Finding Truth
This week, I’m going to call you out – yes, you! If you’re watching this, I’m calling you out and pointing out something you do all the time and you’ve been doing it since you were a kid. More specifically I’m calling out YOU and your cartoonish ways of learning things.
Now, you’re probably assuming that I’m going after Common Core or e-learning via Zoom, but that’s for a whole ‘nother episode.
No, I’m talking about your blind devotion, trust, belief, and faith in the one and only: Sandy Plankton!
I can hear you now: “How dare you! You don’t know me. And, even if you do know me, you don’t have the right to accuse me of devotion to someone I don’t even know or have even heard of! Who the heck is Sandy Plankton, anyway!!”
Now, if you know who Sandy Plankton is, congrats to you – you actually pay attention to the entertainment that you plant your kids in front of.
No, I’m not talking about a convergence of two of SpongeBob’s friends. One, that would just be gross. Two, it’s just not relevant.
The Sandy Plankton I’m referring to is the never-seen, never-heard, but always believed character in the movie Finding Nemo. Throughout Finding Nemo, the “grade-school fish” declare that Sandy Plankton made various claims… and no one in the entire school of fish fact checks the kid!
Here’s what I’m talking about… but in order to not get sued for copyright infringement by Disney, I’m not going to show the clips, you’ll have to just put up with my interpretations.
Early on, little Nemo tells his dad, Marlin that Sandy Plankton from next door, says that sea turtles live to be a hundred years old! (to which Marlin blows him off and replies, “Well, if I ever meet a sea turtle, I’ll ask him…”) – by the way, I love foreshadowing in kids movies.
Anyway, then, later in the movie, the kids have ditched their class and are hanging out at the dreaded “drop off”, when they see a giant object floating up above them.
Nemo asks, “What’s that?” His little friend, Tad answers, “I know what that is. Sandy Plankton saw one. He called it… uh… he said it was called a “butt”. Little Pearl then follows with “That’s a pretty big butt.” Not to be outdone, little Sheldon swims out with his fin outstretched and says, “Oh, look at me. I’m gonna touch the butt!”
(And, of course… this wasn’t a butt at all, but actually a BOAT, revealing that Sandy talks out of his butt quite often!)
And finally, at the end of the movie, after Marlin has trekked all across the ocean to find his son, encountering sharks, undersea volcanoes and even human kids, he tells his son that he met a 150-year-old sea turtle. Nemo then says, “Sandy Plankton said that they only live to be a hundred.” To which, Marlin replies, “Sandy Plankton? You think I would travel the whole ocean and not know as much as Sandy Plankton? He was a hundred and fifty, not a hundred.”
So, what does any of this have to do with anything that we parents face today? And, how on earth can I say that I’m calling you out in regards to some know-it-all grade school fictional fish?
I’m glad you asked.
You see, the writing team led by Andrew Stanton are not good writers… they are GREAT, utterly FANTASTIC storytellers. Every syllable is honed to perfection in their work. So, why include this unquestionable know-it-all?
Because we’ve all known him.
Every school playground had a Sandy Plankton. YOU may have even been your school’s Sandy Plankton. (And you need to repent!)
And, we all BELIEVED our Sandy Planktons – in my case, his name was Joe. We’ll just leave it there, to protect Joe’s wife and kids. Joe would tell us about his Spring Break trip to Europe, and we believed him. Joe told us one lie after another over the years, and we just took him at his word. Now, to be honest, buying into Joe’s truth-deficient stories really didn’t affect my life whatsoever. I’m no better a person for growing wise to his tall tales, nor has my life been adversely affected in any way during those years when he hooked me in.
But, to completely exhaust the metaphor, Joe – and all the other real-life playground Sandy Planktons we grew up with – are just small fish compared to the Sandy Planktons YOU ALL blindly devote yourselves today.
Who do I mean?
I mean the people that you get your information from regarding the world around us. Today’s Sandy Planktons are no longer restricted to the school playground, but they infiltrate our homes, offices, cars, and everywhere else we go – via our phones… EVERY DAY.
But, they’re much more deceptive than Sandy Plankton. They inject their personal opinions into what they call “news”. They lie straight to your face, and then they perpetuate their lies over and over again. And, they go by many different names. Some may refer to them as “Legion”, but the graphics under their images read “Brian Williams”, “Don Lemon”, “Chris Cuomo”, “Joe Scarborough”, and many others. And, to be fair, you can include the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity to the list of modern day Sandy Planktons.
