Sermons

READING, Company on the Path to Inner Truth, by Parker Palmer
We all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern our inner teacher’s voice for at least three reasons:

The journey toward inner truth is too taxing to be made solo: lacking support, the solitary traveler soon becomes weary or fearful and is likely to quit the road.

The path is too deeply hidden to be traveled without company: finding our way involves clues that are subtle and sometimes misleading, requiring the kind of discernment that can happen only in dialogue.

The destination is too daunting to be achieved alone: we need community to find the courage to venture into the alien lands to which the inner teacher may call us.
 

SERMON ~ Truth Amid Disinformation

Truth Matters

As individual people, but also as whole civilizations, we learn about truth in different ways. As children we are taught that we should not tell lies, that we should always tell the truth. In civilized groups, truth is held as important to the group’s guiding principles be they religious or legal. The quest for truth is important and lying is not a good leadership quality in civilizations.

In my college philosophy classes we studied, just as millions before us had studied for thousands of years, whether Truth is an absolute, or if there is concrete proof for Truth’s existence. Oh, how I loved the hours spent discussing ontological viewpoints of reality, studying Plato and Aristotle. Not to mention using the Socratic method of questioning to get to the truth of the matter.

As we grow we find that sometimes a singular situation might hold several versions of the truth, depending on whose view or whose reality was being lifted up. Yes, the same day can be both terrible and fantastically successful, depending on whose truth is being shared. We learn to believe things like, “there are 2 sides to every story, or even multiple sides.”

We still hold dear, though, the importance of getting to the truth. Being sure that only facts are included or considered. Sometimes we are lucky enough to study critical thinking. It shows up in high school when we learn about different methods of public speaking, such as persuasive or informative. Critical thinking skills have fallen by the wayside in recent decades in public schools to our folly.

Here is my favorite lesson from Logic Class at VCU.

No cow has 5 legs

A cow has 4 legs more than no cow

Therefore, a cow has 9 legs

When we do not know how to critically read the written word, fact checking for truth of a statement, as well as whether it makes sense based on present reality, then we fall into believing things that are not true. Typically speaking, cows do not have 9 legs. If we blindly believed the written word rather than critically thinking about it, looking for the logic of the statement, we would be poorer for it. People could tell us anything and we would not stop to review it for its logic and truthiness

As children we believe our parents, when we get older we find out which news sources are worthy of trust, and as we go about our lives we constantly make decisions based on the truth as we know it. Honesty is important.

Whatever year it was that USA Today became the best-selling newspaper in the country, I believe we all lost something. I have nothing against USA Today, truly, but I feel sad that as a nation we agreed with them that we would rather be able to read surface facts of a news story rather than reading in-depth for the unfolding, nuanced truths of good journalism.

Back in the days of Watergate, Bob Woodward carefully uncovered facts for the American public through careful journalism, and now decades later he is back at it. His story about our former President giving Covid testing kits to Putin in Russia instead of his own people is an example of that in-depth journalism. Now we have the internet, and newspaper readership is way down.

Doing research on the web is a blessing but also, it affords us the opportunity to not know anything at all about a news event but be told which side to take. No critical thinking required, really no thinking at all.

Even in light of all these societal setbacks in the name of progress, truth still matters. Facts and science and data and the earnest attempt to be truthful still matter. Critical thinking is something we are faced with being personally responsible for teaching, I think. Living in a society that values truthfulness and honesty as good and useful traits is the world in which I dwell.

When I encounter an experience with a lie, just hanging out there, threatening to disrupt the peace of our group, it bothers me and gnaws at me because it is not the expected, acceptable, natural way of being, to live under a lie. Have you ever been brought into a situation where you are expected to perpetuate a lie? I have. Sometimes, if somebody’s pain was postponed by a lie, it felt ok. But any other time it has made me feel….restless? Anxious? Any time we are expected, for whatever reason, to pretend that something is real when we know it is not, or vice versa, it feels intrusive to our natural state of being.

