Liars, Liars Everywhere!
Rolling Stone magazine printed serious criminal accusations against a campus group, accusations the periodical now admits are completely false. Despite all of this, both the article's author and the magazine editor will keep their jobs according to the publisher. This matters, and matters to far more people than just those on the campus of the University of Virginia or even to the target demographic of Rolling Stone. Behind this scandal is a larger point. In our society, it's become acceptable to lie about people and ideas, as long as the crisis created is in line with a perceived social good.
In the Rolling Stone case, as in others, the inaccuracies of the story are mitigated in some people's minds, it seems, by the fact that stories like this create awareness about real problems. Is there a problem with sexual assault on college campuses? Yes. Stories like this, then, become less about demonstrations of such a problem than as fictional illustrations of the problem. The lie isn't good, one might say, but, hey, let's look at the bigger picture: a rape culture that needs confronting.
It seems to me that we saw some of this just this past week in the coverage over the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) in Indiana and Arkansas. I was stunned by how many journalists and activists were either willfully ignorant of the legislation, or just counted on the public to be too ignorant to know they were lying. These bills, then, were pictured as radically different from the federal RFRA (they weren't; they just said explicitly what the courts have already interpreted the federal RFRA to mandate) or even worse to suggest that a RFRA would provide a blanket right to "discriminate" for businesses (they don't; they simply provide a balancing tests in the court where the government must show just cause for restricting religious free exercise). Some of the anti-RFRA activists know better, but the spin was worth it for the larger social good (as they see it).
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Now, it's one thing for Christians to see all of this and tell each other, "Ain't it awful." It's another for us to ask how we are tempted by the very same sins. And that requires us to see what the Scripture reveals lying to be about: power.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/rolling-stone-and-the-culture-of-lying-137097/
