Truth, Transparency and Trust

 Truth, Transparency and Trust - By Jeff Childers - https://compass.org/gone-truth-transparency-and-trust/ Why was I asked to come here and talk about “covid”? Isn’t the pandemic over? Can’t we move on already? Unfortunately, the pandemic is not over. The pandemic is the explanation for every majorproblem. The pandemic knocked the world off its axis, and it is still spinning wonky. Here’s the problem. Covid launched the three most important Biblically based values historically constraining government into outer space: truth, transparency, and trust. In absentia, thesefundamental core principles were all enslaved to a new master value: science. From the first, when Christians originally invented science, it was never a value system. Christians already had a value system. Science was not a value system, it was a skeptical processfor falsifying hypotheses. Science was a thinking toolbox. It held a hammer of skepticism, a wrench of logic, and a screwdriver of reason. It was designed to help humans learn more about the natural laws governing ourperceptible universe. You couldn’t touch science. You couldn’t see it. It’s not tangible. You can’t really put it in a toolbox, or a hot pocket, or anywhere else. But like the Hulk, "science" evolved. It morphed, emerging after centuries from its intangible chrysalis of rational inquiry, revealed as something new, something tangible, something thathad its own separate existence. It became Science with a capital ’S’. And Science was something to believe in, like Santa Clone or the Tooth Fauci. Belief in capital-S Science required faith, not reason. And faith is something that brooks no questions. Faith and belief are binaries. They are litmus tests. Either you believed in Science, or you didn’t—there was no middle ground. If you didn’t believe in Science, put your faith in Science,and trust in Science, you clearly were anti-Science. You were, in fact, a Science denier. The "Science denier" label was, of course, always a blood libel. It was intended to evoke the sulfuric odors of antisemitic Holocaust denial. Ironically, shredding small-s science’s pragmaticroots, Science irrationally injected muddy belief and politics into the previously sterile corridors of rational philosophy. It didn’t make sense. Calling people “anti-Science” always bore the same logical weight as calling atheists anti-God, or calling UFO skeptics anti-UFO. (This irrational train would shortly pass through the rabbit hole tunnel and arrive at an Alice in Wonderland station where the gift shop sells books like Anti-Racist Baby. But that’s a differentdiscussion.) Science’s zealous and devoted high priests were the billionaires, bureaucrats, and bioengineers. Science’s sacrament was the high-tech vaccine that, like baptism, must be unquestioningly receivedby evangelistic believers in a public demonstration designed to prove their faith. Science’s original sin was disbelief. Many career scientists with impeccable credentials who asked the wrong questions were branded anti-Scientific and ritualistically excommunicated from the ranks of true believers. It’s easy to mistake the high priests of this new religion of Science as the architects and authors of the religion itself. Blaming the pandemic’s fervent administrators is natural, sincethey were the visible face of its worst excesses. But this comfortable conclusion overlooks the vast community of maniacal adherents. Politics, they say, is downstream from culture. Observe the global nature of the pandemic response. The new religion of Science took the world in its iron grip, and over a few days, every single world government signed a legal loyalty oathrequiring them all to respond in exactly the same way. But universal agreement is not human. Humans never easily agree on anything. They never all agree, even when people are all aligned and same-minded. Anyone who’s ever volunteered on the homeowner’sassociation board knows exactly what I mean. How then did the entire world fall into line in a few days (apart from short-lived exceptions that more fully prove the rule)? How did they achieve universal agreement to supplant the long-standing,inarguable goods of truth, transparency, and trust with a brand-new lodestar, a new universal faith offering redemption to the human race — Science? It’s exquisitely tempting, comforting even, to blame the high priests of the pandemic — the billionaires, bureaucrats, and bioengineers. Yet, global agreement has never before been achieved,regardless of money or military power. We must look for a non-human cause. In early 2021, I published my most widely read post, which immediately went viral, got me canceled, and got Coffee & Covid purged from every single publishing platform on the same day. Itwas a letter to the Church, addressed to pastors. I advised spiritual shepherds to stop falsely telling their flocks that the vaccines stopped transmission, and most of all, to stop preaching that taking the jabs was a moral imperative. I explained that the World had been possessed by a demonic Spirit of Fear, manifested in a substitute religion of Science with its own rituals, sacraments, and high priests. (Biblical rabbithole: compare Zechariah 1:7-11 and Zechariah 6 with Revelation 5:6 and 6:1-7, and discuss.) This diabolical Spirit of Science displaced everything in its satanic swath of destruction, casting churches into the non-essential abyss, instantly rendering themuseless artifacts of the old order. It was not coincidental that in the United States, the only lawful protection from the legalistic sacrament of mandates was a religious exemption. The good news today is that, recovering its footing after the shock of the initial onslaught, the rational world fought back. Now we are at war. Because it involves Spirits and not reason,it is a spiritual war. And a spiritual war requires a spiritual defense. Every inexplicable post-pandemic development in the world, like all the wars — both real military wars and insane cultural wars — plus the rumors of wars, and downstream global effects likeworldwide inflation, are merely by-products of this spiritual war. If that is true, how then should Christian legislators respond? The legislative response is to restore to government the essential Biblical principles of truth, transparency, and trust. Thelegislative branch must overthrow the false Religion of Science, along with all its unholy sacraments and performative legalism. Don’t fall into the slough of despondence. Focus on those three positive values. It’s unnecessary to grapple with Science’s made-up sins of misinformation, conspiracy theory, or its pseudo-scientific forced orthodoxy. Government should always be truthful and should never lie. Government should always be transparent — sunlight being the best disinfectant — and should never act in secret. And government shouldalways act in ways that cause citizens to trust it more, and never act in ways that destroy the essential trust required by democratic systems based on the notion that citizens govern themselves. These arguments are uncontroversial and inarguable. Cling to them. Truth, transparency, and trust are universally recognized values. They aren’t the exclusive jurisdiction of Christians. Theyare fundamental, inarguable principles preserving freedom, individual rights, and human flourishing. It is time to restore truth, transparency, and trust to government. It is time to reject the false premise that Science can somehow redeem humanity’s sins. It is time to focus legislativeefforts on restoring real values, to force government to live up to its own standards, and to expose the false promises of pseudo-scientific deception, however painful or embarrassing that might ultimately be. Thank you, Jeff Childers, for making the sacrifices to be willing to be used by God in the lives of so many. https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/