Save that for the wrong message
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
- “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil.” (1 Kings 3:9a ESV)
“We do not get to choose when we die. We only get to choose to live before we die.” (Konstantin Kisin)
There is a messaging problem today. But sadly, not for the messengers who carry the worst possible message. Their message is succeeding brilliantly because they have kept their focus. No, the messaging problem is with those who have the right message, but are either sending a mixed message, or the wrong message altogether.
Jordan Petersen make this point in his short YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLpybP_ggxs. Using the example of illegal immigration, (which as we already know, is a massive problem) Petersen believes that conservatives are reacting with the wrong messaging. Just building a wall along our southern border will do little to ameliorate the problem we now face, because here are the facts: the number of illegal aliens that have crossed into the US at our southern border is absolutely staggering. Worse, it should be obvious they didn’t just show up by accident, because this situation was engineered.
The Center Square reports, “The number of illegal border crossings at the northern and southern borders and all ports of entry since January 2021 totals more than eight million people, greater than the individual populations of 38 US states.” [https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_81293caa-1050-11ee-8619-734bf91c6025.html#:~:text=(The%20Center%20Square)%20%E2%80%93%20The,populations%20of%2038%20U.S.%20states.]
The crush of people actually getting across the border difficult to measure because these numbers are provided by the United States’ Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) who are only able report on those they encounter. If any anyone were to try and provide an accurate count of the population of the Republic of California, for example, they couldn’t. At this point, you may be asking why this is important to you. If so, then you may already identify as a victim, because the messengers with the bad message seem to be winning; winning the war on The West, the war on conservative principles, even the war on Christianity.
Complaining isn’t going to even make a dent in the problem we are all living with: all the bad ideas some people have created for everyone.
Among those millions are a majority percentage of people who simply want to make a living—and a life. While there are drug dealers—whether by choice or not, human traffickers, and yes, more than likely terrorists have also slipped in with the crowd. But most are seeking what many Americans today are criticizing—the American Dream. The message these people need to hear is: “If you want a better life, then you want the liberty and justice only Christians and conservatives have always offered.”
It’s not too late to change the message. Our adversaries were able to. We just can’t take a hundred years to do it. But if you put your ear to the ground, you can just make out the rumble. People are discovering they were fooled by the politicians, and by corporate news and entertainment media—and they are turning to alternative sources. Nascent companies like The Daily Wire, or The Blaze, or Breitbart, are expanding not only their content offerings, but they are growing their audiences as well. Unfortunately, like all bad habits, it’s hard for many giving up the New York Times, MSNBC, Disney, and all the other corporate media giants they still think are credible, trustworthy, and dependable… for something else.
Developing better messaging and overcoming the acquired biases created over a lifetime of cultural Marxist indoctrination, is ingrained in those now living in The West, and believing all the bad ideas. They’ve been taught that critical thinking is reserved only for those who are critical of traditional values and morals, and those who want to conserve them from terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ideas—beginning with critical thinking.
The publishers of When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: When Philosophy Can Save us from Ourselves. have written this blurb, “There is an epidemic of bad thinking in the world today. An alarming number of people are embracing crazy, even dangerous ideas. Worse, bad thinking drives bad acting—it even inspired a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol.” [https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691212760/when-bad-thinking-happens-to-good-people]
The antidote described here is found not in the emerging technology of “Artificial Intelligence,” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) Instead, authors Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro (pictured) believe the philosophy and epistemology of the ancients—specifically, the ancient Greek philosophers will bring us back from the brink. As good and wonderful as that is, it’s still inadequate for the job. We absolutely must harvest the knowledge, instruction, and indisputable wisdom that’s found only in The Holy Bible. The Word of God.
It’s not that most Christians and conservative alike don’t already know this, it’s that they continue to rely on the perpetuity of not the message, but the messaging that worked a century ago, and not adapting to confront the septic rot flooding the marketplace of ideas today. Socrates might never have imagined critical thinking would have morphed into what it is today… but he should have.
“Socrates set the agenda for the tradition of critical thinking, namely, to reflectively question common beliefs and explanations, carefully distinguishing those beliefs that are reasonable and logical from those which—however appealing they may be to our native egocentrism, however much they serve our vested interests, however comfortable or comforting they may be—lack adequate evidence or rational foundation to warrant our belief.”
“Descartes argued for the need for a special systematic disciplining of the mind to guide it in thinking. He articulated and defended the need in thinking for clarity and precision. He developed a method of critical thought based on the principle of systematic doubt. He emphasized the need to base thinking on well-thought through foundational assumptions. Every part of thinking, he argued, should be questioned, doubted, and tested.” [https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/a-brief-history-of-the-idea-of-critical-thinking/408]
Sorry, such colossal hubris is only possible because most of the thinkers throughout the history of critical thinking did little thinking from the perspective of a Creator-God. Instead, they largely “believed their own press.” They became like gods—but only in their own minds.
The problem with questioning and testing every part of thinking without fully knowing the God outside their mind who gave them that mind. This places them on the road not just to their destruction, but all who followed along. Liberals, leftists, secularists—whatever—have finally arrived at their ultimate goal: nothingness.
As Glenn Elmers [https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/pandemic-pandemonium/] explains, Yuval Harari is, “An Israeli academic, [who] provides the pseudo-intellectual arguments for transhumanism [as] scientific and historical inevitability. He is given to grandiose pronouncements, such as that human beings will soon be “hackable animals.” You just have to deal with that, Harari instructs us, because “free will—that’s over.” Harari, like [Klaus] Schwab himself—who sometimes dresses like a 1970s James Bond villain—can be hard to take seriously. But the systems of technocratic manipulation and control they celebrate are not a joke. Aaron Kheriaty quotes Harari explaining how useful the [COVID 19] pandemic has been because “this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize, total biometric surveillance.” Well, isn’t that nice? Humans to him are no more than “hackable animals.”
- “Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” (1 Corinthians 3:18-20 NIV)
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
