Is there a fuzzy line that borders on truth, but isn’t quite right? Some portions of the public relations industry are especially adept at this verbal art form, the squishiness of words. Steven Colbert, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, calls this “truthiness.”
Some PR specialists are professional spin doctors. They generate the creative distortion of facts to obfuscate and blur the lines separating truth from lies, fact from fiction. 
Their bread and butter is the ‘euphemism,’ substituting a more plausible word for the more accurate. He didn’t “die,” he “passed away.” The company didn’t “lose money,” it “missed profitable expectations.” The candidate didn’t “lie,” he “misspoke.”
We see the “truthiness” industry at work in politics, in government, in the business world and often even in the church.
What about ‘truthiness’ in our own lives? Are people who live by the word, and let no “unwholesome speech come out of our mouths?” Do we justify and rationalize lies, so that even after a while we are no longer certain of what is the real truth?
How about you? What do you see in the world around you? What do you see in yourself? What part does truthiness take place in your day-to-day living as a Red letter believer?
Read all past issues at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidrupert
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In