Perhaps the greatest challenge of our day is to remain untainted by media-generated prejudice. Prejudice, usually generated by a deception, is a filter created to inspire us to disregard truth. The only remedies to deception are either truth or greater deception. When the inconvenience of truth renders it an intruder, deception becomes a welcome guest. But it is only a guest. And like an unwanted houseguest, it cannot remain forever.

 

Like the unrealistic grail of perpetually unprecedented economic growth, every deception requires an unprecedented deception to conceal it. And the bigger the lie becomes, the more effort is required to keep it secret. When the resources that sustain the viability of a lie finally run out, the balloon will pop and both the flaccid nature of the lie and the stale inflation that empowered it will be fully exposed.

 

In that day, truth will be a friend to all who love truth and an enemy to all who love deception. There will be no escape from justice, for injustice hides behind a vanishing deception in the same way that evil cowers behind darkness. Both injustice and evil are vulnerable to enlightenment. Truth is the eternal enemy of deception. But how does one apprehend truth in a world so addicted to lies?

 

First, one must recognize the mechanisms through which deception is promoted and truth restrained. The world at peace rests in truth. Truth is the default nature of eternity. Like the rests in a music score, it occupies every space surrendered to it and is only restrained, at great effort, where the mechanisms of discernment are violated or ignored. In this effort to discern truth, time is our greatest ally. People choose deception only where they feel they lack the time to recognize or evaluate the alternative. In this vein, a fast-paced lifestyle militates against discernment. A slower, more considerate pace leaves more room for the discovery of truth. And the only appropriate venue for full disclosure of truth is eternity. But time, or the apparent lack thereof, is only one mechanism through which deception works.

 

A second mechanism working to prevent the proliferation of truth is our feelings. We are naturally compassionate beings. But, based on our subset of relationships, that compassion can be molded to make room for or to exclude others. Wherever failed relationships cause us to exclude the consideration of others, we can be deceived and prejudice results. The primary relationship so vital to retaining wholesome relationships with others is our relationship with God, a relationship that is based on His love and our faith. Whatever makes us prejudice against God's love weakens our relationship with Him. Wherever we neglect to believe in His love, we risk vulnerability to deception. This is why faith in God is under such attack. Without faith in God, we can be made to believe anything.

 

A third mechanism working to promote deception and restrict the influence of truth in our lives is our will. Deception always labors to restrict our genuine free will. The unfortunate tyranny of lies is, in the name of 'choice', it actually limits choice. As I've often said, if we don't know any better, we'll do what we know. Leaving out the truth limits our alternatives to lies. Too often, we celebrate such exercise of choice as if we enjoyed genuine liberty, when all we've really done is changed cells in the same demonic prison bloc. The genuine exercise of free will must consider whether or not all the choices available within our current context are all the choices there are. It must recognize the limitations of our context and be curious about the world beyond it.

 

 

A fifth mechanism working to consolidate certain deceptions as pillars in our lives is the mechanism of virtual authority. We tend to reward the unaccountable with faith. By virtue of a glass screen and a one-sided argument, complete with supporting pictures (the bigger the better) and sounds (the louder the better) presented to us from the ivory-tower box we call a TV (or a computer), we tend to accept as authoritative that which we cannot question. It is not so much because the material is unquestionable that we refrain from verifying or even discussing the source, as much as because of the format in which it's presented. Safely cloistered in our E-Z chair, lulled into a dreamlike sleep by the hypnotic flash of images and accompanying sounds, by virtue of our isolation, our source of information is too remote to question. We cannot question the motives of the speaker's choice of words, or the photographer's choice of images, or the producer's choice of programs. And, since other authorities we look to for guidance demonstrate a similar ambivalence, we conclude, "They can't all be wrong, can they?"

 

Wherever these five core mechanisms of discernment are impaired, our vulnerability to deception is enhanced. To resist prejudice in such a media-dominated world, we must 1) slow our lifestyles to nature's pace, 2) believe in the perfect love of God, 3) be curious about the world beyond our context, 4) recognize that experience and knowledge both have absolute value and, 5) recognize that no one is above authority (even God honor's His word above His name -- Psalm 138:2).

 

Prejudice is the measure of our ambivalence toward truth and reflects our appetite for lies. Avoiding media-generated prejudice begins with a genuine love of the truth.

 

Michael Hennen