Parenting In A “Post-Truth” World
My kids don’t get in much trouble for doing bad stuff at home.
I have four boys, and they hit each other. They tease, trash talk, and put one another down. They leave their clothes lying on the bathroom floor and leave their dirty dishes on the table. They skip doing their homework and thus perform poorly on tests. And, yeah, they may get reprimanded for these or any of the other infractions they commit in regards to our house rules… but there are few “sins” under our roof worse than LYING.
It’s when they hit their brother and then lie about it that they get busted. It’s when they lie, and say that their homework is done when it’s actually not, when things start to get ugly.
It’s when truth is abandoned that the kraken of discipline is released.
But, when I take a giant step backward and observe the culture surrounding my kids… who can blame them?
Why should they live under the tyrannical governance of “truth”, when truth and facts are as relevant as a brontosaurus or a cosmic black hole…
I mean, yeah, these things may have existed once upon a time. They may have even played a vital role in daily life here on earth, or even in the existence of the cosmos… but dinosaurs and supernovas don’t directly affect my kids’ lives today.
How sad is it that the same can be said about truth?
In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary actually recognized the term “post-truth” as its international word of the year. Post-truth is an actual thing!
The dictionary defines “post-truth” as:
“Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
In other words, our culture is more swayed by peoples’ moods than objective facts.
Consider the story of “Hampster Girl”. No, I’m not referring to a new Marvel comic book character, but I’m talking about a young professional writer who had an interesting disagreement with her editor. According to Carol Blymire’s Twitter stream, this young writer was so distraught after receiving constructive criticism from her editor that she called her mother, put her on speaker phone, and kept saying:
“I thought what I wrote was perfect and she just made all these changes and then had the nerve to tell me I was spelling words wrong when I know they are right because that is how I have always spelled them…I mean, I always spell hamster with a P, she has no right to criticize me.”
Blymire Tweeted her perspective, which coincides with my own. She wrote:
“I think I was most perplexed by the insistence of wanting to spell something the way she wanted to because SHE WANTED TO, ignoring the fact that there are rules and dictionaries.”
Then, there is Emile Ratelband, a Dutch TV host and “positivity guru” who attempted to legally change his age from 69 to 49, because he didn’t FEEL 69-years-old. As Ratelband put it:
“You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age?”
Emile’s logic may SOUND true. But it’s simply not ROOTED in truth.
Now, we used to joke about pastors never letting facts get in the way of a good story for their sermon… but that was in regards to which of his three kids slipped going up the stairs, or was the line at the grocery store three people deep or ten… not whether it was a guy in front of the line or a girl… or a guy who was identifying as a girl.
Which brings me to the birds and the bees… or rather, the X’s and the Y’s.
In high school, there were some guys who felt more comfortable hanging out with girls and vice versa. There were girls who hated the idea of jelly shoes and high bangs, so they opted for trucker hats and high-tops… if you know what I mean. BUT, they were still definitely girls. We were taught very succinctly that there was no getting around our chromosomal make up – either we had two X chromosomes, making us a girl; or an X and a Y chromosome, making us a boy. There are boys who behave more effeminately than others and girls who behave more masculine than other girls, but at the microscopic, scientific level, we were either boys or girls.
Or, for those of us who didn’t pay much attention to science class and instead watched too many movies, Little Joseph put it plainly in Kindergarten Cop:
“Boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina.”
But, according to the culture surrounding our kids today, Little Joseph is wrong.
Quoting someone who is nearly never wrong, Dennis Prager:
“…a writer for the left-wing magazine The Nation defended the victory of two high school male-bodied trans women who defeated all the female-bodied women in a Connecticut track competition — because, in his words, “trans women are in fact women.
“Now, we all know trans women are not in fact women, that they are biologically men who regard themselves as women. And in private life, I have no problem treating trans women as women if they look and dress female and take on a female name. But it is completely unjust to have them compete against born females in sports. They are not in fact women; they consider themselves women despite the facts.”
The trouble is that we are living in a culture where if something is repeated enough, it eventually is regarded as fact… without any regard to the claim’s actual validity.
It’s as if an entire society swapped out in Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor’s New Clothes for David Spade’s Emperor’s New Groove… and that is not a fair trade by anyone’s standard!
The fact that something is deemed unpopular, doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a FACT.
In other words, as Ben Shapiro often exclaims: Facts don’t care about your feelings! In fact (there’s that word again) – unpopular convictions can be good… or they can be foolish, if you are convicted of something false.
