Good News and the fake news

There’s a new scourge in the media today. It’s called the fake news. It had its most devastating display during the last US presidential election where one candidate was touted practically by all the major news sources to be the winner, hands down.

The outcome was, of course, different. The upset was shocking. And the world woke up to the realization that it has been fed, maliciously or not, systematically or not, with fake news.

That this phenomenon happened certainly deserves a more in-depth study. How could such powerful news agencies, pollsters, etc., fail to read the mind of the people in general? What an epic, big-time fail it was!

There can be many, endless reasons behind it. But offhand, what I can say is that there certainly was a very devious virus of bias and prejudice involved among the media people that now include millions of netizens with their blogs and social media accounts.

It was a virus that found its host in the passion-filled arena of the political warfare, where the light that was shed blinded more than made people see things properly. It generated what may be termed as agenda-dictated journalism, where self-serving slanting of data and the objective assessment and the fair treatment of the issues were set aside.

Words were inflated or deflated to serve the biases and prejudices of those in media. More than words, ideologies corrupted the minds of people to the extent that the people could not judge things properly anymore and resorted instead to a simplistic black-and-white tack on the issues.

These ideologies tried to be the core basis for the people’s faith and reasoning. But we know that for all their valid points, no ideology has exclusive right to be the sole holder and owner of what is true, right and fair in our human affairs. It’s amazing that many people now turn to ideologies as the bedrock of their beliefs.

God, his word, his will and ways—in short, the Good News—are all but dismissed completely. They are considered irrelevant, a drag and an unnecessary baggage in resolving issues political or otherwise.

Many people have not come any closer to the realization that in fact God has to be in the middle of all our earthly affairs, be it business or politics, etc. No ideology, no personal convictions can replace him.

In short, we have to listen to the Good News God has given us through Christ and now in the Holy Spirit that animates the Church and its many instrumentalities. We have to understand that this Good News is the foundation of whatever opinion, view, philosophy, ideology that we may use to pursue our temporal affairs.

In other words, God’s word is the first and last word. Any word we coin and use in the fields of our sciences, arts, technologies, politics, business, culture, etc., should begin and end with God’s word. Otherwise it will have no proper foundation and orientation.

St. Paul has amply warned us about arrogating our words to be simply our own. “Let no man deceive himself,” he said. “If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God…Let no man therefore glory in men.” (1 Cor 3,19-21)

That’s simply because God’s word or the Good News, as described in the Letter to the Hebrews, is “living, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (4,12)

Its primary purpose is to bring us back to God through our temporal affairs. And so more than just giving us some helpful earthly knowledge, it gives us the ultimate spiritual knowledge we need to return to God, even through the very contentious field of politics.

Christ himself said: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Mk 13,31) We need to echo that response of St. Peter who, when asked if the apostles would also go away from Christ when he talked about himself as the bread of life, said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” (Jn 6,68)

We certainly have to sit down and see how we can be more aware of grounding and orienting our words with God’s word, the Good News. Otherwise, we will be wallowing in fake news.