Truthfulness

Does this sound familiar? You’ve read rave online reviews about a restaurant or hotel and made a reservation. Then you show up and wonder if you’re even in the same place the reviewers visited. That’s when you know: They were fake reviews.

Phony reviews make up a big percentage of the total out there—anywhere from 16% to 40%, according to some estimates. Some fakes are raves by employees, artificial-intelligence software, or people hired to wax poetic about the place. Others are negative write-ups by disgruntled ex-employees or competitors.

The problem is so widespread that the Federal Trade Commission just created a new rule that will seek civil penalties for violators who pay for fake reviews or testimonials. Meanwhile, review platforms and online travel agencies are stepping up their efforts to weed out fake reviews before they ever show up online.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The article in The Wall Street Journal continued by listing six ways to check the validity of online reviews to distinguish a fake review from a true review (such as, “look for a picture,” or “avoid extremes,” and “check the timing of the review”). But how about us? How do we tell the difference between truth and falsehood, good doctrine from bad doctrine?

According to Business Insider, a big turn off for Gen-Z workers is what workplace experts call “a double bind.” Jeanie Chang is an expert on mental health in the workplace, and she defines it as “giving two or more contradictory messages at the same time.”

For example, claiming to value work-life balance by insisting workers are off their computers by 6pm, while at the same time supervisors routinely send messages after hours. Or when a job advertises unlimited paid time off, but workers are routinely denied PTO requests. Chang says that many Gen-Z workers use another name to describe the practice: “corporate gaslighting.”

As a member of Generation X, Chang doesn’t exactly blame managers for their double-bind habits. She thinks that many of them had the same practices modeled for them in their younger years, and just assumed that’s how work has to be. “People my age and up didn’t talk about mental health,” said Chang. She said that many of her coworkers adopted a survivalist mindset in order to battle burnout and fatigue, but they didn’t understand what was happening since they didn’t have the same common language to describe it.

By contrast, many Gen-Z workers adopt what Chang calls “a thriving mindset.” If they perceive that the company is an impediment to their happiness, many of them will quit, even without a backup plan in place.

“At the end of the day, you can't blame those older folks because they don't know what that is. So, it's a learning curve, but all sides have to be open. No one generation is better than the next.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Business; Church Staff; Volunteer Recruitment; Volunteers - Whether managing people in an office, or working with volunteers in a church, leadership must be clear about their expectations and open about the amount of time and effort that is expected and not take advantage of workers.

After a two-week battle with a sudden fast-spreading infection, Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, passed away. Dean had recently given a deposition alleging that his firing in 2023 was in retaliation for having disclosed what he called “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line.”

The Boeing 737 MAX has a troubled safety record, with high-profile crashes in 2018 and 2019 killing hundreds, and an Alaska Airlines flight in early 2024 that had to make an emergency landing after an explosive decompression due to an insufficiently secured door plug.

According to The Seattle Times, Dean was 45 years old, in relatively good health, and known for a healthy lifestyle. In February, he spoke to NPR about Spirit’s troubling safety practices.

"Now, I'm not saying they don't want you to go out there and inspect a job … but if you make too much trouble, you will get the Josh treatment,” Dean said, about his previous firing. “I think they were sending out a message to anybody else. If you are too loud, we will silence you.”

Dean’s death comes two months after another Boeing whistleblower, John Barnett, was found dead of a potentially self-inflicted gunshot wound. Barnett was also in the process of testifying against Boeing about potential safety lapses in the manufacturing of the Boeing 787, and claims that he was similarly retaliated against for his whistleblowing. Barnett was 63 at the time of his death, and known for a vocal criticism of what he perceived to be Boeing’s declining production standards.

Dean’s attorney Brian Knowles, whose firm also represented Barnett, refused to speculate on whether the two deaths are linked, but insisted that people like Dean and Barnett are important.

