Being a huge classic movie buff – one of my favourites is “Gaslight” – a film from 1944 starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury. “Gaslighting” has since become a verb, but many may not be aware of the genesis of the term that has now moved to common parlance. I do recommend watching the film to better understand its origins. Britannica online accurately defines it as “an elaborate and insidious technique of deception and psychological manipulation… Its effect is to gradually undermine the victim’s confidence in his own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from appearance, thereby rendering him pathologically dependent on the gaslighter in his thinking or feelings”

To prove I am not gaslighting you, the segment I omitted was the suggestion that this tends to be carried out on one person toward another. That may be true of “gaslighting” in its original context, but we have moved well beyond such limitations. Attempts to bring attention to cases of mass deception is often derisively dismissed as engaging in conspiracy theories. Since conspiracy theories definitely exist, this makes the deception easier to perpetrate, especially when one perspective controls the dissemination of information and act as gatekeepers. Once this infrastructure is in place, the potential abuses are legion (and I use that term advisedly).

I’ve chosen the title, “The Viral Church” because I feel like the Chinese Communist Party Wuhan flu has shone a spotlight on society and the results aren’t pretty. Worse yet, I’m especially troubled by the response of the western church and the deeper realities that such exposure has revealed. The issue is not the virus itself, but I believe it is a symptom of a far deeper problem that our chaotic times have brought into focus.

It has been my privilege in the past to serve on 3 different Christian boards. During this time, I became painfully aware of my limitations. This has involved the vast areas about which I am ill-informed, minimally informed and/or have no practical experience or insight. At those times I have been blessed with serving alongside mature and godly individuals who I can trust to steer through those areas. My faith in them has not been misplaced. The experience has shown the importance of looking beyond ourselves to gain a better understanding in areas outside of our gifting.

Let me further be candid by confessing that I struggle in many areas of temptation, including balance in my priorities. A recent sermon I heard addressed the need to resist distractions such as social (and other) media. I readily confess that I fall into that category. That said, the indictment assumed that social media would distract from God. While the excessive attention includes pointless and even ungodly content (which I don’t excuse), the vast majority is related to staying strong in the faith and awareness of the cultural battles being waged.

Since I’ve expounded on several of my shortcomings, this is only part of the story. God can work with those with severe limitations, but there needs to be some meat on the bone or anyone sitting on the board that has nothing to offer is unnecessary. For me, my giftings have been shown to reside in the spheres of discernment and reason. God has also given me a passion to seek out what is true and apply these insights into false narratives and teachings. This blog and my other writing opportunities are a tribute to this objective.

Scripture reminds us that we are all members of one body and each of us are uniquely created to fill a role (Romans 12:1-8). There are also countless passages in scripture that address the importance of discernment and putting false teachers and ideologies to the test. My love of apologetics and Christian worldview started when I backed into the issue of abortion. The reason it was not on my radar is that my church throughout my life until that point (some 20 years ago) never brought up the subject and it had no personal relevance. Having researched, debated –including a lengthy email exchange with Joyce Arthur – one of the pre-eminent pro-abortion advocates in Canada. I became convinced of the evil of abortion and applied the same in-depth investigation into other social issues and scrutinized the soundness of scriptural claims. I actually view much of my online activity as building on my gifts for discernment much as a pastor researches material for sermons, so I believe it is a false dichotomy to conflate social media time with taking time from God. These needn’t be mutually exclusive propositions. This brings us to the crux of my point.

A friend recently brought back to mind the oft cited illustration of an elephant surrounded by an array of blind scholars each positioned uniquely around the pachyderm’s body. They conclude the nature of the object in question based on the body part they are touching (i.e. trunk = snake, ear = fan, leg = pillar, etc.). The presumed takeaway that comes from eastern mysticism is that all have a piece of the truth. This is baffling as this violates both the laws of logic and of non-contradiction. Reality informs us, whether or not we have the full picture, that an elephant is not anything but an elephant and making conclusions by extrapolating on our limited information is folly. There is only one true explanation and being blind to the larger picture cannot be fixed by subjectivizing reality with terms such as “my truth.”

It brings me no joy to broach concerns and divisions between me and my fellow believers not just because I want unity, but because I know how arrogant what I am about to say will sound. As my preamble hopefully makes clear, I am not arguing from any pretense of being a more mature Christian or more knowledgeable. If you hear me make such a claim, please denounce me and stop reading. I have said before that I did not attend seminary and am not a biblical scholar, however I ground my arguments in the Bible and owe my discernment to my Lord. If I make false truth claims and won’t recant them, reject me as a heretic. So far, those taking issue with the boldness of my criticisms are not doing so based on them being untrue.

