Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone.
Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm Zach Weihrauch.
And in today's episode, we're talking about a public health crisis, and we're asking the question, why are doctors lying?
This is actually prompted by an article I read in the Atlantic recently about how public health has discredited itself.

Confidence in public health, meaning the perception of doctors and of large governing bodies dealing with health, is at an all-time low among American citizens.
And this article was attempting to point to the reasons why we can't seem to trust public health or doctors on a national level.
Here are some things that the article suggested.
First, a COVID.
The problem during COVID was not so much that we were being told stay away from this or wear a mask or whatever.

I mean, I'll leave those things for a different episode.
It's that the public health officials were picking and choosing when those things applied.
One minute we were being told you need to avoid large crowds and you need to wear a mask when you're around people.
But then when a Black Lives Matter protest was happening, you actually had national boards of health coming out and saying, actually, for Black Lives Matter, it's in the better interest of the public health to be in crowds and to not wear masks.
You're going, well well well, wait a minute.

It’s not a question of whether or not protests are possible, but one minute you're telling us we can't be around people, we have to wear a mask, and another minute you're telling us we should be around people, and we shouldn't wear a mask if we're supporting a certain political cause.
Actually, that's one of the things the article pointed out — it seems like public health officials have moved away from hard science and objective truths about the human body and about human health into more political ideology.
Talking about racism as a public health issue, gun violence as a public health issue.
It's not that those issues aren't important.
It's just that should my doctor really be the one who's talking to me about that?

I mean, after all, recently in the Biden administration, the surgeon general of The United States, the chief doctor, said that loneliness was our biggest health problem.
Now look, I've covered loneliness on wake up, look up.
Loneliness is a problem, but is it a problem my medical doctor should be talking to me about?
The problem is that the more medicine becomes about ideology or the more they kinda leave their lane to get into other areas, the less confidence we have in the things they're saying.
The more they sound political, the more we get cynical.

The more they have double standards, the less we take them seriously when they say any one thing.
I think this is a real problem.
There's a growing cynicism in our hearts and in our culture towards doctors, towards medicine, and towards government.
So what I want to do is use this episode to offer some thoughts on a way back.
Here's the first thing.

Truth must trump ideology.
This is a big problem we have culturally.
Jesus says it this way in John eight.
He says it so well.
The truth will set you free.

That's what truth does.
But we aren't really interested anymore as a culture in truth.
We're interested in shading truth, impartial truth, truths that reinforce our political or social views.
We're interested in burying any truth that contradicts.
Now that's a problem in my heart and a problem in yours, but it's amplified when that problem is in our leaders because what they're passing off as fact isn't actually fact, and we know that.

And even when we don't know that, we suspect that.
We have to get back to being a culture that values the truth.
The second thing is not just truth, but wisdom.
You know, Psalm one eighteen nine says it's better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.
What the writer is saying is that true wisdom, of course, of which God is the source, is better than the collective wisdom of our leaders.

We're no longer hungry for the best strategies.
We're simply looking to solidify our own voice and our own power.
Wouldn't it be great to have a leader come out and say, hey.
We know we said this, but in retrospect, we wish we hadn't.
Actually, this is the answer.

Because in that moment, what they'd be saying is we love the American people enough to want what's true and to want what's wise and to want what's best even if it wasn't what reinforced our power or previously held belief, but we just don't have that in our leaders anymore.
Instead, we have deception which breeds distrust and division.
Proverbs twelve twenty two says that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, and that's what we're seeing.
The Lord hates lying, not just because he arbitrarily decided lying is not his favorite.
It's because lying hurts people.

It weakens families.
It weakens communities.
It weakens culture.
And what we have are leaders we know have lied to us, have not acknowledged that lie, and just move on to the next one.
And as a result, we are increasingly cynical.

Alright.
Well, look.
Everything I've said so far, you might be thinking, I know that's true, but what am I supposed to do about it?
Well, that's actually the biggest point I want to make, is that leaders reflect our own culture.
They reflect our own hearts.

You and I can't make public health officials, doctors, board, surgeon generals tell the truth.
We can't make them value wisdom over ideology.
We can't make them own their lies until we start to own ours.
You see, if you and I want to live in a culture that values truth, if you and I want to live in a culture where wisdom matters more than reinforcing my ideology, where liars admit their lies, the only way we can participate in that is to become that, and that is the call of Jesus on our lives.
When he was talking about the truth setting us free, he was meeting the truth about him, which includes the fact that I am a sinner, that I am often unwise, and that I need to own my sin, confess it, be forgiven for it, and surrender to his leadership.

If we want leaders who tell the truth, we have to be people that tell the truth.
If we want to live in a culture that values wisdom, we have to begin to value wisdom.
Maybe then we'll get leaders who are a little more like us and as a result, a little closer to what God had in mind.
Hey.
Thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up.

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