Knowles said, “Whistleblowers are needed. They bring to light wrongdoing and corruption in the interests of society. It takes a lot of courage to stand up. It’s a difficult set of circumstances. Our thoughts now are with John’s family and Josh’s family.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes telling the truth can be costly. But this should never inhibit us from standing for the truth.

In an interesting piece of science, Nautilus looks at what happens to our brains when we don’t tell the truth. It turns out that the more you lie, the more truthful it seems. Because while a lie might initially appear to the brain as a lie—a fabricated memory sets off your brain’s alarm bell—over time its “source-monitoring” fatigues with each fib. Lying cements the false details at the expense of the real ones.

Psychologist Quin Chrobak said that if a lie or fabrication provides an explanation for something, it’s more likely to become confused with what’s true. He said, “People are causal monsters. We love knowing why things happen,” and if we don’t have an explanation for something, we “like to fill in the gaps.” The pressing human need to fill those gaps, might also pertain to beliefs we hold about ourselves.

Another important factor underlying this effect is repetition. Psychology professor Kerri True explained, “If I tell the lie to multiple people, I’m rehearsing the lie.” And rehearsing a lie seems to enhance it. “The more you repeat something,” Chrobak said, “the more you actively imagine it, the more detailed and vivid it becomes,” which further exploits the brain’s tendency to conflate detail with veracity.

What’s at stake here is more than a scientific explanation for the pathological liar in your life. This process is at work in every self-rationalization and self-justification we tell ourselves.

If falsehood fatigue could explain how people can fall down the rabbit hole of online echo chambers. It’s also a glowing advertisement for a daily/weekly reminder that we cannot trust ourselves. That the devices and desires of our heart—what we believe to be true about ourselves—are all plagued by faulty wiring.

Regularly confessing one’s frailty in this regard might just reset the brain’s falsehood fatigue and bring you closer to the Truth that sets you free.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While this primarily applies to a person’s personal life, it also applies to politicians and governments. Hitler and his henchmen famously said, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Quoting from the book The Crown of Life (1869). Ultimately all lies can be traced to Satan for “he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Separating fact from fiction is getting harder. Manipulating images—and creating increasingly convincing deepfakes—is getting easier. As what’s real becomes less clear, authenticity is “something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to and judging more than ever.” This is why Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “authentic,” the company announced in November of 2023.

Editor Peter Sokolowski said, “Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore. We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”

According to the announcement from Merriam-Webster, “authentic” is a “high-volume lookup” most years but saw a “substantial increase” in 2023. The dictionary has several definitions for the word, including “not false or imitation,” “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character” and “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact,” among others.

Sokolowski said, “We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity. What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.”

Other words that saw spikes this year include “deepfake,” “dystopian,” “doppelgänger,” and “deadname,” per Merriam-Webster. This year’s theme of searching for truth seems fitting following last year’s focus on manipulation. The 2022 word of the year was “gaslighting,” a term that originated from a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton. In the play, a woman complains that the gas lights in her house are dimming while her husband tries to convince her that it’s all in her head.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As technology’s ability to manipulate reality improves, people are searching for the truth. Only the Word of God contains the absolute truth “your word is truth” (John 17:17), as revealed by Jesus, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

A chorus of discontent is emerging from the users of several popular dating apps like Hinge, Match, and Bumble. The consensus is that the experience has been gradually declining. Dating apps are not as fun, as easy, or as enjoyable as they used to be.

Which is not to say that they’re not still popular. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 10% of people in committed romantic partnerships say they met their partner on a dating app or website.

“Our goal is to make meaningful connections for every single person on our platforms," according to a spokesperson for Match.com. "Our business model is driven by providing users with great experiences, so they champion our brands and their power to form life-changing relationships.”

That statement notwithstanding, it’s hard for an app to develop a dedicated customer base when the most satisfied customers, finding a loving relationship, leave the app behind. Each successful outcome results in the loss of two paying customers.