Sometimes we speak of truth tellers. Some people hold that synonymous with whistle blowers and they are different. As clergy, one of the areas of the call is to heed our prophetic natures. Yes, in biblical times these prophets were quite grand. Nowadays our prophetic voices are associated more with social justice and less about God’s commands coming through us; however you understand prophetic calls, truth telling is part of that. Mostly it is naming the painfully obvious, inviting people into a safer space to address that big old elephant in the room. Sometimes being prophetic means helping somebody to name the obvious thing causing pain; when we can name a painful thing then we can start to talk about it and get our arms around the problem. We can stop with all of that energy being exerted to avoid the pain, and use it for healing. Truth telling, naming, all of these prophetic deeds call us back into right relationship with ourselves and with our community. Even if people continue to hold different beliefs on what the truth is, they can agree to disagree, while still moving forward together. Acknowledgement needs to happen of there being different truths before healing could begin. When people with power are intentionally creating chaos through widespread lying, it is difficult to impossible for people to simply agree to disagree. There are not fine practices on both sides—truth matters.

Disinformation is hurting so many people it is hard to feel well in our souls. Disinformation is the overt political tactic of spreading information known to be untrue so that it creates such confusion and chaos as to upend usual, healthy lives. The state of Florida got hit by Milton, thankfully as a category 3 and not 5 hurricane. Florida’s governor willfully practiced disinformation about FEMA not helping. Floridians had to choose whether to believe their governor, that FEMA and the White House do not care about them, or to believe their eyes as they saw the FEMA crews helping people. When politics have created such divisiveness as to make people question reality, then it is easier for the fascist disinformation propaganda machine to keep spreading lies and disinformation so thickly that chaos abounds.

A minister friend of mine in Asheville NC kept a steady, public, online stream going for anybody to receive notifications and help. Not just their congregation. She had to step aside from simply listing where one could find food or water or shelter to address disinformation. Not just clarifying things that we might expect, like such and such a place is out of helpful things so go to this other place instead. That is information. White nationalists there had a strong campaign of disinformation rather than assistance, telling people in crisis wrong information on purpose, especially misleading and harming people of color. Truth matters, and when we are riddled by lies and disinformation, we can lose sight of both truth and its importance, just trying to survive.

During this exact time we are living, October of 2024 in this country, we need to acknowledge that a group of people have made the calculated decision to completely disrupt the natural state of being. They are weaving blankets of lies and disinformation meant to smother us. We are living in a time where we are, again, literally fighting for the soul of our nation, leading up to an election where either democracy will keep its tenuous place or fascism takes hold.

In 50 years the history books will speak of the Big Lie (capital B and L) and we will all know that they are talking about the period in American history when a group of people believed that in November of 2020 the presidential election was corrupted to such a degree that the wrong winner was announced. In order for the Big Lie to become accepted as Truth, that Biden did not win but rather took office, even though Trump won, this Big Lie is being perpetuated and enhanced in hopes that a majority of the voting population will believe it and correct the wrongdoing by electing Trump this time.

The Big Lie names each American who respects the authority of the fake winner, Biden, as traitorous and unpatriotic.

In my professional code of ethics, I do not endorse parties nor candidates from the pulpit nor in my capacity as clergy. This is true. This morning when I am speaking to you, you will not hear me say a name of who I think you should vote for. This morning’s sermon is about Truth. Why it matters, and what it does to our spiritual well-being when we are surrounded by untruths.

It is hard, if not impossible, to feel completely sane, on solid ground, when facts seem debatable. The murderous attack of January 6, 2021, is one example. We all saw it happen, yet the deniers are trying to rewrite history through disinformation.

In 1930’s Germany the politicians had a plan to turn the German government around, convincing the voting populace that they wanted a dictator to guide them, Adolf Hitler. Although most often this next quote is attributed to Hitler’s chief of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, it was actually printed in Hitler’s book.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

I am not here to preach about Hitler, that will happen later in November.

The point is that using the strategy of getting people to believe the Big Lie is a very old, often successful tactic. If nobody knows quite what or whom to count on, if the tried and true forums we used to count on, like great journalism and fact-checking and fear of being called a liar, are dispensed with, then we will all feel off balance.

Friends, this is a sermon and not a political rally. Hear this: lies and disinformation do not change the truth. They are tools to confuse people and create chaos. We do not have to listen to them or abide their propaganda. Use critical thinking and logic when reading about news events. Speak plainly with people when correcting disinformation. Look at each news source and evaluate their reputation and track record. I know that by now I am a broken record, but kindness with each encounter is key. We are all stressed and our electorate is being purposefully manipulated by fascists to not trust the people whose leadership is healthy and helpful. Kindness, and light lessons on how to spot the truth and use critical thinking, will fill our souls. Our spiritual health will stay intact if we hold that The Truth matters.

And, lastly, remember that no cow has 9 legs, even if the writing says so.