There Is a "No Spin Zone"

   This time of the year there are a lot of things that are new, especially for students and teachers.

   There are new school supplies
   There are new kids in my class
   There are new textbooks
   There are new teachers
   There are new sports and teams

   I guess I was reminded of all this as I read emails from my kids that their kids are all in the process of beginning the school year. I have grand kids in college, high school, middle school and elementary, and, even if they are still in the same school as last year, there will be lots of "new" stuff for them. What will they find? What will they learn? What will they believe?

   In fact, those are questions for all of us, regardless of age or position. What do we find as we live our lives on a daily basis? What do we learn from all the sources that are available to us? What do we believe about what we hear and read and see?

   Our kids will be learning from their teachers, their texts, and what they do in class. Will they be getting the truth or someone's opinion, or spin? Sometimes even the textbooks and required reading have an agenda that will influence a student in one direction or another. The advances of science have been such that those who used science texts back just a few years ago and studied "truth" now find that they actually did not. What is taught as truth is often not, maybe not deliberately, but just through ignorance.

   How about us as adults? How do we get the truth? From TV, from newspapers, from the Internet, from others around us? How do we discern the truth without the spin or deliberate manipulation? Our sources are many and varied, and readily available, but how do we determine the bottom line of truth?

   A verse from Psalm 119 for today:

   "The sum of your word is truth"

   A simplistic answer maybe, but true.

   Be wary of all the others, especially if they contradict God.