On the contrary, most apps gain financial success by generating repeat users and maximize their time spent on the platform. This dynamic creates a situation described as “adverse selection,” where the people who spend the most time on dating apps are beset with suspicion from prior bad experiences on the app, making it harder to find meaningful connections. Anyone who remains must either lower their standards or risk engaging with people who are less-than-truthful in their behavior. What results is a less enjoyable experience all around.

Economist George Akerlof says there are solutions to the problem, which often revolve around providing more truthful information to counter dishonest actors. But that would require users on dating apps to share potentially embarrassing details of how or why their previous attempts at relational connection failed.

Alas, when it comes to honest self-reflection and authentic disclosure, there appears to be no app for that.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Long lasting relationships are built on the time-tested biblical principles of honesty, trust, and openness. Any other basis for a relationship will lead to suspicion and heartache.

Author Brené Brown was at a book signing where a woman and her husband approached her with books to get autographed. After Brown signed the books, the wife turned to leave and said, “Come on, hon” to her husband. “No,” he replied, “I want to talk with her for a second.”

Uncomfortable, Brown just waited. The man then looked at her and said, “I really love all this stuff you're talking about, this shame, and being perfect, and having to be someone we're not, and having to reach out. It is really powerful. But I never heard you mention anything about men.”

She felt relieved and said: “I don't study men.” He immediately responded, “That's convenient.” Nervously, she asked, “Why convenient?”

“It's convenient you don't talk about men,” he said, “Because when we reach out, when we tell our stories, when we share our shame experiences, we get the emotional s____ beat out of us.”

Brown was about to reply when he added, “Before you say anything about those dads, and those coaches, or about those bosses and mean bully friends, let me explain this to you. My wife and my three daughters, you just signed books for, they would rather see me die on top of my White Horse than see me fall off.” And then he just left.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story reveals the stresses men face today—the pressure to stay on your “white horse,” to maintain your image of strength and invulnerability, rather than to trust in God’s grace and be vulnerable in Christian community.

Ride sharing apps (like Uber and Lyft) ratings have become almost meaningless. A recent report says, “Confusion over what constitutes 5-star behavior for certain services, combined with the guilt of potentially hurting someone’s livelihood, has people defaulting to perfect scores. Ratings padding is particularly rampant for services involving personal interactions. Everyone is ‘above average’ on some apps—way, way above.”

A customer named Mike Johnson has endured some awkward Uber rides. He once held his nose throughout a trip because the driver was carrying chopped-up Durian—the world’s smelliest fruit. Another time, he was stuck in the back seat while a driver bickered with her boyfriend. Yet another driver tried to sell him a Ponzi scheme. He rated each one five out of five stars.

Johnson explained: “They all seemed like nice people. I didn’t want them to be kicked off the app over my bad rating,” the 33-year-old New Yorker said. “Isn’t 5 stars, like, the norm?”

Ratings are so inflated that Lyft drivers whose scores dip below 4.8 out of 5 stars are asked to boost their performance. Drivers under 4.6 risk getting deactivated.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) God is not afraid to tell us the truth about our sin. 2) Christians should resist this rating inflation and be willing to speak the truth in love to one another.

The moment we’ve all breathlessly waited for is finally here: Dictionaries are announcing their words of the year. In December, the US’s most esteemed lexicon, Merriam-Webster, revealed its choice: “authentic.”

In its announcement, the dictionary said the word had seen a big jump in searches this year, thanks to discussions “about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.” The concept of authenticity sits at the intersection of what’s been on our collective minds.

Large language models like ChatGPT and image generators like Dall-E have left us uncertain about what’s genuine, from student essays to the pope’s fashion choices. When it comes to the news, online mis- and disinformation, along with armies of bots, have us operating under different sets of facts.

