TRUTH appears to be hard to uncover in today’s world of spin and counter spin. What surprises me is that this style of influencing, where you say what is convenient at the time to bolster your argument, though it is blatantly untrue, seems to work.
And if you want the truth – well the truth is, people forget so quickly as they move on to the next piece of hot gossip. What seems to be in vogue is an adolescent rebellion against facts, and an unwillingness to accept our need to alter our actions in light of moral or scientific or spiritual facts. Climate change is the big example of how this works, but it is the same attitude that prevails in so many of our personal and corporate decisions.
It has even begun to be manifest in the corporate life of the church. Earlier last month I was in company where someone spoke openly stating that to their mind, the Church of Scotland was not in crisis, in fact as far as this person was concerned every congregation in their presbytery was doing just fine. To talk about falling numbers and finance is seen to be unspiritual – a lack of faith. After all it’s not about numbers but about faithfulness. (This kind of comment is hard to take when you know that the numbers of parents and children and young people frequenting worship, which is our core business, has fallen drastically in the last fifty years ).