Blind

In the days before anyone ever turned on a light bulb, sitting in a candle-lit room, practical but with a skeptical streak, puzzled, Thomas stared across the dinner table at the man talking, asked, We don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the road to take to follow you?

The answer he got? I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6).

Back when I grew up, most people believed in that old-fashioned religion – Christ was the way, the truth, and the life. That meant truth mattered. But decades later that old-fashioned faith has waned. So do people still care about the truth?

Take a look at politics these days, which reflects the world we live in. What seems to matter is whether you like the man who’s speaking – not whether what he is saying is true.

Back in 2020, running for president, Joe Biden told people he got arrested in South Africa on his way to see Nelson Mandela in prison. Another time, talking about 9/11, he told about standing in New York at ground zero the day after the attack on the World Trade Center. And people listening, who liked him, nodded. But, of course, none of those things were true.

On the other side of the aisle, the same thing happens: Trump posted on social media that Erika McEntarfer – the head of the Commission of Labor Statistics – rigged the latest jobs report to make him look bad, went on to say she’d rigged  reports last year to help Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Trump fired her. And people who like Trump cheered.

But it turned out none of those things were true: The report last summer – which showed 800,000 less jobs – didn’t help Biden. And the report last October, showing the economy stalled, hurt Harris.

In another post Trump boasted we just had ‘the greatest six months in the history of the presidency’ – but in six months in 1945 we won World War II. Trump spun another tale. But his supporters cheered.

Under both Biden and Trump if you liked the man talking you cheered him. No matter what he said. So does the truth still matter?

Imagine if, sitting in your doctor’s office, you told him you had a pain in your chest and he spun you a tale. In the end, blind to a heart problem, you’d pay a price, land in a hospital operating room.

When a politician spins you a tale you end up blind. And a blind man can’t see the pain in his wife’s face, what his children need, or the drunk driver barreling down the road toward him. So in the end he pays a price.

In a fallen world blindness is in our bones. Like a curse. And with faith ebbing blindness is spreading. But sooner or later the chickens fly home to roost.

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Telling stories, in his memoir Carter Wrenn follows The Trail of the Serpent twisting and turning through politics from Reagan to Trump. Order his book from Amazon.