In an interaction on my Twitter account the other day, I said:

“I don’t think you should be forced to get your #vaccine. But I do think you should get it freely. I have never done more funerals than I have the last 3 months. This needs to end, and the data clearly indicates that the vaccine is helping.”

A friend and evangelical pastor replied, “I want the vaccine. I think in comparison it is a safe alternative. It seems a lot of what is happening is preparation for global control in other ways but the vaccine is good. But how can I trust anything when everything is built on lies, coverups, and not owning ones mistakes?”

This is such a great question, and is a fundamental one that underlies much of the chaos and division that is visible in our nation and within American churches.

We are truly in an epistemological crisis in the United States.

So first, a quick definition: Epistemology is the name for a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature & value of truth and the means of knowing — in other words, “What’s true, how can I know it, and why does it matter?”

This crisis not new. We have been in one for over thirty years on the progressive side, (to the point that even he/she isn’t knowable), but the crisis has been slower to arrive in the evangelical movement. But arrive it has — and with a vengeance.

Today I’ll deal with

• What caused our Truth Crisis
• What has sped our Truth Crisis along
• How evangelical Christians can begin to escape the Truth Crisis.

What Caused the Truth Crisis in Evangelicalism

Here’s a fundamental truth that you need to understand:

Let me lay out the process of discipleship that has led us to this place.

We are being discipled by the political culture as much or more than by our churches.

We need to understand that we are in a continuous process of discipleship by the internet, social media and conservative media.

The Rise of the Fake News movement

Living for 30 years in that environment conditioned conservatives perfectly for the rise of the “fake news” movement. I wouldn’t deny that media bias exists. It undoubtedly does. But the fake news movement deconstructed all sources of authority not just based on truth, but inconvenience and association.

I have been told, after sharing a news story that demonstrated my viewpoint, “Well, that’s CNN.” Other versions of this exist:

• “That’s the CDC.”
• “That’s the Libs.”
• “That’s the Drive-By Media.”

But we’ve bought this lie of “nothing is true if it comes from that source” at a terrible cost. It might be convenient for the short term, to prop up a chosen candidate or party, or to be able to disregard some political discussion that makes us feel uncomfortable during a disorienting pandemic. But in the long run, we’ve just traded one skewed agenda for another.

Note well: Cynical actors, vying for power over the narrative, created the Fake News movement, based on a partial truth, which was widely accepted by conservatives. They did it, not because they cared for Truth, but because they cared for their own power. By doing it, they were able to cement their hold on the minds of one end of the political spectrum.

The subtle acceptance of subjective truth.

Once among evangelicals there was a commitment to objective truth, that truth was outside us, and knowable. The slogan, “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” was a worthwhile reminder of the occasional brutality of truth.

Truth is stubbornly resistant to conforming to our fondest wishes.

But somewhere along the line, we decided that there was objective truth about homosexuality and abortion… but not about vaccines, pandemics, conservative politicians, or QAnon.

In this truth vacuum, we are free to project our desires onto reality, then call it the truth.

This is what we’ve observed (and decried) the activists of the political left doing for 30 years. We have rightly scoffed that our feelings could define ultimate reality… but we’ve bought that line hook, line and sinker in the last 5 years. The reason? Because it was “our guy” from “our party” proclaiming it.

The Deconstruction of Authority

Talk about “Deconstruction” and “ex-vangelicals” is all the rage right now in conservative Christian circles.

But it’s time we talk about the ways in which we have become like and empowered those leaving us… You see, we’ve deconstructed, too.

We have deconstructed “ways of knowing” that have been in existence for centuries: Authority, expertise, statistics, math, science, and more have all paid the price of our deconstruction. What is worse, we have no plan for replacing them, so we’re simply in a fog, in a Cloud of Unknowability. In this Cloud of Unknowability, it’s easy to say things like “everything is built on lies” and “this is clearly a ‘plandemic.'” Suspicions, anger, conspiracies, and more abound.

Authorities around us have made it worse, no doubt, by not being trustworthy, and equivocating about the Truth. Dr. Fauci has done us no favors, and I’m not here to defend his reliability.

How do we get out of the evangelical Truth Crisis?

I would humbly suggest a few steps.