My concern is that I believe the western church is largely buying into a false premise. They haven’t heard first-hand many of the matters about which I am sounding the alarm. While some may even accept that news sources, educators, entertainment, courts, and politicians in general skew left, they don’t see their actions as pernicious and have come to believe that mainstream sources could not possibly redefine reality. That is precisely my claim and, like the fish in the pond, they don’t see the level of contamination of the water they swim in because they don’t know what fresh water looks like. These issues are not hidden and can be read in my blog posts which provide plenty of detail and support.

To ground us on the relevance of truth as the north star for Christians, I wish to highlight an exchange between Jesus and Pilate before Pilate orders that Jesus be crucified:

Pilate went back into the Praetorium, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” “Are you saying this on your own,” Jesus asked, “or did others tell you about me?” “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is not of this realm.” “Then you are a king?” Pilate said. “You say that I am a king,” Jesus answered. “For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” “What is truth?” Pilate asked. And having said this, he went out again.” – John 18:33-38a

      This reminds us that Christians have the source of truth as our Saviour. John 8:31-47 makes this point earlier while contrasting Christ’s nature with that of Satan who is the “father of lies.” This means that we can expect Satan to use deceptive teachings and he starts by deceiving his “disciples.” Furthermore, what is the point of putting on the armour of God (Ephesians 6) if we are just to parse the messages of the culture and find a compromise with the world (something else scripture stringently cautions against). After all, it is no coincidence that the designation that we are living in a “post-Christian” culture coincides with the recently adopted “post-truth” culture.

Before I address the strategies that I see being used to create a fiction and bury truth, I will pre-emptively cover what could be reasonable challenges to my commitment to the importance of confronting this forcefully and boldly.

1. Are the concerns being raised legitimate and do they meet the standard for truth?
2. Should these issues be given weight or is this merely nit-picking?
3. Is getting caught up in these issues corrupting the church by politicizing it?

I genuinely believe these to be relevant considerations as I know in many cases the divide is not between marginal vs committed Christians. Here is may position on the above questions:

1. From the outset, I can say that I have raised several of what I view as particularly pernicious lies and distortions and I have not been labelled as Chicken Little. Mature believers I have raised concerns with have confirmed that my concerns and the evidence are justified. In other cases, they have insisted that they don’t know for sure and prefer to err on the side of conventional wisdom. This has been the argument, for instance, with the response to the Wuhan CCP virus. I also know that opposition has come not from competing information that debunks the evidence I provide, but a reluctance to relinquish conclusions that they had heretofore accepted as legitimate. I also have fellow mature believers who have independently reached the same conclusions as me through reliable sources.
2. Certainly, some falsehoods are more consequential than others and have a deeper impact. I believe that the premises that most impact the church and our witness need to be given priority attention. That said, there needs to be a far better understanding of the duplicitous themes, what sources are and are not reliable, and the impacts that shape our culture. Since the compromise within the church – like the cultural shift itself – has happened incrementally, failing to catch the minor deceptions can and have become boulders that now are impossible to eradicate on our own. When the bedrock is based on a lie, it is tough to argue what issues do and do not need to be debunked.
3. One of the greatest tools of the activist secular left is to make every issue political. This serves their objectives in at least 2 ways. First, once an issue moves to the realm of the political, then an authoritarian government system can dictate the rules for everyone. Secondly, since the church should not be mired in politics (and risk our tax-exempt status), then we become stifled as voices on social issues that are being stolen from us; resulting in deleterious impacts and the dissolution of the family and civil society. My blog itself is an attempt to de-politicize issues by grounding them back to scripture and challenging the idea that our options are binary and that tolerance is acceding to the cultural zeitgeist. Speaking truth is not political and we shouldn’t allow it to be treated as a pollical matter.

That said, here are the obstacles faced to bringing truth to light:

