<\/p>\n
By Jim Wallis<\/a> 01-26-2017<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.\u201d Pilate asked him, \u201cWhat is truth?\u201d \u2014 John 18: 37-38<\/em><\/p>\n This has become the biggest question in the first week of Donald Trump\u2019s presidency, \u201cWhat is truth?\u201d<\/p>\n Since becoming president, Trump \u2014 both directly and through his top aides \u2014 has made a number of demonstrably false statements. Rather than backing away from these statements when confronted with the truth, he and his team have doubled and tripled down on claims that defy reason, logic, evidence, and just common sense.<\/p>\n READ: Resistance Is Patriotic \u2014 and Christian<\/a><\/p>\n The first major example of this behavior came the day after his inauguration, when he and his press secretary both made wildly inaccurate and provably false assertions about the size of the crowd that attended and watched his inauguration, particularly in relation to the number of people who attended Barack Obama\u2019s first inauguration in 2009. It quickly became a highly sensitive thing for the new president, a source of personal insecurity and embarrassment that significantly more people attended President Obama\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n Alternatives to the truth are more accurately called lies.<\/a><\/p>\n It was no doubt disconcerting, not only to him but to many of his allies, that the nonviolent protests that occurred the day after<\/em> he took office featured several million demonstrators <\/a>(at least 3 million in the United States alone) in hundreds of cities and small towns all over the United States and world. Even using fairly conservative estimates, major media outlets have reported that the Women\u2019s marches marked the largest protest in the history of the United States<\/a>. Such a massive protest in opposition to a new president is something that has never happened before in American history.<\/p>\n On Meet the Press, <\/em>Chuck Todd challenged Trump and Press Secretary Sean Spicer\u2019s falsehoods in a conversation with Kellyanne Conway<\/a>, one among Trump\u2019s innermost circle of advisors, during which she said Spicer had presented \u201calternative facts,\u201d a phrase that quickly went viral due to its Orwellian overtones. Alternative facts lead to alternative truths; and alternatives to the truth are more accurately called lies.<\/p>\n Trump also continues to propagate the false claim that 3 to 5 million undocumented immigrants (\u201cillegals\u201d he calls them) voted illegally for his opponent \u2014 another very sensitive subject for Trump, considering he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million<\/a>.\u00a0There is absolutely no evidence for Trump\u2019s claims of voter fraud, and even the studies Trump and Spicer cite do not support the claims. However, in what could be a dangerous precedent, Trump may now be putting the force of government behind his hurt feelings, vowing an \u201cinvestigation\u201d into alleged voter fraud.<\/p>\n Trump may now be putting the force of government behind his hurt feelings.<\/a><\/p>\n So what do these major, easily disproven lies<\/em> mean in the first week of Trump\u2019s presidency?<\/p>\n Narcissism.<\/strong><\/p>\n Trump\u2019s own narcissistic personality makes him incapable of acknowledging his own unpopularity. More deeply, these lies and Trump\u2019s determination to stick to them show that he is obsessed with the image of his own legitimacy as president, despite having won an electoral victory by the rules in an election that experts and authorities across the political spectrum agree was not tainted by major fraud.<\/p>\n Trump is not the first political leader who has trouble with the truth, nor is he the first with an overwhelming and sensitive ego. It\u2019s something that almost all public figures have to deal with, and even the wisest among them do. But clearly, Donald Trump is a leader on the extreme end of the narcissism scale and, reportedly, spends a great deal of his time watching television to see how he is being covered.<\/p>\n Autocracy.<\/strong><\/p>\n I believe there is more here than Trump\u2019s self-absorbed personality. He\u2019s already shown himself to be an autocratic leader. Historically, the most autocratic and unpopular political leaders around the world often feel compelled to prop up their legitimacy with falsehoods, and actually try to change the political narrative by lying about it.<\/em> I don\u2019t think we should comfort or delude ourselves into treating Trump\u2019s consistent lying simply as comedic or sad because his ego is so fragile. Donald Trump knows that a certain percentage of Americans, many of his loyal followers, will believe anything he says<\/a>\u00a0and will dismiss those, especially in \u201cthe media\u201d who dispute Trump\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n Autocratic leaders often feel compelled to prop up their legitimacy with falsehoods.<\/a><\/p>\n Marketing.<\/strong><\/p>\n With respect to al<\/strong>l the good people in the field of marketing, Donald Trump is the ultimate marketer \u2014 with his brand as his moral measure of life. Perhaps the lying isn\u2019t just personality, but is also purposeful. Trump may not be an intellectual or someone who reads books or understands policy issues well. But he is smart and a savvy marketer and ran his campaign that way. Sometimes marketers lie in order to deceive, for the sake of their own agenda and brand. Perhaps this lying is ultimately intended to change the political conversation such that the narrative is no longer accountable to the facts. If you are successful in delegitimizing fact checkers and truth-tellers, pretty soon nobody knows what the truth is \u2014 and the strongest and most powerful voices, especially the one controlling the highest bully pulpit, get to define the truth as they see it.