Fake News

Hospital staff, simply trying to do their job, have enough to contend with without receiving death threats.

I was shocked – though perhaps not overly surprised – to hear of such a campaign against staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The hospital was then involved in a legal battle to allow the tragic little youngster Charlie Gard to die with dignity. At the time, Charlie’s distraught parents contested the move. They had hopes of productive treatment, even though this was very much of a long shot. The march of time seems to have resolved the situation but, at that point, it was causing an enormous media stir.

Anyone can sympathise with Charlie’s parents. It is impossible to imagine what they have been going through. The passions raised in the white heat of the arguments back and forth are equally understandable. Yet I shake my head in wonder as to how we have reached a point where hospital staff can be threatened with death over the issue. For all I know, those who were put to such distress had no connection with the proceedings.

The words “Fake News” came to mind. The internet, along with other media, allows contentious, inflammatory material to circulate with great ease. This is a day when all sorts of people with warped values can have a platform to reach and influence thousands of the gullible. They guide them to put totally uncalled-for constructions on emotive events.

It was less possible in the past. If you wanted to write a book or article to go out to the masses, you normally had to find someone to publish it, someone with a good name to maintain. There was thus at least an element of cross-checking or “moderating”. This restraint has long gone. Anyone can air his or her views to their heart’s content. Those views have to be very extreme and dangerous for a moderator to intervene and take them down.

They are therefore much read and, for the undiscerning, become the authoritative truth. This is a most dangerous state of affairs. For perhaps millions of people, the boundary between truth and lies has become so blurred as to be non-existent.

I am impressed by the number of references in the Bible to the truth. The Lord Jesus embodies the truth: He is the way and the truth and the life, John 14:6. He is, after all, sent by God the Father who “cannot lie”, Titus 1:2 KJV.

The Spirit of Jesus is the Spirit of Truth:

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you (John 16:13-15 ESV).

I find that particularly impressive because it is all so easy for a preacher to rant away, claiming the inspiration of the Holy Spirit while in fact spouting a string of prejudices that are the product of his own imagination – or worse, his desire to manipulate others. The Lord Jesus promised His followers that His Spirit would come. Like Jesus Himself, the Spirit would not “speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak” – whatever He hears, that is, from God the Father.

This is a day and age when lies threaten to rule the world. Decent, innocent people may well be ruined, and even die, as a result. You and I need to be warriors for truth.

Ancient Lessons from the Garden

An Our Daily Bread article by Sheridan Voysey immediately made me think back to a recent visit to the famous Kew Gardens in London. For me, that trip was the fulfilment of a long-standing ambition ... but I little thought I would learn a Bible lesson in the process!

Voysey writes:

"Last spring I decided to cut down the rose bush by our back door. In the three years we’d lived in our home, it hadn’t produced many flowers, and its ugly, fruitless branches were now creeping in all directions.

"But life got busy, and my gardening plan got delayed. It was just as well—only a few weeks later that rose bush burst into bloom like I’d never seen before. Hundreds of big white flowers, rich in perfume, hung over the back door, flowed into our yard, and showered the ground with beautiful petals.

"My rose bush’s revival reminded me of Jesus’s parable of the fig tree in Luke 13:6–9.”

This passage goes,

“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down’” (Luke 13:6-9 ESV).

“In Israel,” Voysey continues, “it was customary to give fig trees three years to produce fruit. If they didn’t, they were cut down so the soil could be better used. In Jesus’s story, a gardener asks his boss to give one particular tree a fourth year to produce. In context (vv. 1–5), the parable implies this: The Israelites hadn’t lived as they should, and God could justly judge them. But God is patient and had given extra time for them to turn to Him, be forgiven, and bloom.

"God wants all people to flourish and has given extra time so that they can. Whether we are still journeying toward faith or are praying for unbelieving family and friends, His patience is good news for all of us."

An incident on my Kew Gardens trip brought Jesus’ parable vividly home to me. We were given a walking tour during which we were shown an old tree, a cross between an English and a European oak. The walk leader explained to us that the tree had not grown particularly well over 200 years but had been uprooted in the violent storm of 1987. 

To the astonishment of the gardeners, the stricken tree seemed to be doing rather well. After some head-scratching, they worked out that the roots were gaining precious nitrogen from the air, a nutrient they had long been denied in the impacted soil that surrounded the tree.

Once the tree had been righted and re-planted, the gardeners made a point of loosening the soil around its base every year. This worked wonders for the health of the plant. They decided it was a policy they should follow with their other trees.

It struck me that familiarity with the Bible story would have taught the staff that lesson already. Nonetheless, we must not overlook the main lesson for the tender plants which are our spiritual lives. God is patient with us, 

“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

That patience is not endless. We should be real about the danger of complete shipwreck that we are in, and about the greatness of the gift God offers us in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Far be it from us to try His patience.