Sure enough, other leading dictionaries’ words of the year are remarkably similar. Cambridge chose “hallucinate,” focusing its announcement on generative AI: “It’s capable of producing false information – hallucinations – and presenting this information as fact.” Collins didn’t beat around the bush: its word of the year is “AI.”

In a polarized world, the dictionaries’ solidarity suggests there’s something we can all agree on: robots are terrifying. AI is an obsession that seems to cross generations. Whether you’re a boomer or Gen Z, OpenAI feels like a sign of change far beyond NFTs, the metaverse, and all the other fads we were told would transform humanity.

Social media feeds have become carefully curated extensions of ourselves—like little aspirational art projects. As Merriam-Webster points out, authenticity itself has become a performance. In other words, we’re getting very good at pretending to be real.

Gerrit De Vynck wrote a story in The Washington Post about how artificial intelligences respond to the errors they make.

Citing a recent MIT research paper, De Vynck reported that a group of scientists loaded up two iterations of Open AI’s ChatGPT, and asked each one a simple question about the geographical origin of one of MIT’s professors. One gave an incorrect answer, the other a correct one.

Researchers then asked the two bots to debate until they could agree on an answer. Eventually, the incorrect bot apologized and agreed with the correct one. The researchers’ leading theory is that allowing chatbots to debate one another will create more factually correct outcomes in their interactions with people.

One of the researchers said, “Language models are trained to predict the next word. They are not trained to tell people they don’t know what they’re doing.” De Vynck adds, “The result is bots that act like precocious people-pleasers. [They’re] making up answers instead of admitting they simply don’t know.”

AIs like ChatGPT are not trained to discern truth from falsehood, which means that false information gets included along with truth. Chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google’s Bard have demonstrated a major fatal flaw: They make stuff up all the time. These falsehoods, or digital hallucinations as they are being called, are a serious concern because they limit the effectiveness of the AI as a tool for fact-finding.

What’s worse, scientists are beginning to see evidence that AIs pick up on societal fears around robots gaining sentience and turning against humanity, and mimic the behavior they see depicted in science fiction. According to this theory, if an artificial intelligence actually kills a human being, it might be because it learned from HAL, the murderous robot from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer at Google said, “No one in the field has yet solved the hallucination problem. All models do have this as an issue.” When asked if or when this will change, Pichai was less than optimistic. “[It’s] a matter of intense debate,” he said.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In our pursuit of technology, we must never give up our human responsibility to seeking or telling the truth.

A clip from a Pursuit of Wonder video illustrates how man's ideas of what is true often turns out to be completely false.

In Peru in the middle of the 1400s, there was what is believed to be the largest known child sacrifice in the world, with about 140 children and more than 200 animals killed. The reason: attempting to appease the gods in response to unusually bad weather.

In Europe in the 17th century, just a few hundred years ago, it was widely believed that the earth was the center of the universe and everything else revolved around it. When the now famous astronomer Galileo Galilei published a work that showed that the sun was the center of the universe, and the earth revolved around the sun, the Roman inquisition banned his work and found Galileo guilty of heresy.

In the late 19th century, little more than a hundred years ago, doctors used what are now Schedule 1 drugs to treat common cold symptoms in children. Also, around this time, doctors believed it was foolish to wash their hands before delivering babies or during other medical procedures. Only eighty years ago, it was believed that cigarettes posed no health dangers.

And the list goes on. This Earth is not merely a cemetery of people that once were, but also a cemetery of ideas and beliefs once held to be true but are no longer.

You can watch the video here (2 mins 15 sec - 3 min 57 sec).

In April 2023, the social media company Twitter, under the direction of its new owner Elon Musk, eliminated its previous verification standards. Since 2009, a blue check mark next to a Twitter account signified a form of verification meant to guarantee a user’s identity. It was used to weed out charlatans impersonating famous or notable people or organizations, and gave users a reliable indicator of authenticity to counter disinformation on the platform.

