"Spinning" The Truth
John 8:32: “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
I would suggest a corollary to this affirmation from John’s Gospel which would read something like “If you do not know the truth, you will remain captive to whatever it is that binds you.”
There is both hope and peril in these possibilities. The hope lies in the promise that there is an essential core, that trusted, leads to full living. The peril lies in losing sight of that truth, either intentionally or unintentionally, thus cutting ourselves off from such living. As I consider those two possibilities, I fear that we are “spinning” ourselves to death.
From Wikepedia:
“In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to influence public opinion about some organization or public figure. While traditional public relations and advertising may manage their presentation of facts, "spin" often implies the use of disingenuous, deceptive, and manipulative tactics.”
“Spin” is the alteration we put on the truth to make it more palatable, to keep us out of trouble, to make us feel better about ourselves, while at the same time fueling our distrust and enmity toward those with whom we differ. In truth, it has been around forever, but for any number of reasons it has become particularly effective of late in poisoning our discourse. People have made an occupation out of “spin.” There is even a title for that vocation, “spin doctor.”
The problem is that we have spun the truth so much that we no longer recognize what the truth really is. Everyone seems to have their own truth, and when everyone has their own truth, there is no basis for real conversation about the great and troubling issues that are before us. In the midst of all the “spun” truths, we lose sight of the real truth, that which might serve to set us free.
John Lewis wrote these words about this particular peril in Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change:
“And yet, even though the truth can’t be denied or erased, it can be systemically obscured, strategically misinterpreted, and hidden from mainstream comprehension.”
I fear that is where we are at this point. I am not saying that this is the first time that we have been at this place, but it seems obvious that is where we are now. We are now the victims of our own “spin.”
When confronted with a truth that bothers us in some way, we have learned to disregard it, reshape it, or ignore it. We build up defenses against the truth. Maybe we deny its validity. or we reword it to remove at least part of the sting. Or maybe we just turn a blind eye to the uncomfortable questions being raised.
You see this struggle played out on all sides of the political spectrum. There are charges of fake news. We argue over the discussion of critical race theory issues. It appears that we look at any such challenging information and see it on a “need to know basis,” and we have decided that either the general public or we ourselves just don’t need to know.
But there are some things that we really do need to know. We need to work together to recover that which is really true in order to build better lives for all concerned. The Gospel of John is right. The truth will set us free, but in our present climate we will have to work to determine what that truth is.