For example, last year, my boys were reading Mildred Taylor’s classic novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. For those of you who haven’t read it yet – READ IT! It’s an immersive work that brings you right into the heartwarming and heartbreaking world of Depression Era Mississippi, when family, integrity, and independence were paramount, yet the main characters stood immediately in the face of racism and social injustice. Repeatedly, my boys were reminded of what Cassie, the narrator, called ‘the way things are”. You see, at that time, in that place, it was considered “true” by too, too many people in the South that black people were less valuable than white people. That was the popular belief. That was the influential public opinion.
And it was, is, and always will be 100% false.
The Declaration of Independence has it right (though, admittedly it wasn’t applied correctly for far too many decades): Certain truths are self-evident. These facts are true regardless of public opinion or cultural trends. All men are created equal. ALL MEN, no matter what color of skin they may have. ALL MEN, as in mankind, meaning men, women, and children alike. And every person is endowed – freely given without earning it – certain unchallengeable rights that come from God, our Creator. These rights include, but are not limited to the right to life, and to live freely, while pursuing happiness.
However, even in pursuit of someone’s personal happiness, the ends do not justify the means if the means are not based on truth. The fact is, the skeleton of our entire free society is woven together by shared truth. As truth erodes away – even with the best of intentions – the backbone of our culture erodes away with it like societal osteoporosis.
Now, at this point, I have to set one thing straight. In many cases, it is possible that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time. These moments are somewhat rare, but they do happen.
For example… an all-too-personal example – a student can be very smart and yet still receive failing grades because he decided to go snow skiing instead of show up for class week after week. (And… I apologize to my mom and dad…But, we’ll save my college failures for another episode.)
We see other examples all around us where two opposing facts remain true: My neighbor is incredibly mean and cusses out my wife and kids, but she is undeniably loving to her own adult children and puts up a Christmas light display visible from the International Space Station for the enjoyment of our entire community. Another example: someone can say or tweet stupid things and come off as a complete jerk to half of the nation’s population, and still be spot on with his employment policies.
Or, yet another example of two apparently contradictory truths happened within my family recently: last month, my sister-in-law was in a terrible traffic accident. She was stopped at a red light, and proceeded to move forward when her light turned green. But, just then, a guy flew into the intersection, running his red light, causing my sister-in-law to T-bone his car, setting off airbags and totaling both vehicles. Luckily, everyone escaped the accident with merely scratches and bruises. But, my point is that the accident was clearly the other guy’s fault. Not only did he break the moving violation of running a red light, but a host of other driving laws as well. My sister-in-law was wronged and, along with her car, damaged on so many levels.
But, as I explained what happened to my 16-year-old son, who has just recently started driving on his own, it dawned on me… there is a second aspect that is also true. Before any of us steps on the gas pedal when the light turns green, we need to look both ways to make sure no idiot is about to endanger all of us other drivers. Yes, it’s true that some drivers make unsafe, idiotic mistakes. But it’s also true that the rest of us – especially my son – needs to keep a careful eye out, even when we have the right of way… and this applies to traffic laws as well as metaphorically to the rest of life.
You see, as parents, we must do the hard work of discovering and defending truth. And, it’s our job to pass on and instill truthful convictions to our children. Now, in light of truth, we also need to cling to mercy as much as we do justice. In other words, just because I’m right and you’re wrong, I shouldn’t hammer you with the truth, but I should remain humble at all times, without ever compromising my own convictions or acquiescing to the point of abandoning truth.
And finally, here’s one more bonus truth:
I can vehemently disagree with someone… even about something of utmost importance… and still love them.
I still love my friends when they disagree with nearly everything I just said over the past several minutes. I love my family members when I see them making decisions that are in direct conflict with the way that I would do things. And thankfully… hopefully… they still love me.
I love my country and its unique foundational documents and truths that set us apart from the rest of the world’s nations.
I still love my kids when they say that Twenty One Pilots is as great as U2 (okay… that’s an opinion… but, come on!)
Now, I understand that over time, we may learn more information that changes what we know as fact. That’s why we now have Penicillin, Purell, and models of the earth that are round instead of flat. But, until a truth is bonafidely disproven, it is still true.
The point is this: two plus two will always be four. Little Joseph was right and truthful. So was Thomas Jefferson.
And so is our responsibility to not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever that they sound like truth. Instead, we must lovingly hold fast, and speak the truth with conviction, as we parent like we mean it.