But under Musk, blue check marks are now exclusively reserved for users who subscribe to Twitter Blue, a premium service. This change has created a crisis for people who tend to rely on the service for newsgathering purposes. For example, the NY Times reported that within 24 hours, there were eleven different accounts impersonating the Los Angeles Police Department.

One researcher tweeted, “This is going to be chaos for emergency services.” Because Twitter is often a source of credible information during national disasters or other forms of local crisis, the change will make it harder for people to receive emergency services.

Podcaster Josh Boerman posted a satirical tweet impersonating New York City Mayor Eric Adams. In it he claimed that the NYPD budget would be slashed by 70%. He said, “Pretty much everybody got that it was a joke immediately—I wasn’t trying to mislead anyone. The point was that this can be both a joke on the state of the network as well as an opportunity to think about the way that media is disseminated.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Without a standard by which sources are verified as being truthful and trustworthy, people are left to their own devices. Similarly, without God's Word, we have no way of arriving at ultimate truth.

The next time Robert McKenna III celebrates a recent victorious court case in front of coworkers, he’d be wise to prevent anyone from filming his exultation. That’s because McKenna was part of a defense team that successfully fended off a wrongful death suit for a local gastroenterologist.

He was recorded on video at a company function describing the situation as “a guy who was probably negligently killed, but we kind of made it look like other people did it. ... We actually had a death certificate that said he died the very way the plaintiff said he died, and we had to say, ‘No, you really shouldn’t believe what that death certificate says, or the coroner.’”

As a result, the judge who presided over the case vacated the verdict, ordering all parties involved to return to court. At a hearing for the new trial Superior Court Judge James Crandall said, “I think I have to protect the system and say plaintiffs deserve a new trial.”

When asked for his reasoning, the judge elaborated. “When he says on video a ‘guy was probably negligently killed,’ probably is more likely than not. Then he goes on to say, ‘But we kind of made it look like other people did it.’ That seems like an admission of negligence. Seems like an admission the plaintiff should have prevailed.”

The judge went on to call McKenna “an excellent lawyer,” with a reputation for “honesty and integrity. ... But good men make mistakes.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

We shouldn't get so caught up in boasting of our own accomplishments that we lose sight of our own fallibility and the truth.

Nobody likes to be lied to. It is generally agreed that lying is a sin or is not socially acceptable and potentially harmful. Some people believe they are smart enough to spot a liar and have no worries about being duped. Current research on the subject plainly shows that they are not giving credit to man’s master ability to distort and deceive.

Researchers list a surprising 102 possible nonverbal cues that are alleged to expose a liar. The most prominent ones are: “averted gaze, blinking, talking louder … shrugging, shifting posture and movements of the head, hands, arms or legs.”

Numerous studies have found people to be overconfident in their perception and judgment. A study at Texas Christian University revealed that no student volunteers were only able to pick true from false statements better than 54 percent of the time—just slightly above chance.

Even experts who are trained in this area are failing. Studies found police officers no better than 50/50 in recognizing true and false statements told during recorded outbursts by emotional family members who later were found to have committed horrific crimes.

Psychologist Ronald Fisher, who trains FBI agents, warns that good liars are good liars. “Liars do feel more nervous, but that’s an internal feeling as opposed to how they behave as observed by others.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The devil is a liar and a murderer and the father of all liars. He began his career lying to Eve and has continued to use this deception ever since. His “children” (John 8:44) follow his example when they teach deceptive doctrine and worldly philosophy that deceive so many (Col. 2:8).

Six students overdosed on fentanyl during a Florida spring break trip, and several were hospitalized, including two on ventilators in critical condition. The students were football players at the Military Academy at West Point, and afterward the story was covered and passed around several major news outlets. Several stories included anecdotes alleging that some of the students who overdosed did so after attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on their fallen colleagues. But those appear to be exaggerated, according to Simon Taxel.

