It's a Fact

Have you not brought this upon yourself by forsaking the Lord your God, when He led you in the way? Jeremiah 2:17

The workshop on media bias was an eye-opener for me. The object was to explain that different people process information differently. Some people make decisions based entirely on emotion. Others make decisions based entirely on facts. Of course, the majority of people can be swayed by a combination of the two. And, with the success of marketing, my guess would be that there are a lot more "feelers" than "facters" in the world.

I was not surprised to find on the accompanying assessment that my emotion processing skills were so low that I rarely allow emotions to affect my decisions. (Except where basset hounds are involved, and then my reason goes to mush.) It was, however, an eye-opening experience for me.

Suddenly, I understood why so many policy issues were black and white for me. When others saw poor little sick children and thought government should do something, I saw dollars and cents and knew it was not government's job to intervene. Don't get me wrong. If I see a poor little sick child, I am even more likely to get personally involved in the situation than I am to pick up a stray basset hound. But, I don't confuse my responsibility to take action with the role of government.

So, naturally, verses such as the one in Jeremiah today make sense to me. God had chosen Israel and they were in a situation where there was absolutely nothing good left to say about them. The facts were in, and Isreal deserved to be abandoned by God and left to ruin.

Actually, forget Israel, the facts are in and we all fall short. Left to our own devices, we deserve damnation. Praise God who so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

And, praise Jesus who acted on the fact (in the face of conflicting emotions) that there was no way humanity could reconcile with God apart from His sacrifice.

It's Easter week - a good time to be thinking about the facts.