What did we lose the most of in the past 3 years?
Of all the things we have lost over the last three years, it would be difficult to identify anything more ubiquitously absent than trust. Any student of “the times and the seasons” will have noticed a barrage of contrasting and conflicting views, data, expert opinions, and authoritative proclamations confusingly descending from podiums on high. The unsuspecting public is left in a quandary about who and what to believe. This is not in itself a bad thing.
For some, an early suspicion of official obfuscation has proven rather prescient, as terms like dis/misinformation continue to be used by mainstream pundits to discredit dissenting but highly qualified voices who come to the debate with data and research. The persistent censorship and vilification have only eroded the public’s faith in institutions, public office, media, technology, and high-profile people. It is not difficult to perceive why there is a general malaise of distrust, confusion and even anger. Some of it, at least, seems by design.
Pilate questioned (or dismissed) Christ by asking “what is truth?” In our post-truth world, we have a paradoxical answer: nothing. That is, the truth that nothing is true guarantees that “truth” is nothing but the embodiment of political or ideological will. Accountability is to be measured by the adroitness of eluding detection. Official narrative dogma has become paramount and heresy intolerable. Lamenting the demise of trust and its patron saint, truth, is more than nostalgia for a world of more meaningful categories, it reveals a very present war for the soul of the future. We are in deeply troubling times.
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Yet, this deep trouble holds a deep promise. As the Christian faith — born of the transcendence of self — is the “substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things unseen,” it arrives at our plight in its rightful and destined place: where “deep calls unto deep.” With the collapse of trust in institutions and public figures and the marketplace idols exposed as untrustworthy, the stage is cleared for something more substantive.
The confused, the cynical, the angst-driven need to see something immovable; they need to see the divine otherness of Christ in us. Our fidelity to transcendence will prove a distinctive reality and reveal something upon which all the shipwrecked can cling — like life-bestowing flotsam in a torrential storm. A human, all too human. ethos which “teaches doctrines of man as if they were commandments of God” will fail miserably as a moral compass in a world driven by deception and agenda. “Nice” doesn’t rate very highly in a hierarchy of values vis a vis the gravity of the human predicament. Neither will faith in disbelief be much of an answer.
Jesus speaks of a time when “nation will rise against nation.” It is worth noting the word used is “ethnos.” It is a disturbing trend that many of those responsible for fomenting racial discord reside in the highest public offices.
Eschatologically, a strong case could be constructed in which coercion to accept the proverbial “mark” may not come resembling any comedic, low-budget antichrist proclaiming himself God at an end-of-the-Age briefing in the holy of holies of a recently constructed Third Temple — it'll come with government mandates and charges of bigotry, racism, and crime against humanity.
Dissent will be an unforgivable sin.
Even darker times may soon be upon us, but for those who take a knee to the Word alone, who is Himself the message, may it yet prove “their finest hour.” The well-being of many may well depend on the courage of the few.
Irwin Jeffrey is a free-lance writer living in the northern woods of British Columbia.