Taxel, a certified paramedic, addressed the Wilton Manors overdose story specifically. “Illicit fentanyl is extremely dangerous, but the hyperbole and misinformation that has become associated with it are also incredibly harmful. The published statements that two of the victims absorbed enough fentanyl to overdose while performing CPR and mouth to mouth resuscitation are dubious and scientifically extremely unlikely.”

Taxel followed up, “Reporting like this has the potential to cause substantial harm. They increase the fear among both community members and professional rescuers. This fear and anxiety can cause both lay rescuers and first responders to hesitate and potentially delay lifesaving intervention. They also cause the erroneous use of resources like the deployment of hazardous materials teams to scenes where there is suspected fentanyl, when standard precautions like wearing exam gloves and hand washing are more than sufficient to protect everyone.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

There's no need to exaggerate the truth in order to warn people of danger. Discernment and facts should be the backbone of our decision-making process.

No one wants to be seen as a liar. Liars are considered untrustworthy. And yet, we are perfectly content to lie to ourselves all the time. “I’ll enjoy this sleeve of Oreos today because my diet starts tomorrow,” I might tell myself. Or, “I love my job; who cares that I complain about it constantly?” Or even—ironically— “I am always honest with myself.”

Deceiving yourself doesn’t make logical sense. After all, lying involves telling someone something you know to be untrue. When you are both the liar and one lied to, this means you have to both know the truth and not know the truth. To be really happy, we must learn to be completely honest with ourselves.

Relatively few people are completely honest with others. In one study, researchers found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation, and many lied multiple times. Distorting reality inside your own head might be even more common. No one is completely honest with themselves, because the truth hurts. Life is simply full of harsh realities.

All that self-deception takes a lot of work to maintain. Consider procrastination, a form of self-deception that can be trivial (“I’ll unload the dishwasher later”) or catastrophic (“I’ll call the doctor next week about that chest pain”). This form of self-deception is costly not only because avoiding problems can make them worse but also because the procrastinator must do the mental work of a task over and over, without reaping the rewards of actually getting it done.

If you are willfully oblivious to your flaws, you can’t correct them. In the end, each of us has to decide: Do I want the full truth, no matter where it leads? The honest path isn’t easy, but you can be sure that day by day, you will be proud to say that the person in the mirror is not a liar. And that will be the truth.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Real happiness starts with telling yourself the truth, even when it hurts. Real healing begins when we stop making excuses for our sins, telling God the truth in confession, and receiving his forgiveness.

In his book Less is More, pastor Kai Nilsen writes:

On my way to a Bible study class for teens, two friends and I decided to add a little spice to the gathering. We stopped in a local drug store, picked up a few cap guns, tiny fake-metal bearings to toss like grenades across the table at unsuspecting classmates (probably girls), and other small weaponry of chaos. The problem was we had no money to pay. No problem, we thought. A drug store with all this merchandise won’t miss a few insignificant knick-knacks. The store manager, who met us at the door, had other ideas, including calling the local police who chauffeured us to the police station, filed their report, and called our parents.

I’m not sure what was worse, facing the police or facing my mom. (Actually, I know what was worse!) To each I pleaded my case. “I was just the look-out guy. Yes, I was part of it, but I didn’t take anything!” It was a convincing argument to everyone but myself. The tiny bag of fake metal bearings buried in my pocket screamed a different story. “Liar! Thief!” They knew. I knew.

When I returned home, I snuck off to our garage, tucked many yards behind the house, extracted that tiny bag from my pocket and flung it into the darkest corner hoping, praying that I would never have to confront it again. Yet, I didn’t tell anyone for years about the fact that every time I walked past that part of my garage the tiny voice persisted, “Liar! Thief!”

Is there anything you need to say to God today or to someone else to clear that tiny voice from your head and replace it with God’s voice? Hear the truth from God: “You are forgiven. You are loved. Welcome home, again.”