But, I’m not calling them out. They can redefine truth and ignore actual facts until the cows come home. I’m calling out YOU.
YOU’RE the one who takes them at their word. You’re the one who hears their stories, and then simply nods your head and believes them just as Nemo did. You then parrot their opinions, half-truths and convictions as if CNN is preaching the Gospel.
And, so that there’s no misunderstanding, I’m talking about your approach to COVID, to your attitude toward Trump, to your stance regarding Black Lives Matter and systematic racism in America, to your perspectives on the impact of the LGBTQ movement on our society, to your understanding of the separation of Church and State, and which inalienable rights are actually guaranteed to each of us. And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg!
I’m talking about EVERYTHING.
Here’s your problem – and yes, it’s YOUR problem. It’s YOUR wrongdoing. It’s YOUR mistake that YOU make over and over again and it bleeds into every aspect of your life, including how you raise your kids and prepare our society for their future. Your cardinal sin is your deadly combination of SLOTH, GLUTTONY and PRIDE.
For example, you hear Don Lemon compare his friends – who happen to be Trump supporters – to drug addicts who “have to hit rock bottom” and seek help.. And worse, he said he had to cut them out of his life. And you listen in agreement. There’s your sloth.
You’re LAZY.
Instead, you should be taking the next step and seeing what the other side has to say about Lemon’s claims. (And, for the record, Cuomo, Scarborough and so many others are no better, no worse, no different). Check sources like The Daily Wire to learn another perspective.
But, your PRIDE PROHIBITS you from daring to seek out another side of the story, if for no other reason to seek understanding, much less to fact check your “news sources”. You sit there, complacently thinking, “I got this. I understand it all because so-and-so said so.”
A wise youth pastor once taught me that he wouldn’t necessarily agree with the stupid moves that I’d make as an irresponsible teenager, but he always wanted to hear my story to at least try to understand why I did what I did. And, I promise you, no one EVER accused Pastor Jeremiah Riffe as being slothful! Quite the opposite – he would seek understanding ALWAYS. And he surrounded himself with TEENAGERS! Talk about an endless endeavor!
But, getting back to YOU. After hearing Sandy Plankton’s stories, lazily nodding in agreement, and then digging your heels in the ground, you then GLUTTONOUSLY ingest more and more of these opinions disguised as truth and conversationally vomit these same ideas everywhere you go – even all over your dinner table where Sandy Plankton’s lies drip all over, stain and infect your kids.
And, right about now, all you fans of FOXNEWS are sitting pretty tall on your high horse – YOU’RE NO DIFFERENT. You do the same thing when you watch Tucker, Sean or Laura Ingraham.
And you guys on the extremes – you know who you are – you devotees to The Young Turks and OAN. I’m looking DIRECTLY at YOU!
You are all guilty of hearing the news you agree with, clinging to your personal confirmation bias, and then calling it a day.
I mean, look… if God Himself tells us to fact check Him and His spokespeople – it’s there, I promise. Check Acts 17:11 and 1 Thessalonians 6:21. Seriously, if the Bible says “test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil”… or lie. Shouldn’t we do the same thing regarding our news sources, especially in regards to, I dunno… pandemic disease transmission, or the Constitution, or the 1619 Project… as the Apostle Paul wrote – TEST THEM ALL!
So, how do we break this cycle?
Well, at some point in time – I can only assume it’s taken place sometime over the past 25 years or so – a skillset has been abandoned by our schools and therefore our society. Way, way, back, when I was a boy, we were all taught that it was our DUTY to be CRITICAL THINKERS. I clearly remember Mrs. Gillingwaters drilling it into the minds and habits of us 14-year-old high school freshmen, insisting that we learn how to communicate beyond even our own best intentions in pursuit of truth and understanding.
We need to be willing and able to look at all of life’s issues and realize that every coin has two sides, every story has multiple perspectives, and every Kleenex box has six faces.
But don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking about abandoning truth. I’m talking about deciphering truth and separating it from Sandy Plankton’s lies and Don Lemon’s opinions.
Then, live appropriately – cling to truth. Do what is right. Mercifully speak that truth, bathed in love – sometimes tough love. All the while, remaining humble, especially in light of the fact that each time you open your mouth, you run the risk of being someone else’s Sandy Plankton.
So check yourself.
Check out more Parent Like You Mean It videos on our YouTube Channel!
And, watch more entertaining and engaging videos from our incredible influencers videos here!