• Taking at face value the veracity of mainstream sources. All or almost all mainstream sources skew left – especially in Canada. We know this because of the political makeup and framing of issues by these institutions. The reams of evidence are so substantial that to even offer a cursory examination would require numerous articles. One would have to believe that despite the ideological imbalance (generally upwards of 90% in favour of a secular left philosophy) that this in no way colours how they cover issues.
• Assuming sources that affirm your worldview are trustworthy and those on the other side are corrupt. While this can certainly inflict those on all sides of the political or ideological aisle, the first point shows why Christians and conservatives are most often assumed to be lying and corrupt. This is absurd on its face – especially as Christianity teaches objective truth and recognized lying as a sin – even when telling the truth costs us personally. The left, in fact, often excuses the actions of those on their side BECAUSE they don’t claim to hold Christian values. My blogs are replete with examples of this. The primary challenge for conservatives and Christ-followers is the tendency to focus so heavily on confronting the left because the layers of deception are so profound that we can be tempted to ignore the abuses in our camp. This is why a diversity of views is so essential.
• Believing that each side is playing by the same rules or on an even playing on the same field. I have heard non-believers of various stripes claim that Christians are trying to impose their values on others. Their top examples (opposition to abortion and same sex marriage) are both cases where the state imposes their worldview and we are attempting to either make the case for our position to change law or not be forced to comply and affirm through force of law the mandated values of the left. Milkshaking, doxing, violent protest, shadow banning, censorship, blacklisting, cancelling, firing for dissenting views, Human Rights lawsuits, implementation of “hate speech laws,” de-platforming, de-monetizing, etc. are all weapons from the left used uniquely against conservative and Christian views. Let that sink in. Those who are imposing their values are using coercive force and projecting their actions on those they are actively suppressing and oppressing.
• Being deceived by charismatic speakers and soothing speech. Christ conflicted with the religious leaders of his day because they’d lost the plot. Yes, this included the legalists and this threat should never be ignored. That said, heretical teachers are currently denouncing even the most principled and loving voices of dissent because of the notion that failing to “update” scripture to conform with cultural trends is treated as an act of intolerance. To me, there is no greater act of hubris than presuming to correct God’s moral law based on the notion that the Bible is some “living and breathing” book to be adapted as a way of showing love to those rebelling against God’s teachings.
• Disinterest about whether or not the information being dispensed in accurate. I have heard the defense made in response to tacit compliance with the lockdown, church restrictions and wearing of masks as based on a desire to remain apolitical; granting the presumption that government is pure in its desire to protect the public. Ignorance, however, is not a virtue. We KNOW the evidence for the efficacy of masks is mixed AT BEST, lumping statistics over a period has been used to claim a surge and return to draconian measures, the goalposts have shifted from “flattening the curve” to no increase in cases, vastly increasing testing leading to an uptick in cases is conflated with a life threatening situation, deaths with tenuous connection with the Wuhan CCP flu are counted in the statistics, social media censors any facts that cast doubt on the most dire explanations, the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine has been censored for purely political reasons, church attendees, parents in parks and pro-life counsellors FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS are arrested while violent protesters are free to commit chaos and can gather in large numbers for a memorial for George Floyd, the AVERAGE age from the Wuhan CCP flu is roughly 78 and almost all (in excess of 96%) had pre-existing conditions, government allows cannabis, alcohol and casino operations and big box stores to stay open while shutting down churches, small businesses, travel and social gatherings are not allowed, politicians and journalists peddling Wuhan CCP panic have violated their own rules. Not only is there a paucity of those standing against the laws, but even offering information to assuage the needless fears of panicked congregants.
• Criticizing or becoming angry at those sharing information that challenges the accepted narrative. This is certainly true of the issue referenced above.
• Incorporating secular ideas into biblical principles. BLM has been a primary example of this tendency. I have written 2 blog articles – here and here and one with Faith Beyond Belief about the unbiblical narratives adopted by professing Christians about our response to the divisive response to race by simply going back to scripture as a source. Failing to use the Bible as our compass for all issues makes us susceptible to falling for anti-Christian concepts that perniciously divide us while claiming to be uniting.
• Allowing agenda-driven anti-God ideologies to control the narrative. The language of the left is steeped in terms like tolerance, diversity, compassion, choice and similar terms that bear no resemblance to what they are preaching. The activist left is not taking the opposing position of “hate your neighbour” or “do unto others before they do unto you.” They are claiming to be the fulfillment of biblical objectives by coopting the message and preventing Christians from carrying out our mission by turning us into enemies of this goal. Worse yet, many within the church have bought into this premise.
• Tackling or viewing issues from a political framework instead of a Judeo-Christian moral worldview. Politics is not the answer. The fact that it can be sufficiently empowered to have such a role demonstrates the dangerous lack of constraint on their abuse of authority. I have almost no interest in politics and only follow it because the decisions made in this sphere are profoundly impacting every aspect of my life and yours. The public’s (let alone the church’s) silence as the government has incrementally usurped power that they have no right to is a mark of our failures. We have allowed Caesar to rob God of what is rightfully his – in broad daylight.
