When Clark Kent emerged from the phone booth, he promised to serve truth, justice and the American way. When my grandmother promised me there were no nighttime monsters in her guest bedroom closet, I took that as the truth and trusted her. But today the nagging question in our culture remains what is the truth and who can we trust to tell it?
Unfortunately, our society has evolved, some say digressed, into a place where there are many truths - yours, mine and ours. This thinking is the product of a Godless culture that embraces moral relativism and its incendiary offspring of no absolute right and wrong, selfish ambition at any cost and the resulting divisive identity politics affecting every facet of our lives.
With no absolute right and wrong to guide our personal and commercial behavior and negate the sinful tendencies of our human nature, we are left rudderless to navigate whatever social winds blow us around. If someone says killing babies and old people is acceptable, we have no moral guardrails to refute such heinous acts. If perverse sexual lifestyles show up on beer can labels we have no guidelines to tell us that's wrong. We fear being negatively labeled by those few who are controlling the microphone
A lack of absolute right and wrong means there is no real truth. Truth then becomes whatever you want it to be; whatever serves your purpose at the moment. Lack of enduring truth enables us to behave in any way that is expedient to our profit motive, prurient moral desires or political narrative.
Without truth to guide our actions, selfish ambition becomes the accepted, and even the honored way to act. Getting ahead with all the outward signs of affluence and critical peer acclaim becomes the ultimate meaning of life to be attained by whatever surreptitious means are available. The ends justify the means and shady characters like George Soros and Jeffrey Epstein become public icons.
Once the absence of truth becomes pervasive in a culture with no absolute right or wrong and where selfish ambition is the priority, then it's only a matter of time before a Godless theorist like Saul Alinsky and a smooth talking devil like Barack Obama surface to take us to the next darker levels of identity politics.
In an effort to concentrate and retain political power in the hands of a few selfrighteous elites, they use the absence of truth to create jealousy and fear among disparate social groups. They use race, gender, income and ethnicity to divide us. Degenerate Hollywood stars and irresponsible professional athletes are worshiped as unholy cultural role models and anyone who doesn't emulate them is ostracized from the social ingroup. See Colin Kappenick, LeBron James or Madonna.
The COVID-19 Coronaphobia ushered in hate among opposing political factions and subsequently funneled trillions of dollars of government control to settle those disputes through greater dependency on the state. Fear and loathing filled the vacuum where truth was missing and allowed deceitful bureaucrats to subvert medical science with political science. And the masses trusted the elites allowing identity politics to separate us into rival groups engaged in tribal warfare across the country. See Tony Fauci.
Pontius Pilate cynically asked what is truth, and Jesus trustfully answered that His message was the truth, the light and the way. The only real truth we can trust is the gospel message. It's the foundation that absolute right and wrong is built on. It's the cornerstone for the golden rule that should guide all our personal relationships and commercial dealings. And it's the beacon on the hill that can fairly enlighten the governance of a truly civilized society.
Without the gospel message to show us the real truth, Clark Kent stays in the phone booth and the monsters come out of my grandmother's bedroom closet.