Valerie wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 7:12 am
The situation exists where there are opposing stayed "facts" by those that we are listening to.
When that happens, we need to trust the Lord & discern
whose facts are true. Science supports evolution instead of Creation. Science tries to explain a lot of "sin" away by their supposed facts- and so we pray. There are many "professional" voices out there with a lot of "other" facts. Judging by the anabaptist that I'm most familiar with, I can see they don't trust the facts that the masses in America trust.
What does the word "fact" mean in that paragraph? How would you know if something is a fact? Are there false facts? Does knowing "whose fact" it is tell me if it is true?
I think we've reached this odd point where many conservatives have become postmodern - "it's a fact if I feel like it's a fact" or even "it's a fact if it scores points for my political tribe". There are, of course, liberals who do that too, but I find it more surprising in conservatives, it's completely against the classical education that underlies much of conservatism in our culture. And large groups of people believe things that seem patently absurd - we can disagree about which people those are, of course. If we lose the ability to talk about facts, we tend to devolve into partisan tribes that each own their own truths.
I don't think this kind of truth is the same kind of truth as Jesus ("I am the way, the truth, and the light"), but it still matters when people use untruth to stir up controversy. Bearing false witness. Repeating rumors and gossip that builds tribes that each have their own truths. If someone asks for facts, let's take the time to look at the facts together without making it a fight. Too often, the fight is what is central, not looking at the facts or asking if it's something that we even need to pay attention to. People sometimes start threads that declare who their enemy is in the first post.
I don't think we need to "discern whose facts are true", positioning ourselves as the true Christians standing against those infidels while discussing the kinds of matters of fact that can be determined with an audit or a clinical trial. If a subject is important enough to be worth the time and effort, I think we need to determine "which facts are true" and then discern how we should respond. A large percentage of these controversies are based on falsehood, aimed at stirring up conflict, and clearly identify an enemy they are pointed at - more often than not, they fall apart if we take the time to look carefully at the facts. We should learn not to be useful idiots to the people who promote these things. And one way to do that is to be eager to look at facts, not worrying about "whose" facts they are.