Author Gad Saad is one of the leading voices exposing the harm and folly of political correctness in the US and Canada. In his most recent book, he explores the current futile practice known as “virtue signaling.” Most often on social media, people express moral outrage just by hash-tagging a cause and doing nothing else. Just one example is the #BringBackOurGirls, that was used by millions globally because of the kidnapping of Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram. The only thing that came out of all the virtue signaling was the feeding of one’s ego and the social message that they are progressive and a good person.

Saad gives an example of a public display of valor known as “costly signaling”:

The Sateré-Mawé, an indigenous Amazonian tribe, have a very powerful way of differentiating prospective warriors from their fake counterparts. They sedate bullet ants, whose sting is akin to being shot, and then weave them into leaf gloves. Initiates wear the gloves for several minutes and must withstand the stings of hundreds of these ants as they come out of their sedated torpor. One sting causes unimaginable pain, and yet the inductees must withstand the suffering with restrained dignity (they cannot holler).

One such ordeal would be sufficient to test anyone’s toughness, and yet the young men must endure this tribulation twenty separate times. If all it took to become a warrior was the completion of ten push-ups, nearly everyone could complete the task. ... (It is) a rite of passage that serves as an honest signal of toughness and courage, and you’ve solved the problem of identifying the fakers.

You can watch the YouTube video of the tribal ritual here.

A media provocateur known for spreading outlandish lies recently reported that his friend’s home was raided by the FBI. The seriousness of his claim, combined with photos and video footage, merited interest from local investigative journalists. But in an effort to publish quickly, they failed to discern an essential detail--the raid was staged.

When contacted by a Washington Post reporter, Jacob Wohl gave corroborating details about the supposed raid on his friend, conservative lobbyist Jack Burkman. What he left out was that the men creating the commotion outside Burkman’s residence were actors, hired under the guise of a TV pilot.

The story triggered more investigation from Post metro editor Mike Semel when he noticed there was no other confirmation from FBI or other law enforcement sources. This resulted in a mea culpa from the Post, in the form of a statement:

The Post earlier today published an erroneous story about a purported FBI raid on the home of conservative operative Jack Burkman. The FBI has since said that the raid did not take place. Our story was published because we failed to obtain appropriate confirmation.

When given the opportunity to retract, Burkman doubled down on his story, warning the Post thusly: “You have to remember in journalism you have to be careful—I’m not saying you did this—creating your own reality and ensnaring yourself in those realities.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those who are motivated to spread the truth shouldn’t need to use lies to prove their point. Deception is inevitably revealed as fraudulent and discredits the work of anyone who uses it.

Leilani Schweitzer is in charge of communication and resolution at Stanford Hospital in California. On a segment for NPR Ted Talks, she explains that she is the one tasked to apologize and make amends when a tragic incident happens during a patient’s hospital treatment.

Years ago, Schweitzer’s 20-month-old son Gabriel died in the same hospital due to a nurse’s error and the lack of a failsafe in the equipment used. Schweitzer speaks about how the hospital’s honesty and transparency were critical in her family’s healing:

It would have been easy for the university hospital administrators to blame the nurse, fire her and assume the problem had been solved because the bad apple was gone. It would have been typical deny-and-defend behavior for them to ignore my questions, to go silent and hope I couldn't gather my thoughts enough to file a lawsuit. But they didn't do that. Instead, they investigated. They explained, took responsibility, and apologized. It made all of the difference.

Schweitzer realizes how difficult it is for any person or institution to admit to having seriously injured or killed someone. There’s shame, guilt, and fear. Most hospitals don’t apologize and let the legal department handle the issue. Now in her position in the same hospital where her son died, she explains:

I've been in many meetings where we explain to patients and families what has happened. And those are difficult things to be part of. I've seen an explanation move the guilt off of a mother's face. I mean, that is the power. I have seen parents walk into a meeting with a physician where no one can lift their heads to look at each other. And by the end of that meeting, they are embracing. And it is remarkable what understanding can do for people.