When Lies Become "Truth" and the Monsters it Makes Us.

Heads up... Dense conversation ahead.
You've been warned.

What do you do when suddenly everything in your culture gets turned around? We're finding more and more people embracing blatant lies thinking it's the high moral ground. As language becomes less expressive, minds are more easily controlled. Wrong is right. Right is wrong. Up is down. Down is up. Babies in the womb aren't actually babies. Men have periods. Men are women. Women are men. At the same time... there are no men or women. Gender is fluid. The color of your skin determines your worth and character. Never in my lifetime did I think this would be considered 'progress'. It ironically hurts more people than it helps, especially those who truly struggle with their sexual identity and those begging to be heard about true injustices. The world hurts the world to help the world. Slavery is freedom. War is peace. Love is hate. This reminds me of Orwell's "Newspeak." This is confusing.

And I think it's supposed to be.

Why?

Power.

Apathy makes people prefer the false peace of conformity to the tensions of liberty. Whatever and whoever has the power can pressure you into believing their version of truth.... even if they're flat-out lies. Anyone who opposes this is viewed as backward and ignorant. We live in a world where there is more and more intense social pressure to accept that there is no such thing as objective truth. There's only power. Whoever holds the power decides what is true and false. The value of truth claims depends on who's making them. More and more people are knowingly believing lies out of fear of opposing them.

Personally, in a few short years, this has been in my face. It's been difficult and confusing to sort out what's happening and trying to understand it in a meaningful and accurate way. It felt messy. It's like you're trying to clean your kitchen, and can handle the regular mess of everyday life. Then suddenly, your kitchen expands ten times bigger and the mess is no longer one you're capable of handling by yourself. It's time for reinforcements who have had MUCH more experience dealing with MUCH bigger messes.

So I handed Greg Koukl his metaphorical mop and broom. I asked Greg on to give me his thoughts on this. As I mention at the beginning of the video, I listen to his podcast, Stand to Reason, regularly. He did one in May that really resonated with me. We discuss things like:
How do we discern truth in this divided world? Are we really entering into soft totalitarianism? What does that even mean? Are we inflating this? With such militant and intense pressure to conform, what can we do about it? And much more.

I walked away from this conversation with a lot of the understanding, perspective, and insight that I've been craving about these topics.

So yeah. This was an interesting interview.

Timestamps:
0:00- Intro
04:54- How Are we Entering into Soft Totalitarianism? What Even is that?
18:21- Why Freedom of Speech is Shockingly Important
26:15- The Propaganda in our Culture and how Language Persuades us to Believe Lies.
29:16- Are Only Christians Upset About this?
33:30- How People WANT to be Controlled as Long as it Makes Them Happy; Willful Apathy
37:04- What's the Natural Outcome of this if People Get What They Want?
48:17- A Nagging Candid Question About Other's Perspectives on our "Pre Totalitarian Culture"
58:29- What's the Ideal Way to Respond to Real Misinformation and Unhealthy Echo Chambers?

Links Mentioned in Interview:
Solid Ground Article: www.str.org/w/freedom-fading
The May 14th Podcast: www.str.org/w/how-can-we-discern-truth-in-this-divided-world-

Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher:
www.amazon.com/Live-Not-Lies-Christian-Dissidents/dp/0593087399/ref=sr_1_1

Books by Greg-
Tactics:
www.amazon.com/Tactics-10th-Anniversary-Discussing-Convictions/dp/0310101468/ref=sr_1_3

Story of Reality:
www.amazon.com/Story-Reality-Everything-Important-Happens/dp/0310525047/ref=sr_1_3

Follow on Social Media:

Greg-
Instagram: www.instagram.com/standtoreason/
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Twitter: @STRtweets

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