“One word of Truth…” is the title of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s acceptance speech when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
The title is part of a Russian proverb which says ‘One word of truth outweighs the whole world’.
In the news very recently you will almost certainly heard or read that a court in the USA has awarded damages close to a million US dollars against Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist, because he described the shooting by Adam Lanza of 20 children and 6 adult staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012 as a well organised hoax.
It wasn’t just a single statement but one proclaimed repeatedly with many variations by many followers of Alex Jones.
Alex Jones justified his statements on the grounds of his right to free speech.
The jury in this court case, brought by parents of the children killed in this massacre, clearly decided that Alex Jones was not just lying, he was deliberately and blatantly contradicting the real truth of what happened.
He needed to be held accountable for his unacceptable, even evil, behaviour.
Isaiah reminds us of God’s judgement – ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter’ (Isaiah ch 5 v 20).
Moral categories are there for the benefit of the wise and the instruction of all.