• Permitting God-hating elements to define the issues and characterize who we are. The issue of standing with Christian principles is not that they are intolerant, but they rightly ground how we need to understand reality and what is true. Dissent alone is seen as an act of contempt for others. The Christian should recognise that staying silent or watering down our message to make others feel better in their sin is the ultimate sign that we care nothing about others.
• Basing one’s stances on emotional or visceral reactions rather than standards of truth. Every time I have debates with atheists and even fellow believers who part company with me on issues do so based on emotion. I am not guiltless here as my propensity to not succumb to political correctness means I can be needlessly crass or blunt. While I do not excuse this, my approach fills a purpose in a culture tiptoeing around issues whereby we self-police our words. I invite all Christ-followers who don’t like my approach to use winsomeness to express truth in the face of those who don’t want to hear it. If you compromise your message, however, or side with individuals who are less volatile but outright wrong, you are allowing your feelings to supersede the dispensing of truth. Just listen to prominent “Christian” personalities who have publicly walked away from the faith. You can count on the rationale to be steeped in emotion (i.e. I have friends or family who are homosexual/transgender, etc. and I care about them). If your opposition to such social issues is based on your visceral response or negative view of them or their lifestyle personally, the problem is you, not Christ wrongly identifying sin.
• Putting trust in teachers rather than content. Teachers can have great insight and grounding on scriptural truths, but due to blindsides, ignoring our current circumstances, or any of the other points I raise here can go off-course from scripture and this can incrementally lead us off course. This may well be the greatest stake through the heart of the western church.
• Defending ourselves from attacks rather than making an affirmative case for our positions. This is especially challenging because of the shaping of the narrative. One of the reasons I don’t debate well is because my passion carries me and I have so much I feel compelled to correct to even set up my faith-based position that I have a propensity to become loud, abrasive and a poor listener in that setting. I know in counselling I am more than able to control this and do so naturally. This blog is intended to give context and argument together in a format that best relays my message and is specifically geared to debunking presumptions.
• Judging people based on abstract standards rather than character and actions. Trump is hated by vast numbers of Christians for many good reasons. He is a serial adulterer, arrogant, blunt, needlessly confrontational at times, etc. When I ran, these factors were part of why I didn’t feel he should be in office. This is because anyone claiming to stand for godly values who does not live them (especially when they have been lifelong Democrats -liberals) means there was little reason to believe he would stand on those principles. Based on what he has done, there is much Christians can celebrate even with his abrasive habits. Ignored in this (by the press and those who judge Trump on the external) have accepted that he is the problem and electing Democrats (who have actively engaged in and/or advocated all the concerns I’m raising) will set the U.S. straight. That is allowing emotional judgments apart from any semblance of discernment to carry you into accepting lies that are beyond dangerous to our lives and freedoms.
• Compromising or staying silent for the sake of peace. Many Christians post recipes and affirming Bible verses and stay away from anything controversial to keep the peace. Christ said he came to set family members against one another (a point I cover in detail in this post). If keeping the peace comes at the cost of putting your light under a bushel, then you are excluding yourself from the sphere of influence for friends, family and the nation. As Edmund Burke famously said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Thinking the noble thing to do is to stay silent and keep “out of the fray” – especially while judging those who stick out their necks to stand against lies and suppression – is not keeping peace. It is putting compromise and comfort over being a messenger for Christ.
• Taking on unnecessary battles that divide or being unloving in how we communicate. All things considered, we need to pick our battles and not seek to draw lines that needn’t be drawn. That too is a lack of discernment.
• Engaging in gossip rather than seeking resolution and clarification. We don’t need more enemies in our camp. Standing against the zeitgeist alone is very draining. We need to strive to winsomely (where possible) and pro-actively get across our concerns. Many understandably don’t like to live in these spaces and simply don’t know how profound the battle is. This is not an excuse, but those of us who plunge into the abyss know how tiring and isolating it can be and how strong the suppression is. We are part of Christ’s family and trying to enlist warriors should always be something for which we strive.
• Criticizing the process for airing grievances rather than weighing the merit. I recently heard a sermon about the need to share concerns face to face rather than in writing. As I’ve indicated, I know that my writing is an area of gifting and that using the phone is the worst method of communicating. Scripture (which incidentally is a written document) does not teach this. I encourage everyone to find the best way of imparting truth that attempts to do so respectfully and effectively. What matters most is the merit of what is said rather than the vessel for expressing a point.
• Choosing to respond to the world as we would like it to be rather than how it is. While essentially addressed in various forms throughout the blog, this overarching fact dictates pretty much everything else. When Orwell wrote “ignorance is strength,” he was not arguing in favour of this, but warning against a dystopian future that is being birthed as we speak. The lack of leadership from the church has given us our post-Christian/post-truth culture where disinformation and division has been nurtured. Continuing to react to the culture will not only further dilute our witness, but will make the church instruments in the process. This is no small thing.

Times of testing always magnify who we are as individuals and even collectively as members of a group. For the western church, the prognosis is poor because it exposed a virus that pre-existed our current state. The government has told us that we are not an essential service and, for the most part, we have agreed with them.