must also realize how vile lying is – it’s Satanic. Satan was the first liar. Lying is so repugnant to God that the only instance we find of Him striking someone dead in the New Testament was when Ananias and Sapphira lied to the church (Acts 5). Afterwards, the Apostle Peter made two powerful observations – Satan had filled their hearts and they had lied to the Holy Spirit. If we wanted to convince people to be honest today that would work! Let a few members in the congregation keel over if they lied and everyone would immediately clean up their act.  

  Post-truth is a relationship murderer. We’re social beings. God designed us to need relationships to be happy and fulfilled. We innately want to get along with each another and live in harmony. That’s impossible if we can’t trust one another. When truth isn’t a given in a relationship, disappointment and insecurity are inevitable. Lying erodes the foundation necessary for healthy relationships, making real ones impossible. When we succumb to post-truth, we become very anxious about reaching out.

  It’s imperative that we’re able to trust one another if we’re going to be the healthy Body of Christ God designed us to be. As God defines what it means to be holy and pure, He also defines what it means to be truthful.  

  In some ways, dishonesty is like a person with allergies. When it’s determined what they’re allergic to, everything that causes them to react allergically is removed from their world. Post-truth causes God to react. God doesn’t just dislike sin. He hates it and will not tolerate its very presence. When we lie, we separate ourselves from Him, becoming like those described in Romans 1, “they exchange the truth of God for a lie.”

  “Post-truth” may be a new word. But it and no other word that’s describes someone dishonest should characterize a Christ-follower. God’s will is for every believer to be a committed truth-teller. We can’t do it in our strength. We need the Spirit’s power. God is the God of the truth. Christ-followers are to be people of truth. We’re to be different. Because of the new life we have in Christ, we must always be known as the people of “present-truth.”

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