Seeking Truth in a World of Misinformation

Russ Ewell

The problem with everyone having their own truth is that it ushers us into a world of misinformation.

All kinds of commentators, social science observers, surveyors, researchers, and pollsters will tell you that misinformation is a problem.

Sometimes they’ll associate it with the social media complex that’s out there. Sometimes they’ll associate it with a particular political party. And many people are trying to say, well, how do we stop the misinformation, the inaccuracy of information that misleads people?

And yet, very few are willing to look and say, maybe it has something to do with the postmodern age in which we live. What does that mean? Postmodernism is born out of a number of thinkers, many philosophers, some like Nietzsche, many would give him credit for it, who believed that truth is relative. It’s relative to your own experience, your own perspective, your own worldview. And when everybody has their own truth, then … is misinformation really misinformation? Or is it actually your truth being communicated to others? And because it’s your truth, you actually believe you’re communicating accurate information? 

Why is this important? Because in that world, some of the misinformation out there is misinformation about God, misinformation about spirituality, misinformation about what it means to be a Christian, misinformation about what it means to obey the Bible or practice biblical Christianity, misinformation about how well this type of spirituality, the spirituality of Jesus, can be integrated into our lives to allow us to live extraordinary lives, resilient lives, lives that can adapt, lives that can thrive.

As the scriptures teach in 1 John chapter five, lives that can conquer.

That’s something that’s been on my mind a great deal. That’s something that I’ve been wrestling with and watching other people wrestle with: the stress and tension of society in America and around the world, that doesn’t know how to handle information, that doesn’t know what to do with the information that’s out there.

Many people who are young don’t know how to discern what is true and what isn’t true. Again, because at the bottom of the pit, so to speak, is something we’re not all talking about, which is as long as we live in a world where we think that information is relative to your own perspective, as long as we live in a world where we think that information and truth is relative, then we’re going to continue on a spiral and a cycle of having everybody come up with their own perspective and say, this is absolutely the truth. 

That’s why today I want to introduce the newsletter for Deep Spirituality and a change we’re making.

You’ll begin to receive, if you’re subscribed, and we hope you will subscribe to the newsletter. You can go to deepspirituality.com and go ahead and subscribe to the newsletter, and you’ll begin receiving in the next week a newsletter called The Chemistry Lab. 

Now that’s funny and it may not make sense, but let me explain how a kitchen table and science can help us find truth and God and spirituality in a way that will clarify what truth really is, enhance and transform our lives, and be able to change the world and make it better so that we leave the world better than we found it.

In Proverbs 25:2 it says, 

God delights in concealing things. Scientists delight in discovering things. 

That’s Proverbs chapter two in the Message. Now here’s the thing: a lot of people get worked up about the various translations, and if you use a translation that’s not their translation, they have a problem. That gets back to what I was talking about: everybody having their own truth. As long as we live in a world where everybody gets to have their own truth and there’s no absolute truth, then we end up fighting and squabbling over things that we don’t need to fight and squabble over, and generally don’t make progress in life. 

In Proverbs chapter 25, verse two, where it says, God delights and concealing things. Scientists delight in discovering things. In other translations and most translations, it’ll use a word like king or governor or leader or ruler.

Well, why does Eugene Peterson, the translator of the message, use this language? Because in the time that the scriptures were written and throughout the history of the world, kings were often tasked with finding wisdom, making decisions, inventing and discovering, leading the nation to be able to be transformed. Think about Egypt in the pyramids, and so on and so forth. 

And so when Eugene Peterson translates, he makes what’s called a functional translation instead of a literal translation. I know a lot of you may be bored with that, but think of functional as I took Spanish when I was in high school. Functional as hey, let me let me just communicate.

It might not be pretty. It might not be exactly what you’re expecting, but you understand it. 

Whereas literal, if you translate, say, Spanish like I did, literally, it doesn’t actually make sense. If you try to translate it literally and make it what it ought to be in english. It’s a totally different language. Well, what Eugene Peterson does reflects today’s world.

It’s scientists who discover, it’s scientists who invent. It’s scientists to explore. And that’s why I believe if we really embrace it. And if you’ll join me on the journey, not subscribing and becoming a part of it because, you know, I’m asking you to, but because you want to be part of the journey of experiencing discovery in your life so that you can understand spirituality so that you can clarify and be able to see clearly and think critically about the information you receive in life, but also about how you make choices about how you live in your life.

Well, scientists do that, and that’s what I originally wanted to be. And that’s why we’re going to call the newsletter the Chemistry Lab. 

I’ll be writing it personally and getting it out to you and sharing with you things I’m working on, things I’m exploring. They may not always be right. They may be wrong. I’ll be wanting your input.