<\/p>\n If you are successful in delegitimizing fact checkers and truth-tellers, pretty soon nobody knows what the truth is.<\/a><\/p>\n How much could the \u201calternative facts\u201d of Donald Trump change the expert-backed narrative that voter fraud is virtually nonexistent? How could his lying about voter fraud change \u201cthe facts\u201d enough to justify his stated goal of \u201cstrengthening up voting procedures\u201d? Could Trump and his allies use lies and deception to advance a false narrative that voter fraud is a major problem, which then could provide the justification and political cover to institute voter suppression on a massive scale in order to disenfranchise low-income and minority voters who are less likely to support Trump and his conservative Republican allies? Those allies have already been trying to use the myth of voter fraud to disenfranchise African-American voters with \u201csurgical precision\u201d as a federal court described Republican voter laws in North Carolina. Lying has a purpose.<\/p>\n Our national conversation about the brazen and shameless use of blatant falsehoods for personal and political reasons should go far beyond politics. This assault on truth should concern us spiritually as Christians. As Michael Gerson noted this week, conservative Christians in particular are in grave spiritual danger<\/a>\u00a0during this presidency. Gerson\u2019s reasons \u2014 the need to reject racial nativism, the fact that religious freedom needs to be applied equally to Christians and Muslims, and the dangers of faith aligning itself with the power of the state \u2014 are all important.<\/p>\n White Americans in particular, including white Christians, are especially subject to untruths told about immigrants, refugees, Muslims, African Americans, and other minorities. Timothy\u2019s second epistle warns against \u201chaving itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.\u201d Those myths and lies can lead to justifications for practices and policies against \u201cthe others,\u201d which is a principal fear now about a Trump administration \u2014 especially among people of color.<\/p>\n READ: American ‘Christianity’ Has Failed<\/a><\/p>\n The disregard for what is true, and the cynical spreading of blatant falsehoods, presents great spiritual dangers, and not just political ones, to those who might acquiesce to or embrace these tactics. Christians are called many times in the Scriptures to be truth-tellers and to reject falsehoods, from scriptural commandments against bearing false witness to Paul\u2019s exhortation in Ephesians 4:<\/p>\n “<\/em><\/strong>We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people\u2019s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ\u2026. So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n According to Stanley Hauerwas<\/a>, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us that politics \u201ccan never be divorced from truth.\u201d Indeed, Hauerwas maintains that Bonhoeffer believed that \u201ccynicism is the vice that fuels the habits to sustain a politics that disdains the truth.\u201d The cynical use of blatant falsehoods, as well as using facts in incredibly misleading ways, were both hallmarks of the Trump campaign \u2014 and based on his first week in office, they seem likely to continue during his presidency.<\/p>\n The free press has a critical role to play in protecting the truth \u2014 but so do people of faith.<\/a><\/p>\n This cannot be a political or partisan issue for people of faith. Truth-telling is a matter of faith for us and a fundamental principle of how we hold politics accountable. We cannot let our knowledge of both objective scientific facts and deeper spiritual truths become causalities of this administration. The free press has a critical role to play in protecting the truth \u2014 but so do people of faith and conscience.<\/p>\n As I finish the piece, Donald Trump has just said that torture \u201cabsolutely\u201d works and that he would approve it in his administration if his team agrees. That torture works is a lie and a moral aggression that would directly lead to the use of torture again by the United States. As many diverse Christian leaders have said, torture is anti-Christian. Will the Christians who supported Donald Trump stand up against torture under his regime? \u201cSpeaking the truth to power\u201d is a necessary and invaluable Christian practice and tradition that may become central again in our witness to the presidency of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n Perhaps John the apostle puts it best: \u201cYou will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.\u201d<\/p>\n Jim Wallis<\/a><\/p>\n Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners. His book, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America<\/em><\/a>, is available now.\u00a0Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christians’ Call to Speak Truth to ‘Alternative Facts’ By Jim Wallis 01-26-2017 “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.\u201d Pilate asked him, \u201cWhat is truth?\u201d \u2014 John 18: 37-38 This has become…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-larrynorton","post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom","no-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bppg-3V","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}