Video from CNN
Our National Reality Disorder
Ashley Vanderbilt fell down the QAnon rabbit hole but after Joe Biden was inaugurated, she knew she'd been tricked. She tells CNN Business' Donie O'Sullivan how she escaped.
We live in a strange time.
Our new President spent part of his inaugural address trying to make the statement that facts are facts. The fact anyone would need to do that is if looking in from the outside astounding. The world, God’s world is a complex creation and what we think we see in front of us is but just a sliver of the ultimate reality.
Romans 1;20 “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”
In this fallen world we live in futility continues to break done our bodies and the world as we head toward either our death or the Second Coming of Christ. We are limited in all that we do. Christians often are just as susceptible to falsehoods as unbelievers. This brings us to our culture today in America.
The culture of lies and conspiracies was already well underway, mostly propagated by the internet, that along with moral relativism and expressive individualism allowed many people to only believe in what suited their opinion at the moment in time. With cynicism to back this up, we had the perfect storm of a Leader who with no scruples, values or morality began pushing the buttons of weak and easily deceived people.
Remembering also our culture is primarily Godless we have people with no moral grounding, no faith in a Savior looking for a savior and they found one in the former president. He is transactional and will say anything to get votes and praise. Blatantly narcissistic, and lacking empathy he was then able to perform every deed that we could list for moral failure, ingratitude, and vindictive retribution with the tacit approval of his so-called base.
Christians also bought into this with mainly transactional claims concerning abortion and other issues. Rants about America becoming a Marxist nation under Biden were bantered about. I won’t go through all of the crazy of Trump’s four years. It ended badly after months of his baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. On Jan. 6, those claims turned into a mob of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, an attack that cost the lives of five people.
Currently, all of the main actors are reaping what they sowed with multi-billion dollar lawsuits, firings, disbarments, etc. Reality tells us there are consequences to our lives, to our actions. The sin and hubris of thinking you could create your own reality and wish it into existence is a spiritual and mental problem.
All of this leaves a relationship with Christ out of the equation. God is not a partner to evil and lies. Flag-toting praying insurrectionists are no evidence of a Godly purpose.
Change begins with a change at the top. Instead of modeling the worst behavior leaders must model wise and civil behavior. “Post-truth is the political subordination of reality,” states Lee McIntyre, a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. He is the author of the 2018 book, “Post Truth.” “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced ideologue," he continues, paraphrasing Arendt. "It’s the person for whom true and false and right and wrong don’t exist.”
Information sharing has been decentralized as social media has become a widely consumed witch brew of fake news and other outright lies that many people are more than willing to believe. No moral bearing on God and his values allows our sinful nature to buy into just about anything. Anyone can be a journalist- so to speak and a contributor to the widespread discourse. Yet everyone is also expected to be their own editor, to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not, and most people just can’t distinguish real from fake or they have a Confirmational Bias that insists on only one point of view.
Paranoid Conspiracy Fantasists reveal a unique problem as we have people who either have always been told what to do and lack the ability of self-determination or paranoid personalities looking for an easy, even if totally irrational explanation for their fears or beliefs. Most people I have talked with personally who espouse conspiracies cannot produce little it any hard facts when pressed.
Again we are living in a time of Godlessness and evil. The cycle of mankind’s sinful nature is repeating itself. And as in the past many Christians, our Christian leaders have bought into the Grand Deception along with the rest of the world.
After the Capitol attack, Mr. Trump was banned by Twitter and Facebook. The U.S. House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to bar Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from serving on committees, after her documented record of inflammatory and unfounded statements and behavior based on conspiracy theories.
“Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality,” said Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, in a harsh rebuke of Greene.
Our crisis of truth is also a crisis of trust not only in our institutions but in each other. Rebuilding trust is the way forward. You can start by being a good neighbor, helping people, talking to people, stay off social media if all you can do is criticize and argue. For Christians, we are on social media to glorify Christ, spread the Gospel message, encourage, and edify each other, and nothing else.
Experts think this Reality Disorder could last a decade, time will tell and after all, God is the one working providentially. We are not God.
God is calling you to act like a Christian! Don’t believe lies or promote lies. Deals with the devil do not justify the ends you desire no matter how noble.
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