And so you should go to these Deep Spirituality and send emails. You should also go to our podcast, whether it’s on YouTube, Spotify, Apple’s podcasts, or wherever you find your podcast, leave us a comment so that we can be able to get your input and make the newsletter and all of our content better and better and better. But let’s get back to that kitchen table and let’s get back to science.

So when we moved to Michigan, my family did, I was seven years old. And my parents were moving us into the house and they told us all three kids, two girls and one boy. I’m the youngest, the only boy. They said, go ahead and go in the house and pick out the room you want. And so I ran in with my sisters and unbeknownst to my parents, I ended up picking the biggest room, which was supposed to be their room.

Now my parents, being the unsuspecting, trusting type, decided to let me have that room. And so I got that room. Fast forward a year or so, and my parents wanted to get a new kitchen table because the kitchen table they had wasn’t adequate for their purposes, even though it was a huge kitchen table. And when they were getting rid of it, I said, can I have the kitchen table?

And they allowed me to have the kitchen table. And so I moved the kitchen table in my room and like I told you, how could I fit a huge kitchen table in my room? Well, I had gotten my parents room, that’s why. And my mom was just laughing about this the other day. My mom’s 90 years old, and she was laughing about how they ended up being in this small room, and that she couldn’t remember why they didn’t move me out of that room and take it for themselves.

And what went on top of that kitchen table? A chemistry set, then a second chemistry set, and then a biology set. Because I wanted to be a scientist. 

All the books I read when I was young were about scientists. You know what scientists do? Scientists discover, scientists explore, scientists search things out. Scientists aren’t afraid to be wrong in pursuit of truth, and scientists believe they can find truth. Scientists search for the facts, they uncover what is inaccurate, and they try to discover what is accurate. That’s what scientists do. And that’s why I’ve chosen the name, the Chemistry Lab. because the spirit of discovery is what will drive the chemistry lab. 

A newsletter like I told you, it’ll be new weekly from deep Spirituality. Why? Because in a world full of noise, people need a space to discover God, to discover how God can be involved in their personal life, in their relationship with God, in their work life, in their family life, in their friendships, in moments of suffering, in moments of victory, God can be intricately involved.

What we call this is walking with God. What we call this is being in the presence of God. And instead of spirituality being some nebulous thing floating out there, we’re able to, when we look at the Bible and we use the Bible, we’re able to define and understand how spirituality can affect what I say are the four dimensions really of our life: our mind, our mental acuity, the way we think, our intellectual life, our emotions, the heart, our physical body, literally the way we function, move and take care of ourselves. And of course, spirituality itself, the soul. 

That’s why the Bible says, Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength because there’s four dimensions to life. And even though there are people who say, well, I don’t think God is true, I don’t think spirituality in the Christian Bible is real.

Well, that’s because many people who say that while being well meaning they say it because they don’t respect or believe in or haven’t explored and discovered the fourth dimension of life, which is spirituality. Maybe they’re stuck in the intellectual or stuck in the emotional, or maybe just consumed with the physical. They like to workout, run, get out into nature and move.

All those things are good, but you need to have all four dimensions. And what we’ll be doing is understanding what really we talked about in the article. If you haven’t seen it, what if it’s true on Deep Spirituality, go read it. Go take a read if you want to and explore it. Here’s a quote from it: 

“While some dismiss Christianity as a cultural construct or human invention, such claims ignore a fundamental truth: we are not merely physical, emotional, or intellectual beings. We’re spiritual. It is this spiritual dimension that produces the disturbances and internal unrest we cannot explain away.”

It’s about letting go of all the things that maybe we’ve assumed about God or assumed about spirituality. Even for some of us, letting go of our traditions the way we’ve traditionally done our Christianity and asking the question, what did God intend?

And joining me on losing control so that we can find God and understand how a kitchen table and science can actually lead us to spirituality, knowing God, and the kind of discoveries that will energize our relationship with God, energize our family relationships, energize our friendships, and energize our ability to make a difference in our community. 

So the chemistry lab, it’s going to open this week, and I want to encourage you to go on to the deepspirituality.com site, subscribe to it and join us on this journey.

And even as you begin reading your Bible, join us on the journey by looking and seeing what you can discover. And if you want some help with that, tune in to our next episode, which is kind of a part two of the chemistry lab, where I’ll have Mike Query as my guest and he’ll be talking to me about the perspective he has on relationship with God and what he wants to learn and grow in so he can deepen this relationship with God.

And so he’ll be bringing all of that into the lab so that we can begin to help ourselves and hopefully all of you have a more vibrant spiritual life. 

Thanks for listening. Don’t forget to rate us and please give us five stars and give us a comment, because that helps what we’re doing here at Deep Spirituality reach more and more people.