A 56 pound laptop?

A few years back my kids came home early from their classes at a local community college. It seems there was a bomb scare and the school was shut down while a suspicious brief case with the numbers "9-1-1" showing on the combination lock was found abandoned in a hallway on the premises.

Upon further examination, it was discovered the case actually contained an antiquated laptop--nothing else.

But when the news media got hold of the story, things sounded very different. What struck me most about the articles and reports that came out was the weight of the case--supposedly it weighed 56 pounds!

What laptop ever conceived has weighed 56 pounds? More than likely, someone mentioned it may have weighed 5 to 6 pounds, but this is just one example of how the media can get a story all wrong, but still report here-say as fact in order to gain a greater audience.

I have always wanted to become a writer, and so I was told that I should go into journalism so that I could make a living at it. After dipping a toe or two into the water, I decided it was not for me--I just could not be that unethical and aggressive.

Journalists must vie for space and time. They must run to the be the first to get a story, and then be the best at trumping up a story into something fantastic that only resembles the truth in order to get recognition and gain clout. Editors and directors choose the more sensationalized versions of the truth in order to gain more readers/viewers.

And this is one reason why most of what we are fed in the media is only partially accurate.

The other reason is that there is an agenda to most news. Rush Limbaugh and the like are often found directly accusing the media of a bias, and the folks in the mainstream emphatically deny it--and I don't believe the media types are trying to deceive, I believe they themselves are deceived into believing their truth is the truth.

The truth most media foists onto the rest of us is truth that has been born from the labors of the universities of our nation; universities dedicated to inculcating a set of values that are decidedly humanistic and secular (some would say they are purposely socialistic and communistic).

And journalists of all ranks have been indoctrinated by their years spent, not only in the humanistic propaganda of a usual public school education, but of four or more years of a college education as well. Their view of life is very different from the view of wisdom described in the
Bible, but is instead built entirely from a subjective reality in which man is the center and originator of all things; that there is nothing higher on this earth to be attained to, no higher law or knowledge, etc.

And so they report and write for us according to a new, relative morality in which smoking is a great sin, "shacking up" is holy sacrament, divorce is a necessary stepping stone in life, and making money is good as long as it is done in politically correct ways and always redistributed "fairly".

In this new morality, health is a godly goal, and saving the planet is a cause carried on the lips of small children with missionary zeal. We may no longer sing carols of the Savior's birth in public, but we are encouraged to stand and proclaim our great love for Mother Nature and share testimonies of how much we have recycled over the last year.

But God knows all about this sort of thing, and He declares it all foolishness:

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 1 Corinthians 1:19-21

In my humble opinion, not much I read or hear is to be trusted. I try and seek the truth in the middle of a whole lot of mess--I try and ask God what to see and believe in what I hear, and I try and keep in mind the lesson of the 56 pound laptop!