Let’s be honest.

These days a lot of commentators and news stories are not exactly true. It is easy enough to prove. Just check the source material quoted. Just keep a mental record of what these people say…and you will soon discover how the story changes over time. No matter what side they claim to be on, these people drop buzzwords calculated to stir up an emotional reaction in their target audience.

The good news is that an emotionally excited audience tends to donate more and fall in line with things they wouldn’t otherwise. The frightening truth is that fear sells! If you feed on a steady diet of fear, soon it is okay to compromise on any particular issue because the word is that situation is so dire we need to compromise a little to deal with it. Soon, it makes a lot more sense to go and hide somewhere…at exactly the time when bold voices of truth should go out and be heard.

Soon, you are ready to fight to the death for a glorious leader when more productive things could be accomplished by thoughtful discussion. Soon, we can preach about getting back to the Bible without actually feeling the need to get back to the Bible ourselves. (Honestly, teachings like what we find in the Sermon on the Mount aren’t really practical if all we really want is to win a culture war. If all that we really want to achieve is to force other people to do things our way.)

Maybe its time to stop playing the game…maybe its time to hit the off switch on the tv and actually talk to the people involved…who knew you could talk to people you disagree with and remain civil? Weird. Maybe it is time to stop listening to people who only offer anger and emotion but have no practical solutions or proposals to fix any given situation. Being mad is alot of fun though and yelling…yelling is bliss. Throughout history much has been accomplished by yelling…but the conspiracy is to edit all these yelling instances from history books so we can’t find them. Trust me. I received a special vision about this. Ahem.

Maybe the side we need to choose is the side of truth…even if the truth isn’t really what we’d like it to be…it can set us free…maybe we need to become the change we want to see…