South West England is home to a small village named Combe Martin that snakes through a beautiful valley for a mile and a half until it culminates in the sea. The village has been holding a celebration for the past 300 years called "Hunting the Earl of Rone".
Preceded by drummers and dancers, the Combe Martin "Grenadiers" march through the town in their red uniforms to the thrill of tourists and villagers. They enter the woods to reenact the capture of an Irish Earl who fled Elizabeth 1 in 1607 and was shipwrecked nearby. Every year, the Grenadiers find him, "shoot" him, (to the cheers of the crowd) and throw him into the ocean. (It takes them approximately three hours, literally 17 firing squads, and lots of dancing to accomplish this.)
In fact, the actual Earl fled directly to France and died many years later in Spain. There was no shipwreck, no search in the woods, no capture, no firing squad, none of it, and no one knows how the pageant got started. However, large parts of England believe the capture of the Earl is the God's truth.
Perhaps this story is just an entertaining example of the old saying, "Repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth." The scary thing is, it was the devil himself, Joseph Goebbels who said it. As the chief propagandist for the Nazi party, he used this method to brainwash wary German citizens into being hard-core haters and malleable puppets for the Nazi regime. Heard over and over, the lie became truth to them.
Amazingly, Goebbels managed all this more than 80 years ago, without the technologically-advanced communications we have today. So perhaps, in this age of constant messaging, advertising, and pushing of viewpoints, we should pay a lot more attention to the words that are being used to convince us. Are they divisive? Do they push an "us against them agenda?" Be afraid, be very afraid.
More and more, we have to decide for ourselves. More and more we have to look for evidence to justify the way we think about things, being wary of viewpoints that promote division. Benjamin Jowett, a theologian at Oxford University, said "There is a great deal of lying in the world; especially among people whose characters are above suspicion." Maybe we need to be a little more suspicious.
The village of Combe Martin has turned their lie into a lovely annual pageant, but most lies don't create anything as pleasant as a parade. You are what you eat, and we are being fed a lot of hate-inducing lies and half-truths by smiling people on TV and witty sloganeers on social media. Are we really willing to go along with the malicious content and allow it to become "truth" to us?
While no one mobilized hate like the Nazis, don't kid yourself, it can happen again and it can happen here. We are not immune. I'm going to be real woke here: I hereby cancel the cancelers. BAM! And, here's the real God's Truth: People are basically good and love is what matters most. Pass it on.
Nancy
