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.