1. Recommit to truth being actually knowable.

It is not enough to ask questions and poke holes. The anti-vax community and other conspiracy theorists only and always attempt to do this. Frankly, evangelicals are genuinely struggling with knowing truth, because we have become like them. This needs to stop.

Deconstruction is easy. Construction is hard.

So, rather than constructing a way of knowing, people have just deconstructed the house they live in, and then acclimated themselves to epistemological homelessness.

Quick example of construction vs. deconstruction:

I’ve had tons of people tell me that I can’t trust the CDC’s stats, or the OK state department of health, because “they have an agenda.” This is classic deconstruction, the tearing down of a source of Truth.

But what would reconstruction require? To truly know the COVID death and vaccination stats… you’d have to create a system that enabled you to call every hospital and assisted living in the country, and collect their data, and compile it into a report.

THAT would enable you to know the truth. But that’s HARD. It’s much easier to deconstruct than to build ways of knowing.

So people stop right there, and just commit to “Well, I guess we’ll never know the REAL Truth.”

2. Recognize that authorities not on my side politically can be sources of Truth.

This requires significant humility in such a polarized environment. We’ve been discipled to disbelieve everything for the last 30 years. We need to unlearn some things.

3. Stop making every mistake or biased statement by recognized authorities a disqualifier for them as a source of Truth.

If every time a commander in the military made a mistake, the soldiers decided to disobey them into perpetuity… we’d never win a battle ever again.

4. Relearn critical thinking.

Few use this phrase correctly. It is often imagined to be thinking critically about your opponent’s views. But classically, it means thinking critically about things you’d like to believe. That’s hard, but healthy.

Looking at what you’d like to believe, and seeing if it holds up to scrutiny is a valuable skill that respects something more than your own feelings about what you’d like to be true.

5. Recognize narrative-driven news is a bipartisan phenomena.

These days, conservatives are using sketchy statistics and selective anecdotes in order to maintain a truly untenable position… frankly, in service of their own political power.

As a quick anecdote about that, someone posted on my Facebook wall short edited clip of a state governor saying they were seeing a 25% rise in hospitalization among vaccinated people. So I took time to do the research. Turns out, it was a rise from 6% of hospitalizations being vaccinated people to… 7.5%. 

This kind of silly, out-of-context statement is what we have accused the “other side” of… and here we are.

Look steadfastly at that, and understand it — The person who edited that clip was counting on you not knowing how statistics work, and being unwilling to do the work to check it. That’s narrative driven dishonesty, using an “accurate” statistic.

It’s time we recognize that CNN does it, but so does every other conservative news source.

6. Redefine the battle.

Warfare rhetoric in the political realm has not been kind to conservatives. It is only one step from “we are at war” to “all’s fair in war.”

The goal isn’t simply defeat of our human enemy, but their Redemption. After all, we still “wrestle not against flesh and blood…”

7. Reconstruct Authority as a means of knowing the Truth.

I realize authorities have been untrustworthy at times. But the internet has democratized info in unhealthy ways. All men are created equal, but all opinions are not.

I am aware that political populism has defined as “elitists” all those who have expertise… except a small group that paint themselves as “persecuted” yet somehow are willing to say exactly what the throng wishes to hear. But populism is foolish, and eventually turns on those who lead it (as Robespierre discovered.)

We should generally trust education & expertise. Education and expertise doesn’t make someone always right, but it makes them far more dependable. It doesn’t make them elite. And even if it did, there are few benefits to hating “elitism.”

The truth is that Authority is a wonderful means of knowing the truth. We used to know this as conservatives!

Denominations. Pastors. Doctors. Experts.

Yet, we live in a world where the disorientation has made us doubt that authority is a valid source of knowing Truth. It ought not to be so within conservative circles!

As long as it is this way, we will continually struggle with the ability to know anything… and the disorientation, fog and conspiracies will continue.

In Conclusion

It isn’t really true that “everything is built on lies.” That’s a conditioned response that we can & should reject.

If we make the only source of Truth our own faction, we will live to regret it. 

If you appreciate this, I’d be honored if you’d share it on social media.

And if you would be interested in having a way of discipling new Christians that is from classic sources of authority, I’d invite you to download a free copy of the NewStart Discipleship Journal at the link above.