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A Special Message To Parents and Grandparents
by GBC Ministry

 To All Christian Parents and Grandparents:

 

 

 
Some of you have shared with me accounts of misrepresentations and lies that are being taught in our schools as truth.  Men's opinions and desires are being taught as facts.  In other words, our educational system, especially, but not exclusively, our secular educational system, is rewriting history.
 
I have also shared my concerns, both publicly and privately, regarding the human tendency to "embellish" the truth, to add to or take away from the true facts when it is convenient to support a personal prejudice or enhance a treasured, personal or family ideal.  This sin, which is rooted in the depraved nature of man, is growing in presence and practice in our society.  To keep ourselves and our children from succumbing to this rebellion against truth personally, we must all personally heed and teach our children to submit to the exhortation of Romans 12:1, 2:
 
     "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, 
     holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be
     ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and
     perfect, will of God."
 
Further, we MUST NOT allow ourselves to adopt today's relativistic approach to life which allows each individual to define for himself or herself what is righteousness and what is sin.  Rather, we must each accept and humble ourselves before the true facts that the Bible standard is the only true standard for true righteousness, that "all unrighteousness is sin" (1 John 5:17), and that the "wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23.
 
With all soberness, we must always remember and teach our children that our spiritual Adversary is the father of lies (John 8:44), all forms of lies, even what men may like to characterize as "half truths."   They must understand taht when we lie we are carrying out the wishes of the Enemy who hates our God, our Lord, and all His children, the saints.  It should make us shutter when we see ourselves or others we love begin to "stretch" the truth, invent facts, and rationalize circumstances to serve our own desires, lusts, devices and prejudices.
 

I would remind you that if you are walking faithfully in the Lord yourself, you will be led by the Holy Spirit, the "Spirit of Truth."  In obedience to the God of Truth, you must teach your childrent by both precept and personal example that there are no "lilttle white lies," that anything less than the whole truth comes from a spirit of lying which is rooted in our own flesh, and fed and encouraged by the Enemy of our souls.  Further, they need to be taught that "opinions," i.e., our feelings, desires, etc., that are not based on a full knowledge of all the facts of a situation, and guided by the Bible which, again, is the only source for truth and unassailable history, are very likely to be tainted to some significant degree with error.

To show the seriousness of this, i.e., what the end of failing to submit to and defend the truth will be, read and meditate on both 1 Corinthians 5:6 and Galatians 5:9 which emphasize the same truth:

      "...Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?" (1 Cor 5:6)
 
     "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." (Gal 5:9)
 
When the Holy Spirit repeats Himself like this, He wants us to pay special attention.  The lesson: a little lying (stretching the truth) today will ultimately result in a life that is a lie.  Sobering.
 
As Christians we must also humbly acknowledge the fact that we may be the source of many untruths in our families, knowingly or unknowingly.  We all are prejudiced about certain things, ideals, persons, etc., and all too often we support our prejudices with "expansions" of the real, verifiable truth.  When we do this, we are being led by the Enemy into one of his snares, a snare which, if we so not escape its deceit quickly, will enclose us, harden our hearts against truth, others, even God, and, ultimately, choke out the real truth from our life.

"Examine yourselves" (2 Cor 13:5) is once more an applicable exhortation.  Let us do this with a sober desire to please God, bless our children, and honor Him who is the Truth.  In the end, our eternity and the eternity of our children will reflect the degree to which we submit to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

 More below.

 
Dr. Albert Mohler, President, Southern Theological Seminary, Blog
March 4, 2008
 
The Post-Truth Era Strikes Again
 
The question of truth has always haunted authors of controversial stories -- including both fiction and non-fiction. Nevertheless, non-fiction was understood to represent a claim to be a true, even if highly interpreted, account of reality. Or, at least that has been the understanding until recent times.
Now, in the age of Stephen Colbert's concept of "truthiness" and what others have called a "post-truth era," the lines between fiction and non-fiction are becoming more and more blurred. This is true even in the case of some well-known, popular, and influential works.  Does the truth matter anymore?  Do we care if fiction is presented as non-fiction?
 
In 1992 Guatemalan author Rigoberta Menchu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely on the basis of her book, I, Rigoberta Menchu, in which she claimed that she and her family had been subjected to horrible persecution by right-wing Guatemalan forces and the government. While it is likely that this was true, at least in general terms, serious questions have been raised about specifics in her story. Is this not a problem?
 
In 1976 Asa Earl Carter released another book destined to be a best-seller. Writing under the pseudonym of Forrest Carter the book appeared as The Education of Little Tree. The book was presented as an account of the life of a young Native American boy. It later turned out that the story was not an autobiography at all, but a work of fiction. Nevertheless, the book is still cited as a non-fiction account in many contexts.
 
President Ronald Reagan had asked historian Edmund Morris to write what many considered the authorized biography covering his life and presidential administrations. Readers were shocked when Morris's book, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, appeared. The book was not a traditional biography at all. Instead, Morris wove together fictional and historical materials so that the reader is never sure which is which. After controversy ensued, the book's publisher had the audacity to claim that Morris's methodology actually represented an improvement or advance in the biographical form.
 
Two years ago, James Frey was forced to admit that his purported memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was not a truthful account of his struggle with drug addiction.  Then, just last week, the literary world was shaken by the news that Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years by Misha Defonseca is yet another fake.
All this is background to today's revelation in The New York Times that the book world has been rocked by yet another literary admission.  Truth has been victimized again.
 
From the story:
 
In "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.
The problem is that none of it is true.
 
Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.
 
Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published "Love and Consequences," is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Ms. Seltzer's book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Ore., where she currently lives.
 
Here is the most interesting section from the paper's report:
 
"I'm not saying like I did it right," Ms. Seltzer said. "I did not do it right. I thought I had an opportunity to make people understand the conditions that people live in and the reasons people make the choices from the choices they don't have." Ms. McGrath [editor for Riverbend] said that she had numerous conversations with Ms. Seltzer about being truthful. "She seems to be very, very naïve," Ms. McGrath said. "There was a way to do this book honestly and have it be just as compelling."
 
That is the saddest aspect of this entire controversy.  This statement just about says it all:  "There was a way to do this book honestly and have it be just as compelling."  The truth would have served just as well -- and would have led to none of these embarrassments and humiliations.
 
We may live in what some would style a "post-truth era," but the fact remains that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction matters -- and far beyond the literary world.  The truth always matters, and only the most deluded may believe that we can live without it.
 
Still, there is hope in all this.  Every one of these revelations has brought a sense of outrage.  This just might be a sign that an instinct for the necessity of truth survives even yet.
In today's entry in his onging blog (commentary) which is titled "The Post-Truth Era Strikes Again" (see below), Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY comments on how this willingness to create false history, i.e., to lie, is permeating our culture.  I am sharing it with you because of the awesome responsibility you have been given to raise your children in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord," in the nurture and admonition of the One who is called "Faithful and True."  May this provoke us all to faithfulness to the Truth.

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